The Significance of Poetic Language in Prose (on the Example of the Georgian Writer Goderdzi Chokheli)

Abstract

The study of a writer’s language remains one of the most critical issues to date. Researchers are drawn not only to individual periods in the development of literature but also to the creator themselves—their process of maturation and its ultimate outcome: individuality. “Some scholars consider ideological content to be an integral element of the structure of a literary work. Although the thematic-content aspect is not strictly a subject of linguistic study, its exclusion during concrete analysis is deemed unacceptable” (Ochigava, 2009: 3). Consequently, we likewise assert that a literary-critical analysis of Goderdzi Chokheli’s oeuvre cannot be complete without reviewing the virtues of his artistic-poetic language. “Artistic language constitutes a universal medium for revealing the deepest layers of the unconscious, which directly border upon and react to the hidden forms of existence—that is, what lies beyond reality and perception. Artistic language serves as the mechanism for this reaction. ...Unlike the signs of conversational and scientific language, which are characterized by denotative transparency, the sign of artistic language is ambiguous and carries a ‘train’ of associative meanings. Rather than directing us immediately to the signified, it does so indirectly. Due to this nature, artistic language activates all the symbolic possibilities inherent within the word” (Kvachantiradze, 2008: 104–107). Ultimately, these symbolic possibilities woven into words manifest through a combination of lexical, grammatical, and dialectal norms. It is precisely the stylistic function of certain lexical and grammatical features that we have attempted to uncover in Goderdzi Chokheli’s works. “It is well known that artistic language possesses communicative, emotional, aesthetic, and appellative functions” (Kvaratskhelia, 1995: 9). Goderdzi Chokheli is a writer with a distinctive artistic language; linguistically and stylistically, his oeuvre holds an indisputably special place in Georgian literature. Therefore, delineating certain peculiarities of the author's language and style is of significant interest—all the more so because it simultaneously concerns both prose and poetry. His prose style is more poetic than narrative (in the traditional sense of the term). He avoids meticulous description or a prosaic, literal approach to the subject, often remaining content with the position of a poetic contemplator of events. This poetic device evolves into a system in Chokheli’s work, to the extent that a portion of his prose works is occasionally written in rhythmic prose or explicitly articulated blank verse. Generally, literary studies embrace the poetics of poetry, whereas a poetics of prose remains rare, even though poetics fundamentally studies the structure of a literary work. A literary work, after all, is not confined solely to poetic verse. Nevertheless, it is precisely the methods and devices of constructing a poetic work that are taught in the normative poetic treatises of Aristotle and Horace.