The Political Influence on Ibsen’s Reception in Georgia Mariam Nodia Mphil Thesis in Ibsen Studies Centre for Ibsen Studies, Faculty of Humanities UNIVERSITY OF OSLO Spring 2013 II The Political Influence on Ibsen’s Reception in Georgia Mariam Nodia Mphil Thesis in Ibsen Studies Centre for Ibsen Studies, Faculty of Humanities UNIVERSITY OF OSLO Spring 2013 III © Mariam Nodia 2013 The Political Influence on Ibsen’s Reception in Georgia http://www.duo.uio.no/ Trykk: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo IV Abstract The topic of my thesis is the political influence on Ibsen’s reception in Georgia. The political phases that Georgia has undergone since the 1890s, when the first paper on Ibsen was published, are dramatically different from each other. In my thesis I have presented three periods of Ibsen’s reception in Georgia: 1. when the country was a part of the Russian Empire. 2. when the country became a part of the USSR and 3. in the Democratic Republic of Georgia, since 1991. Obviously, the prevailing political winds were different within Tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union and in the Democratic Republic of Georgia. Therefore, in my thesis I have not only given a chronological history of Ibsen’s reception in Georgia but, while focusing on different fields within different historical phases, such as the printing press, translations and theatre performances, I have examined how the evaluation of Ibsen’s plays altered alongside the ideological changes taking place in the country and how they acquired different significance during the various political eras. In order to research how and to what extent Ibsen’s reception in Georgia was influenced by the political regimes, I have analysed 1) the reviews of the texts / translations of Ibsen’s plays and 2) performances together with their reviews. The theoretical framework that I have applied to my thesis is a reception theory. My research led me to the conclusion that ruling regimes and ideologies have had an obvious influence on Ibsen’s reception in my country and, moreover, Ibsen’s works were often used as a weapon for fighting against political injustice. V VI Dedication Dedicated to the loving memory of Herjolf Skogland and Lili Nodia VII VIII Acknowledgements First and foremost, I offer my sincerest gratitude to Jon Nygaard, my supervisor, who has supported me throughout my work on this thesis and whose expertise, understanding, and patience, added considerably to my graduate experience. A very special thanks to Astrid Sæther, Erika Fischer-Lichte, Jullie Holledge, Frode Helland, Kamaluddin Nilu, and Claudia Horntvedt for their engaging and productive lectures. I am indebted to Randi Meyer, the librarian at the Centre of Ibsen Studies, who was always ready to assist me and give me valuable advice. I cannot find words to express my gratitude to Lydia West for reviewing/proofreading my thesis and for her valuable comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank Vano Khutsishvili, a theatre director at the Liberty Theatre; Maia Odisharia, the PR manager at Tumanishvili Theatre; Employees of the Georgian State Museum of Theatre, Cinema, Music and Choreography; of the library of Shota Rustaveli Theatre and Film Georgian State Unviersity, of the Archive Department of the Ministry of the Interior of Georgia, and of The National Parliamentary Library of Georgi, for their support. I owe my deepest gratitude to Frode Hermundsgård and Kakhaber Loria who taught me Norwegian and made me interested in Norwegian literature. I am profoundly thankful Darejan Chikviladze, who, besides being my first English teacher, is a role-model and a dear friend. My professors Elguja Khintibidze, Inness Merabishvili, Ekaterine Navrozashvili, Rusudan Chanturishvili, Tinatin Margalitadze, Tamar Injia, and many others from Ivane Javakhishvili State University deserve my sincere gratitude for their academic guidance. At a more personal level, I would like to offer heartfelt thanks to my beloved husband Arni, for his love and encouragement; to my son Daniel who totally changed my life since he came into this world; to my parents and parents-in-law, to my siblings Tamuna and Giorgi for their priceless support and inspiration, and to my dear friends who were always optimistic and had faith in my work. Without these people, this thesis could not have been written. Mariam Nodia Oslo, 2013 IX X Table of Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... V Dedication ............................................................................................................................... VII Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... IX 1 Introduction and Historical Background ............................................................................ 1 1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 1.1.1 Topic ..................................................................................................................... 1 1.1.2 Research Question and Design ............................................................................. 2 1.1.3 Significance and Previous Research .................................................................... 3 1.1.4 Theory .................................................................................................................. 4 1.1.5 Data and Methods ................................................................................................. 6 1.2 Historical Background ................................................................................................. 8 1.2.1 Georgia under the Russian Empire ....................................................................... 8 1.2.2 Georgia under the Soviet Union ......................................................................... 12 1.2.3 The independent Republic of Georgia ............................................................... 15 2 Ibsen’s Reception in Georgia under the Russian Empire ................................................. 17 2.1 Ibsen in the periodicals of Georgia under the Russian Empire ................................. 17 2.2 Translations of Ibsen’s works in Georgia under the Russian Empire ....................... 29 2.3 Ibsen on the Georgian Stage under the Russian Empire ........................................... 41 3 Ibsen’s Reception in the Soviet Republic of Georgia ...................................................... 54 3.1 Ibsen in the Soviet Republic of Georgia’s Periodicals .............................................. 54 3.2 Ibsen translations in the Soviet Republic of Georgia ................................................ 66 3.3 Ibsen on the Stage of the Soviet Republic of Georgia ............................................... 71 4 Ibsen’s Reception in the Democratic Republic of Georgia .............................................. 89 4.1 Ibsen and Literary Criticism in the Democratic Republic of Georgia ....................... 89 4.2 Ibsen Translations in the Democratic Republic of Georgia ...................................... 93 4.3 Ibsen on the Stage of the Democratic Republic of Georgia ...................................... 95 Appendix ................................................................................................................................ 116 Photos And Illustrations ......................................................................................................... 121 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................ 123 XI XII 1 Introduction and Historical Background 1.1 Introduction 1.1.1 Topic Georgia is my home country, therefore, as soon as I became involved in Ibsen studies, I decided to discover when and how Ibsen’s plays were translated, evaluated and performed in Georgia. For this purpose I studied the database on the subject of the National Public Library of Georgia. The result of my preliminary research turned out to be interesting: Ibsen’s reception in Georgia dates back at least a hundred and twenty years. Ibsen’s works have been reviewed, staged and published in Georgia since the end of the nineteenth century. Little Eyolf was the first work by Ibsen that was translated into Georgian and published in the newspaper Moambe (Herald) in 1901. In the first decade of the twentieth century, two more Georgian versions of Ibsen’s plays were introduced to Georgian readers: An Enemy of the People i.e. Doctor Stokcmann, as it was named in 1903, and Ghosts in 1904. The earliest article I found where the works of the Norwegian playwright are mentioned and discussed was published in Iveria in 1895. Since then, hundreds of reviews of Ibsen’s works, performances of his plays etc. were published in Georgian newspapers and journals. The largest amount of data on Ibsen was issued in 1956 in Georgia, fifty years after the death of the author. Georgia underwent radical political changes in the last century. When the first biography of Ibsen and the first Georgian translations of his works were published in Georgia, the country was under the rule of the Russian empire. In 1956, when almost all periodicals of Georgia published at least one article on Ibsen and his works, the country was a part of the Soviet Union. And in the late 1990s, when two volumes of the translations