@Copyright 2012 Mary Evelynne Childs Classical Allusions and Imperial Desire: Problems of Identity in Georgian and Russian Literature Mary Evelynne Childs A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2012 Reading Committee: James D. West, Chair Laurence Bliquez Walter Andrews Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Comparative Literature University of Washington Abstract Classical Allusions and Imperial Desire: Problems of Identity in Georgian and Russian Literature Mary Evelynne Childs Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor James D. West Department of Slavic Languages and Literature This dissertation explores cultural and political aspects of the relationship between Russia and Georgia, through the lens of Classical allusions. Since ancient Greek and Roman times, Classical myths and tales have been re-written by successive generations to reflect on critical political and social issues, including questions of empire and national identity. In Russia and Georgia, such a use of the Classics has been perhaps even more marked than in Western Europe. Straddling Asia and the West, Russians appreciate access to the western Classics as a touchstone of their belonging to Europe. Georgia, on Russia’s southern border, is actually home to several famous Classical mythological characters, including Prometheus, Medea, and her father Aeëtes, and its claim to these figures provokes a sense of cultural competition with Russia. In negotiating political and cultural control in the Caucasus, Russia, imagining itself as a neo-Roman Empire, may lay claim to ruling the physical space, imaging itself as a harbinger of civilization for the “uncultured barbarians” on its southern border. Georgia, however, has developed its own sense of nationhood, claiming a spiritual hegemony as an empire of humanism, embracing its ties to Hellenism. Applying a thread of post-colonial theory both to think about Empire from within the hegemonic empire itself, and to listen to voices from the margins, my dissertation is structured on the process of veiling, unveiling, and self-unveiling, and how the use and manipulation of Classical allusions aid in this process. From the common language of Classical references emerges an intellectual space in which the authors I study, the Russians Andrei Bitov, Liudmila Ulitskaia, the Georgian-Armenian, Bulat Okudzhava, and the Georgian, Otar Chiladze, articulate their hopes, passions and desires, a space for their various voices to be heard. Read together, they tell a larger story about the relationship between Russia and Georgia. Touching upon how empire is conceived, imagined and generated, they reflect their countries’ shared and intertwined history that includes conflict, disappointment, the problem of dealing with Stalin’s legacy, and a strong desire from both parties to be accepted as full and active members in the increasingly complex post-Soviet world. Dedication I dedicate this dissertation first of all to my family. To the memory of my maternal grandmother, Helen Mills Tolbert, on whose living-room bookshelves I found Homer and Sophocles in Greek, and Ovid and Latin; and tucked away upstairs, volumes of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Nabokov in English translation. In the comfort of her stately farmhouse in southern Idaho, reading the Classics and Russian literature together seemed a natural phenomenon. And to the memory of my father, Morris E. Childs, who, as an aerodynamicist researching supersonic boundary layers, introduced me to the importance of studying areas of turbulence. And to the living: To all of you for your patience and understanding – you know who you are. I also would like to thank my extended network of advisers, mentors, and friends: my dissertation chair, Professor James West, for encouraging me to tackle such a topic, and for insisting that I use the Georgian I had the opportunity to study; Aida Abuashvili Lominadze, for introducing me to the complexities of the Georgian language; and the many family friends and relatives who have politely refrained from asking that vexed question – when are you going to finish? i 1 Introduction Classical Allusions and Imperial Desire: Problems of Identity in Georgian and Russian Literature. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of us who study Russia felt a need to explore beyond the forbidding and forbidden border of Russia itself, to explore the peripheral republics that comprised the “Friendship of Nations.” My own attempt to grapple with Russia outside of the centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg began with a project I started in 2005, “Legends of the Black Sea: Traces of Classical Culture in Contemporary Russian Literature and Culture.”1 As a Classicist, I was interested in exploring the contemporary presence of Classical Greek and Roman culture in the Black Sea region, extending my study of the Classics beyond the traditional borders of Troy and the Bosphorus. As a Slavicist, I hoped to better understand how Russia relates to the lands on her southern border, and how Russia and the West relate to each other along an extended East-West border. In an attempt to understand Russia’s southern periphery, to explore what is East, what West, and how the two relate, the Black Sea region beckons as fertile ground: its shores touch Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine and the Crimea, Southern Russia near Sochi, Abkhazia, Georgia, and Turkey, all of which lay claim to being at one time or another the border between East and West. Bulgaria, once part of Thrace, is studded with Ancient Greek ruins, shows signs of Ottoman influence, and is now part of Europe. Romania was home to the Greek colony of Istria, and the Roman outpost at Tomis, site of Ovid’s exile. It has been part of both Ottoman Turkey and the Austro-Hungarian Empire; and in the late-19th and 20th centuries, with Bucharest known as the Paris of the Black Sea, it was 2 claimed by the Romanians to be “an island of Latinity in a sea of Slavdom.” Ukraine and the Crimea were also part of the Greek empire, whose trading centers at Olbia, Chersonesus and Theodosia were meeting grounds for Greeks and the “barbarian” Scythians, Sarmatians, and other nomadic tribes. Further east, Georgia has been at the epicenter of overlapping empires, with its ancient Greek trading posts of Dioskurias and Phasis; Hellenistic Greek artifacts found just outside of its capital, Tbilisi; Roman vases from the hills above Batumi; and castles overrun by the Persians in the 17th century, in the Alazani Valley. Georgia, in particular, lays claim to being at the very crossroads of East and West, with the Caucasus Mountains separating it from Russia in the north and west, and the lands to the east and south opening out to the plateaus of Iran and Iraq, the Mesopotamian basin. But where is the ever-vanishing border between East and West? Rather than defining a distinct border between East and West, I have found it far more helpful to think of the Black Sea region as an extensive border zone. Over the centuries, all of the countries have indeed been on, close to, or within a political line of demarcation between East and West; they have all felt the effects of being in an area of sustained convergence of various external forces. In such a border zone, turbulence seems inevitable, and the job of a cultural scholar, whether anthropologist, historian, or literary critic involves reading and interpreting patterns within the turbulence. The primary pattern I have chosen to read is that of the traces of and references to the ancient Greek and Roman Classics. Once we have identified cultural particulates, in this case the retellings, adaptations, allusions and references to Classical myths and culture, we can then watch how patterns develop: how the Classical tales and myths spin and refract, how they change in different environments, and take on different hues of meaning. 3 Although my original interest in such a border zone concerned the Black Sea region as a whole, I have narrowed my scope for this dissertation. The patterning of Classical allusions is particularly marked in the turbulent zone of the Caucasus, in the relationship between Russia and Georgia, and in this dissertation I explore how allusions to Classical myths and legends in selected literary texts have been and continue to be used to articulate issues of national identity, to bring into relief the less than peaceful relations between the two countries; and to express personal identity and trauma felt by authors caught within the forces of authoritarian governments, and the turbulence and tension they have bred. The General Landscape More than twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia and its former republics are still engaged in a process of redefining themselves: Russia attempting to regain its glory as a world player; the republics trying to maintain the independence they established after the collapse, and to re-articulate their relationships with Russia and with each other. All the while, their eyes have a global focus, to both East and West: towards the United States and the European Union, but also towards the rapidly-changing Middle East of Turkey and Iran, and the east of India, China, and beyond. The world at large is trying to understand this redefinition and the current geo- political and geo-cultural contours of a landscape that has known many changes over time, yet has stayed in some ways much the same. One small portion of that landscape, Georgia, has garnered a lion’s