აკაკი წერეთლის უცნობი რუსულენოვანი ავტოგრაფები (ტექსტოლოგიური ანალიზი)

აბსტრაქტი

სტატიიდან აღებული ავტორის ინგლისურენოვანი რეზიუმე:

Key words: textual criticism, journalism, unknown autographs, Akaki Tsereteli, history of Georgian church, history of Georgian theatre.

There are several very important unpublished autographs kept in Akaki Tsereteli’s private archive at Georgian National Center of Manuscripts. Text, written on two pieces of paper and titled as “The Autocephaly of the Georgian Church” is neither dated nor signed. The handwriting is fast and not clearly legible. The calligraphy belongs to Akaki Tsereteli. It begins with the information about the heated debates in the Holy Synod concerning the autocephaly of the Georgian Church. The session, mentioned in the manuscript, was held on the 17-18-th of January in 1906. Accordingly, The text must be dated later than the event took place – after January 18.

The article seems to be written with the purpose to express support for the position of the Georgian bishops – Kirion and Leonid declared at the Synod sessions. It describes History of Georgian church before the lost of its independence (in 1811) and after it. The poet writes that the abolishment of the patriarch’s chair and intensification of the russification policy caused spiritual degradation of the nation. Akaki Tsereteli also speaks about the appropriation of church lands by the State Treasury of the Russian Empire and about auctioning of the property, plundered from Georgian monasteries. In the end he comes to the conclusion: the rule of exarchs did so much harm to Georgian people that they got suspicious whether Russians were real orthodoxes or not.

In Akaki Tsereteli’s opinion this was the reason that caused estrangement from the church. The nation which survived their faith from the 6-th to the 19-th centuries without any inclination, began to move to some other – non-orthodox churches. Another autograph, written on 8 pieces of paper in Russian and titled as “The Georgian Theatre” is not dated. In order to identify the time when it was written, we used information about some facts, given in the text. The author says that Taso Aabashidze’s benefit performance on January 26, described in the article, was held 15 years after her first aapearance on the stage. We compared this information with various documents of the period and came to the conclusion that the time interval “15 years” is not exact.

The benefit performance was held 14 years after her first appearance on the stage in 1899. Thus the article must be written on January 26, 1913. This date is in full accordance with all the other facts, mentioned in the document. Akaki Tsereteli has written a number of articles on theatre in different years but the text of the autograph is very important as it is the last article on the subject which deeply analyses not only the problems existing in the theatre but general vices of our society as well. The text of the speech, addressed to the exarch of Georgia is a draft copy written in Russian without any title, date or signature. From the contents we can identify that the Russian empire was involved in a war.

Besides, it becomes clear from the text, that the speech was to be delivered on the 8-th of September in Gelati church of the Nativity of the Holy Virgin. The poet is supposed to be in his late years and rather famous as only an experienced, selfconfident and highly honoured person could make such strict, objective evaluations of the imperial policy before the head of the church. Taking into account all this, we suppose that the war mentioned in the text is the first world war begun in summer, 1914, the “Virgin Mary’s birth day” is the 8-th of September of the same year and the text was written before the date. From June 26, 1914 the exarch of Georgia was Piterim Oknov and the letter must be addressed to him.

Akaki Tsereteli speaks about both – positive and negative sides of Georgia-Russia integration but most of all emphasizes the facts of the Georgian language oppression. The addressee of two draft copies of the speech text, written in Russian, without a title, date and signature is an Emperor. Some historical facts, mentioned in the text helped us to identify that the emperor must be Russian monarch Nikolai II and the speech was to be delivered in November, 1914 during his visit to Georgia. The fact that Akaki Tsereteli was going to meet Nikolai II and address him with a speech is confirmed in Aniko Machabeli’s letter sent to the writer on December 5, 1914.

We can assume from the letter that Akaki Tsereteli, being ill, could not attend the meeting between the king and Georgian aristocracy and accordingly could not deliver the speech. Alongside with the unknown texts Akaki Tsereteli’s archive in Georgian National Center of Manuscripts contains Russian autographs not included into the full edition of his works (in 15 volumes) but Georgian versions of which are quite familiar to our reader, e.g. Russian text “Recollections of an old timer”, written on four pieces of paper not by Akaki Tsereteli, but some other person and signed at the end by the writer himself, is a copy with some corrections in it.

The plain text and the corrections are written with the same ink. So, we can say that the writer was involved in the process of creating the copy. We could not find its publication in the XIX century Russian periodicals but the thorough study of the Georgian articles of the period revealed that it is a Russian version of the Georgian text – “significant” published in “Akakis’ Krebuli” in 1898. The greater part of the text is written (and maybe translated too) by some other person but at the end it is signed by the author. Some passages of the Georgian text, containing general information, are concretized and particularized in the Russian one.

This kind of corrections could be done only by the author. Thus the text should be considered authorized. Comparative study of some episodes revealed that the Georgian version is earlier than – Russian. The Georgian text says: “Gigauri served with us 30 years ego” while the same passage of the Russian version says: “I know the Priest Gigauri. 35 years ago he served with us in Chala-tke”. So, between the creation of the Georgian and Russian versions there must be 5 years and the Russian version should be written in 1903. The article is about religious traditions and rules. Akaki Tsereteli says that even in the 60-ies of the XIX century Georgian people were much more religious than by the end of the century.

In the writer’s opinion the main reason of this was the way the liturgies were held in the Georgian churches of the period. He does not say directly that the population could not understand Russian and stopped attending the service for this reason but he implies it. Summing up the research results, we should say that the texts kept in the Georgian National Center of Manuscripts contain important information not only about Akaki Tsereteli and his observations on different subjects but about the general historical background of the period as well.

გამოქვეყნებულია ჟურნალში „სჯანი“, ტ. 14 (2013), გვ. 114–125. ნაშრომის გახსნა