ᲝᲠᲘ ᲠᲝᲛᲐᲜᲘᲡ ᲛᲡᲒᲐᲕᲡᲘ ᲓᲐ ᲒᲐᲜᲡᲮᲕᲐᲕᲔᲑᲣᲚᲘ ᲒᲐᲜᲖᲝᲛᲘᲚᲔᲑᲐᲜᲘ: ᲙᲜᲣᲢ ᲰᲐᲛᲡᲣᲜᲘᲡ „ᲛᲘᲡᲢᲔᲠᲘᲔᲑᲘᲡᲐ“ ᲓᲐ ᲒᲣᲠᲐᲛ ᲒᲔᲒᲔᲨᲘᲫᲘᲡ „ᲪᲝᲓᲕᲘᲚᲘᲡ“ ᲛᲘᲛᲐᲠᲗᲔᲑᲘᲡᲐᲗᲕᲘᲡ

ანოტაცია

Following Stalin’s death, the mid-1950s and early 1960s witnessed major socio-political changes across the Soviet empire. Like other spheres of social life, art and literature were also affected by these transformations. In Georgian literature, particularly noteworthy processes emerged, which may be understood as an attempt to restore and continue the modernist line of development that had been forcibly interrupted in the 1930s. The first novel of the outstanding Georgian writer Guram Gegeshidze (1934–2020), “The Sinner” (1966), should be read in this context. In Georgian literary criticism, the question soon arose as to the literary origins of
Gegeshidze’s work. Did its main character, Vamek Guramishvili, emerge from Georgian reality, or was he a hero transplanted from foreign literature? Among Vamek’s several possible literary counterparts, particular attention has been devoted to Johan
Nagel, the protagonist of Knut Hamsun’s celebrated modernist novel “Mysteries”, which has long enjoyed, and continues to enjoy, great popularity in Georgia.
Guram Gegeshidze’s novel reveals notable similarities to Hamsun’s novel in terms of plot development, especially in its opening sections. Like Nagel, Vamek becomes the catalyst for a series of strange events in the small, unfamiliar town to which he unexpectedly arrives. It appears that “The Sinner” was indeed written under the inspiration of “Mysteries”; at the same time, however, it clearly differs not only from Hamsun’s novel but from any other work as well. The inner world of “The
Sinner” and “Mysteries,” their underlying message and central ideas, and especially the resolution of the plot, differ substantially from one another.