The Concepts and Realities of the Eastern Culture in “The Knight in the Panther's Skin”

Résumé

To the present day the research on The Knight in the Panther’s Skin (“Vepkhistqaosani”) in connection with the Eastern Muslim world has been conducted in two main directions:

1. “Vepkhistqaosani” and literature composed in the Muslim world (for example, parallels with Nizami, Ferdowsi, Fakhraddin Gorgani etc.);

2. “Vepkhistqaosani” and the confession of the Muslim faith: this includes the works, which agree or deny the presence of the Muslim understanding of God, world, romantic love and the relationship between men and women in Rustaveli’s Romance.

When analyzing the concepts and realities of the cultures of the East in “Vepkhistqaosani” the most significant is the concept of mijnuroba (love). Substantiating his own understanding of mijnur in the Prologue, Rustaveli refers the reader to the Arab culture. Presenting the suffering from love as an incurable malady obtained a special literary and aesthetic meaning in the poetry of the Bedouin (Udhrah) tribes of Central Arabia in the 7th and 8th centuries, the poets of which wrote verses on a fatal and almost mystic love that could bring only ordeal, with death being the only possible way out of it. The main motifs of the Udhrī lyrics (loss of consciousness, shedding tears of blood, roaming the plains, etc) acquired greater meaning and depth not only in Sufi poetry, but in the “Vepkhistqaosani”.

Yet, the conventional motifs, which are typical for both concepts – Beduin and Sufi poetry – are encountered in Rustaveli’s work only as readymade formulae, which are given a different interpretation as a result of literary revision.