A Man Was Going Down the Road
This article possibly contains original research. (August 2016) |
ISBN 0956468306 | |
A Man Was Going Down the Road (Georgian: გზაზე ერთი კაცი მიდიოდა) is a novel written by Otar Chiladze in 1973. It was translated into English by Donald Rayfield in 2012.[1]
Synopsis
A Man Was Going Down the Road begins with the Greek legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece and the consequences for the obscure kingdom of Colchis after the Greek Jason comes and abducts Medea. But it is also an allegory of the treachery and destruction that ensued when Russia, and then the Soviets, annexed Georgia, as well as Chiladze's interpretation of life as a version of the ancient Anatolian story of Gilgamesh, and a study of Georgian life, domestic and political, in which women and children pay the price for the hero's quests, obsessions and doubts.[1]
Plot
The novel is written in three parts, spanning generations. The first part, Aeëtes, tells the story of Phrixus and his upbringing by King AEetes, the king of Colchis. In his new land, Phrixos would always be an outsider “like a cuckoo’s egg” and forever in debt to the people who saved him and reared him. This is also the tale of Jason, the Argonauts, and the Golden Fleece. Jason arrives from Greece to steal the golden wool, but kidnaps Medea, the daughter of King AEetes, as she drugs her father in order to also steal the golden fleece of the winged ram. Young and handsome, Jason is regarded as a hero, although a “wrongdoer.”
Part II, Ukheiro, is of a warrior, who breaks his leg in battle. His wife Marekhi dies in childbirth and Ukheiro's 10-year-old daughter Popina looks after her father and the new-born boy, Parnaoz. While waiting for death – for he can no longer fight as a warrior – Ukheiro takes up embroidery. His son Parnaoz falls madly in love with Ino, the seventh daughter of black-eyed Malalo. But theirs is a troubled relationship, and he has a competitor. Parnaoz's sister Popina has a son, Popeye, whose father flees at news of the pregnancy. As Popeye grows, he too falls in the love with Ino. The rivalry between Parnaoz and his nephew Popeye is intense, and Parnaoz eventually leaves Colchis for Crete.
Part III, Parnaoz, is the story of Parnaoz's return to Colchis after about 10 years in Crete. But Ino has not yet married, and the rivalry between Parnaoz and Popeye continues. Parnaoz marries childhood friend, Tina, but he “didn’t care whom he married” for he was “looking for a refuge.. somewhere to hide from Ino.” Tina and Parnaoz soon have a son, little Ukheiro, but Parnaoz now wants to leave his wife. “Parnaoz knew only one thing: whether he got together with Ino or not, he could never accept not being with her, or any substitute life offered, or anything from life.” Interwoven in this section is also the tale of Icarus and Daedalus. In Greek mythology, father and son attempt to flee Crete with waxed and feathered wings. Icarus does not heed his father's warning, and flies too close to the sun. The heat melts the waxed wings, and he falls into the sea and drowns. What follows Parnaoz's disillusionment with his wife, and his constant pining for Ino, is the tragedy that comes from not heeding any warning, and from idealistic and obsessive love.
Characters
Characters from the Mythology
, or else of a certain Antiope.
The play tells of Medea avenging her husband's betrayal by killing their children.
Jason appeared in various literary works in the
Daedalus – he was a skillful craftsman and artist.[15][16] He is the father of Icarus, the uncle of Perdix and possibly also the father of Iapyx although this is unclear.
Major themes
Chiladze wrote A Man Was Going Down the Road in the early 1970s while Georgia was still a part of the Soviet Union. The book is allegorical. In the story of how Colchis was overrun by outsiders – and native Colchians like Popeye were turned into informants and torturers – Chiladze is telling Georgia's story.[17]
As Bochia talked, he too was amazed how everything took on a fairy-tale wonder and enchantment, things that hitherto only he had known that had been permanently deposited, together with countless other memories, in the depths of his heart and, perhaps, had thus lost their colour and meaning, like grandmother's wedding dress. But now, brought into the sunlight, taken out of the trunk, aired in the breeze, in front of so many curious grandchildren, it not only recovered its original softness and lightness, it reanimated its owner's intoxicating virginity, the quivering as her wedding was prepared. People's hearts swelled with pride, they choked on belated tears, and an equally belated regret distressed them, because they had so easily and casually forgotten such a fine, beautiful grandmother whose grave they could no longer find, if only to clear it of weeds and sit just for a minute at her feet (415–16).
— Otar Chiladze, A Man Was Going Down the Road
References
- ^ a b Ismailov, Hamid (18 January 2013). "BBC – World Service Writer in Residence: A Man was Going Down the Road". BBC World Service. Retrieved 19 June 2015.
- ISBN 0252063562. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
- ^ Colchis was an ancient Georgian Kingdom
- ^ Glauce is known as Creusa in Seneca's Medea and in Propertius 2.16.30.
- ^ Gaius Julius Hyginus, Fabulae, 13.
- ^ Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 9. §23.
- ^ Apollonius of Rhodes, 3. 241.
- Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica
- ^ Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 9. §24; Ovid, Tristia 3. 9; compare Apollonius 4. 338, &c. 460, &c.
- Pseudo-Apollodorus, Library 3.1.2.
- ^ Nonnus, Dionysiaca, 13. 220ff.
- Hyginus, Poetical Astronomy 2. 34
- ^ Stephanus of Byzantium s. v. Pholegandros
- ^ Larissa Bonfante, Judith Swaddling, Etruscan Myths, p. 43
- ^ "This is the workshop of Daedalus," wrote Philostratus of Lemnos in Immagines (1.16), "and about it are statues, some with forms blocked out, others in a quite complete state in that they are already stepping forward and give promise of walking about. Before the time of Daedalus, you know, the art of making statues had not yet conceived such a thing."
- ^ Frontisi-Ducroux, Françoise (1975). Dédale: Mythologie de l'artisan en Grèce Ancienne. Paris: François Maspero. p. 227.. Cf. Frontisi-Ducroux
- ^ Dittes, James (6 July 2015). "Marching Through Georgia '15: Book Review: A Man Was Going Down the Road by Otar Chiladze". Archived from the original on 14 February 2016. Retrieved 29 January 2018.