{"product_id":"donkey-messiah","title":"Donkey Messiah","description":"\u003cp\u003eDonkey Messiah\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eRazhden Gvetadze\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eLiterary modernism in Georgia enjoyed a brief flowering before its suppression by the incoming Soviet regime. Central to the country’s febrile early twentieth century output, Razhden Gvetadze pursued a poetics predicated on sensation, perception and the weight of existence.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eA member of seminal modernist group the Blue Horns, Gvetadze’s work situates him at once as Georgian, invoking the customs and folklore of his land, and as a prototypical pan-European artist, drawing from and maintaining active correspondence with the French Symbolists whose work he both emulated and sought to frame in a domestic context.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eWith any exploration of national identity, history and certainly the perceived cultural degradation of the Blue Horns’ Baudelarian decadence all forbidden, Gvetadze’s practice split, prose taking the place of poetry and straight-laced socialist realism substituted for ludic experimentation. He went on to write novels and, as a director of a publishing house, was able to continue to support fellow Georgian writers: perhaps a subtle act of resistance.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eOriginally published in 1924, this reprint of Donkey Messiah resurrects an important literary work that may have remained obscured were it not for the poet’s great-granddaughter, Thea Gvetadze, who initiated this publication, here translated into English for the first time. While the trajectory of his career cut short his experiments with form and theme, the rediscovery of his work not only repairs something of Georgia’s modernist heritage but might serve to reconnect a contemporary avant garde with its forebears.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eEditor: Nina Akhvlediani Text: Bela Tsipuria\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eDesign: Dan Solbach, with Lidka Vallet\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003ePoetry translation to English: Lyn Coffin\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Kona Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":66156196462941,"sku":null,"price":13.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.gazellebookservices.co.uk\/products\/donkey-messiah","provider":"Gazelle Book Services","version":"1.0","type":"link"}