OCTAVE OF SILENCE

Trample it with joy, sometimes with sorrow,

Mounted on Rocinante ,

Shall Don Quixotes ride“

Lasha Tabukashvili

Late last spring, A meeting with the writer and dramatist – Lasha Tabukashvili took place in the "Tumanishvili Film Actors Theatre", under the auspices of the “Living Books” project of the Ministry of Culture.

The hall was crowded. Everyone missed meeting their favorite writer, seeing him, listening to him, and sharing space and silence with him.

Lasha Tabukashvili is a writer of thought, of a thought inverted to content, looking through the eyes turned to the inner essence, that’s why his speech – voice and mannerism, the vibrations of his soul, means silence as well. Healthy intervals, electrifying pauses. Everyone who attended the meeting that night would agree.

I remember this day as the noise of silence. It was both a reminder of the great artist’s life and a kind of intermission – being a warrior in the world of sin and grace.

Every time I would meet him, I would touch the silence and he looked even more complete,dramatic, and eloquent on the stage.

I want to use this silence as the Kammerton of this small letter (to borrow from the dear writer again) and spread my thoughts, impressions, words, and love in it.

Like in an emerald lake, where all the waves are transparent, but the bottom is still invisible.

Lasha Tabukashvili is the heir of a great family. To be the son of Rezo Tabukashvili and Medea Japaridze is both a blessing and perhaps a burden and I will not talk about it now. What can I say that’s new, or more important in our country’s history than this family itself, until there are ways in our culture nourished by the grace and work of Tabukashvilis. When I think about this family, I imagine a royal gift – encrusted with pure gems, with the scent of Zedashe wine. This thought takes your breath away – how did these precious and beautiful souls come together? How much power did God wish for this unity? This beautiful trinity – mother, father, and son – an anthem to the exalted?

If there is something eternal and immortal in our people, in this country of ours, this family firmly established and symbolized it. They connected the independent Georgian cause with the common kindness and turned it into an eternal value. That is why Lasha Tabukashvili does not start from a clean sheet. It is the continuation of a great, centuries-old writing, and he greatly accepts this heritage. In order to become an ancestor himself.

In the biography of Lasha Tabukashvili, we read that he graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Tbilisi State University. What is surprising about this professional choice – the service of the word in this family is like entrusting the knights with guarding the treasure, It was as if the well of truth had been given to them from the ancestors and they would protect it all with the strength of their hearts! I am thinking what would have been the first text that Lasha Tabukashvili wrote?... I will remember this question for myself and when we will meet, I will definitely ask him. It is trivial, but I am always excited by such stories – the first text of a favorite writer, the first publication, the first reader, and so on… Perhaps it was a poem, or it was the very first text, with which his literary biography begins – his debut in 1969 – the short story “ A Boy Was Killed” published in the “Tsiskari” magazine. And then there were stories – more clear, transparent, and iconic than before. For Lasha Tabukashvili, the story is the most important part, it is an internal structure, even a path, like for Odysseus – the self-oblivion of Penelope’s thread. The plot is the backbone of literature and, even more so, of the genre in which Lasha Tabukashvili works so fruitfully – dramaturgy.

His biography is included in the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Center catalog “100 Famous Playwrights of All Time”. His plays are staged both in Georgia and abroad and are constantly relevant. Some of them are even iconic, for example, “ Spring Beyond The Shutters “ – a kind of anthem of eternal youth, in which even pain is somehow calm and bearable, or rather – sympathetic, comforting.

“They Are Taming a Sparrow-Hawk”, “An Old Waltz", “A Wound”, “ In The Place Of a Former Church”, “Roads Going Towards You” – if you to stop anyone outside, in the street and they are moderately well-read and love theater, everyone will tell you the content of these plays by heart and even the idea patches, because These are works created with amazing clarity, like the emerald lake that I mentioned above, transparent and deep, engrossing in the wisdom of life.

I didn’t include the play “What Does It Matter That The Wet Lilac Is Wet?” in this list, because it’s a separate story to tell and think about. My friend, the director Ioane Khutsishvili, correctly said once – “Lilac” (that’s what we call this play and performance informally) brought many young people back to the theater back then. “Back then” – that’s the notorious 90s, the age of gray winters and fears, blood, destruction, aggression, and pain. Not just the theater, everything that was close to the taste of life, was being destroyed in front of our eyes and hands, the theater was sometimes used as a shelter for protesters if anyone remembered, there Lasha Tabukashvili’s “WHAT DOES IT MATTER THAT THE WET LILAC IS WET”, which we can say without exaggeration, revolutionized the consciousness of the youth of that time. All the performances were sold out (I don’t know how many dozens of performances they staged!) and the audience climbed from the ceiling to find a place to stand on one leg.

What was the secret of this play? What attracted these heartbroken people like adamant, armed with aggression in the face of new time?... Above all, the truth! With this play, their voice was heard, their pain was felt, and no one bit their tongue or waved a finger from the moral pedestal, on the contrary – they created a mirror with surprisingly realistic plasters, to look inside and see themselves from was no electricity and no money for decorations, not to mention royalties, and at this time, at such a time, In the Rustaveli theater, Robert Sturua staged many angles... A parallel reality could be seen in this mirror, for some it was an unattainable dream, for some, it was the passion and effort of a lifetime, this mirror was a gathering of all their consciousness, a reflection of the wars and hardships endured in recent years, a tense thought about what happened and what Georgia has become... in Georgia Yes, each of us!

In the history of world art, there are such stories when a cultural event turns into a cultural (f) act for society. Such was the case for “What Does It Matter That The Wet Lilac Is Wet” and we must also say that this play has not lost its relevance even today, it is still performed on the stage of various theaters, it is still “read” by modern audiences, as well as other plays of Lasha Tabukashvili, whose degree of attraction at all times is uniquely radiant.

A few years ago, “Intellect” publishing house printed Lasha Tabukashvili’s first novel “Give us a Laugh, Guinplane”. In it, too, the artistic world was dissolved and the voices were heard, thus, in the literary polyphony, it will not be difficult for you to recognize Lasha Tabukashvili’s work.

The main story of this novel is the theme of inheritance, not only the conflict of the old and the new, but also taming the existing (or permissible) harmony between them, as the unconditional and correct basis for the development of the world. Obviously, there are conflicts here too, without conflicts, what would become of a play or a novel, or, if you prefer, life, but these are, in a way, “secondary” conflicts, vital confrontations, the struggle between good and evil, dark and light, and here, too, the main artistic concept of the author is clearly revealed – Unconditionally on the side of good and unconditionally a supporter of man. One might say, “How else”, it is the function of the writer (artist); Of course, it is true, but let’s not forget that in our unbridled, brutalized, and caricatured times, perhaps no one will follow such a humanitarian mission, or rather, many will avoid it.

Lasha Tabukashvili is not among many. In general, his work belongs to the “family” of those few, in whose writings the breath of God touches the breath of man, with something very subtle and at the same time with a powerful touch. In more literary terms, we are dealing with chivalric romanticism, the best expression of this vanishing aesthetic/belief. Lasha Tabukashvili’s artistic world is imbued with this aesthetic, his characters are descendants of the cultural memory that left room for dreams and aspirations even in the most dramatic, tense, painful relationships between people. That’s why their passion and love are even more different – as if filled with the memory of the forgotten, the power to restore the deceased.

There is an antique intonation in this adventure of love, and there is something very Georgian, and authentic, with its skillfully painted landscapes and flawless portrait ornaments. When saying Georgian, I will not single out the traditional, because although the work of Lasha Tabukashvili, in general, is a part of the literary/thought tradition, it is, first of all, still the result of passionate searching, for him this tradition is not a single truth, but a constant search and discovery, an infinite number of innovative ways and perspective of countless methods. This is where his respect and loyalty to tradition and heritage can be seen. Lasha Tabukashvili’s Georgia – if we look at it from this side – is a powerful spiritual and physical opportunity, the realization of all national archetypes, passionate memory, and love imbued with faith. His Georgia is also magical realism – unimaginable by the laws of logic and physics, but completely realistic in archetypal metaphysics, that’s why this country has such a mythical destiny and that’s why it attracts both trouble and joy with equal force. Lasha Tabukashvili is a true writer – he knows the secret of his homeland. This knowledge is the adamant of his art, the unquenchable thirst to read his works in all times and circumstances. Guaranteed to be constantly interesting.

This knowledge also knows silence. It is the peak that crowns the entire road from the roots. The long, painful path of the writer, full of wisdom, love, failures, and victories.

Lasha Tabukashvili was born on St. George’s Day – on November 23. I remember that when they thought of publishing the magazine “Twentieth Century”, the Tabukashvili family asked White George for help. It will be difficult for me to remember the exact text, but I remember the beginning of that prayer: “White George, bless us...” That magazine was as important as air at that time – the only literary publication in the dark and unhappy times for those who were looking for a "savior in literature"...

White George reached out to them even then and I believe, that he hears the pleas of broken hearts to this day. This can be seen in the deeds of this great family, in the ancestors and heirs – from the great Rezo onwards, including Rezo Jr., who himself is an exceptional writer and a strong voice in modern Georgian literature, which I will gladly tell you about in the future and I will start this story from when I first came across his story “Mount Dhaulagiri” and Since then, I have been waiting for all the new books of Rezo Tabukashvili Jr. with insatiable interest...

And before I move on to other stories, I will finish this letter first. With the same sound, I started with – an octave of silence. True literature knows this – it will make you silent, it will make you think, it will make you drain you with divine feeling like an hourglass.

It is a grace to find such silence in our loud and angry times. Lasha Tabukashvili’s works are guardians of grace in the twenty-first century.

AUTHOR: NINIA SADGHOBELASHVILI