Sacred Silence and the Genealogy of the Nation: Religious and Metaphysical Dimensions in the Poetry of Nikoloz Baratashvili


Öztürk G. M.

GENEALOGY, cilt.9, sa.3, 2025 (ESCI, Scopus) identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 9 Sayı: 3
  • Basım Tarihi: 2025
  • Doi Numarası: 10.3390/genealogy9030083
  • Dergi Adı: GENEALOGY
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, Linguistic Bibliography, Directory of Open Access Journals
  • Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

This article examines how national identity is constructed through religious representations in the poetry of Nikoloz Baratashvili, one of the leading figures of 19th-century Georgian Romanticism. Through a text-centered analysis of four key poems, it explores how a religious memory woven around motifs of sacred silence, divine absence, and sacrificial imagery is transformed into a poetic narrative within a postcolonial context. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of S & oslash;ren Kierkegaard, Paul Ricoeur, Edward Said, and post-Soviet Georgian thinkers, the study interprets Baratashvili's poetry as an expression of an existential national narrative. It argues that the poet's poetics articulate both individual and collective trauma and that the nation is reimagined as a metaphysical community. In this regard, the study offers an interdisciplinary contribution focused on how the Georgian national genealogy is constructed poetically, the role of Orthodox cultural symbolism, and the impact of colonial modernity.