The warrior in the tiger skin

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Old manuscript of the warrior in a tiger skin
King Rostewan and Awthandil on the hunt.
Illustration from a 1646 manuscript

The warrior in the tiger skin ( Georgian ვეფხისტყაოსანი , transcribed Wepchisstqaossani , scientific transliteration Vepkhis t'q'aosani ) is the national epic of Georgia . The poet Schota Rustaveli wrote it between 1196 and 1207 at the behest of Queen Tamara of Georgia . The work was declared World Document Heritage in 2013 .

Lore

Vep'his tqaosani literally means the one with the wepchi fur . Linguists debate whether Wepchi with Tiger or Panther must be translated. In any case, the name is a metaphor for a man wrapped in passions. The names of the heroes of the epic have been used for centuries in Georgian history. For example, there are five Georgian queens named Nestan Daredjan and at least eight named Thinathin.

The warrior in the tiger skin , inspired by the Persian national epic Shahname and other Persian knight reps , became part of Georgian folk poetry. Up until the beginning of the 20th century, the text was passed down orally from generation to generation in Georgia . In the process, new stanzas, composed by the narrators, were added. The text had been written down in various versions since the 15th century. The oldest surviving manuscript comes from the 17th century. In 1712 the epic was commissioned by King Wachtang VI. first printed. The king tried to restore the original version and provided it with a comment.

The poem is school material in Georgia and linguistically does not represent a major hurdle, since the Georgian language has not developed as much as German has developed from Middle High German. The work is present in many editions in Georgia and continues to be a landmark for Georgian literature and was quoted in novels by Naira Gelashvili and Lascha Bugadze at the beginning of the 21st century .

The warrior in the tiger skin has been translated into many languages. The first complete German translation was done by Arthur Leist in 1889. Four more translations into German followed later. In 1974 the composer Aleksi Matschawariani adapted the epic as a ballet in two acts .

Excerpt in Georgian

action

The epic describes in - depending on the handwriting handed down - 1,550 to 1,700 stanzas and 57 chapters chivalry and nobility that rise above religion and nation. It is about two lovers: the Arab princess Thinathin and the Georgian general Awthandil as well as the Indian princess Nestan Daredschan and the Georgian prince Tariel, the warrior in the tiger skin. Both couples can only marry after special heroic deeds by the male partners. Awthandil must find Tariel and Tariel must find and free Nestan Daredschan. The heroic deeds finally succeed with the help of the Persian prince Fridon. All three young men stick together and lead their wives and countries towards an era of prosperity.

A crucial scene is the re-encounter between Awthandil and Tariel. After a three-day ride in search of Tariel, Awthandil first sees a black horse on the edge of a thicket. When he sees his friend shortly afterwards, he is startled: Tariel is sitting on the ground, unconscious, with a scratched face and disheveled hair. At his side lie a slain tiger, a blood-smeared sword and a dead panther. Awthandil's attempts to free his friend from his melancholy and to keep him from suicide initially failed. Only when he asks Tariel to get on his horse does Tariel obey him, and on the ride together the sadness disappears.

The final climax of the plot is the capture of Kajethi Castle, where Nestan Daredjan is imprisoned. After Awthandil, Tariel and Fridon have reached the castle with an auxiliary of three hundred men, the three princes discuss how they want to storm the fortress. Proud of his acrobatic skills, Fridon first suggests throwing a lasso over the castle tower and conquering the fortress on the stretched rope. Awthandil, on the other hand, would like to lead the battle inside the castle alone, disguised as a traveling merchant. This in turn hurts Tariel's sense of honor, who could not bear to be discovered by his beloved as a non-fighter. Finally his plan comes to fruition, which envisages assigning each of the three hundred men and storming the castle together. Disguised as travelers, they enter the castle at dawn, cause a bloodbath among the crew and free Nestan Daredschan.

Translations

Shota Rustaveli dedicates his national
epic to Queen Tamara, painting by Mihály Zichy , 1880
English
  • Marjory Scott Wardrop: The Man in the Panther's Skin. A Romantic Epic. A close rendering from the Georgian (= Oriental Translation Fund, New Series , 21), Royal Asiatic Society, London 1912; Reprinted with a foreword by Donald Rayfield, Curzon Press, London 2000; Online version (in German and other Western literature, the work is usually cited with the stanza counting of Wardrop's translation, which is sometimes preferred to the German translations in its text)
German
  • Arthur Leist: The man in the tiger skin. Translated from Georgian , Pierson, Dresden / Leipzig 1889 online version
  • Hugo Huppert: The warrior in the tiger skin. Old Georgian Poëm. German post-poetry. Published by the Society for Cultural Connection between the Georgian SSR and Abroad, Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1955; 4th edition, ibid. 1982
  • Hermann Buddensieg: The man in the panther skin. The Georgian National Epic. Re-seal . In: Mickiewicz-Blätter 15 (1970), pp. 54-87, pp. 134-167, pp. 202-229; ibid. 16 (1971), pp. 45-64, pp. 133-150; ibid, 17 (1972), pp. 53-63, pp. 123-127; in book form under the title Der Mann im Pantherfell. Old Georgian epic. Nachdichtung , Tbilisi 1976 and Rendsburg 1989 (adaptation in hexameters, based on a posthumous prose translation by Michael von Tseretheli)
  • Marie Prittwitz: The knight in the tiger skin. An old Georgian epic. German post-poetry . Edited by Steffi Chotiwari-Jünger and Elgudsha Chintibidse, Tbilissi-Berlin 2005 / new edition Shaker Verlag, Aachen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8440-0300-0 , with a foreword about the work, the existing translations, about Marie Prittwitz and the History of the discovery, German, pp. 5–38.
Retellings in prose form
  • Ruth Neukomm: The man in the panther skin. Translation from Georgian and afterword. Manesse, Zurich 1974, ISBN 3-7175-1484-9
  • Michael von Tseretheli: The knight in the panther skin. Translation from the restored and critically edited Georgian original by Michael von Tseretheli , ed. by Nino Salia. Salia, Paris 1975
  • Tilman Spreckelsen: The hero in the leopard skin. A Georgian legend from Shota Rustaveli. Narrated by Tilmann Spreckelsen and illustrated by Kat Menschik. Galiani, Berlin, 2018
Retold for children
  • Schotha Rusthaweli: The man with the tiger skin . Translated and "retold for the German youth" by Felix Pecina. Illustrated by Ernst Liebermann. Enßlin and Laiblin, Reutlingen 1929
  • Viktoria Ruika-Franz: The warrior in the tiger skin. An old story from Georgia . Illustrated by Norbert Pohl. Der Kinderbuchverlag, East Berlin 1976 (current edition: Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-7725-1130-9 )

literature

  • Gertrud Pätsch : The man in the panther skin - as a contemporary document; Sinn und Form, 6 (1970), p. 1377
  • G. Koolemans Beynen: Shota Rustaveli and the Structure of Courtly Love . In: Evelyn Mullally et al. a. (Ed.), The Court and Cultural Diversity , Brewer, Cambridge [u. a.] 1997, pp. 239-249, ISBN 0-85991-517-4
  • G. Koolemans Beynen: Violence and Communication in Shota Rustaveli's 'The Lord of the Panther Skin' . In: Albrecht Classen (Ed.), Violence in Medieval Courtly Literature: A Casebook , Routledge, New York 2004, pp. 169–186
  • Helmut Birkhan : Rust'avelis 'hero in panther skin' from a European-Medieval perspective. In: Thordis Hennings u. a. (Ed.), Medieval Poetics in Theory and Practice. Festschrift for Fritz Peter Knapp on his 65th birthday , de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2009, pp. 141–166
  • Lado Mirianashvili / Felix Müller / Ulrich Müller: Schota Rustveli, 'The Knight in a Tiger Skin': The Georgian court epic of the high Middle Ages. In: Rudolf Bentzinger / Ulrich-Dieter Oppitz (eds.), Fata libellorum. Festschrift for Franzjosef Pensel on his 70th birthday (= Göppinger works on German studies , 648), Kümmerle, Göppingen 1999, ISBN 3-87452-894-4 , pp. 163–186. Schota Rustveli, "The Knight in a Tiger's Skin": The Georgian courtly epic of the high Middle Ages ( Memento from November 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  • Ruth Neukomm: Schota Rustaveli. In: Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon , Vol. 14, 1988, pp. 499-501, ISBN 3-89836-214-0
  • Zaza Shatirishvili: Fictional narrative and allegorical discourse: Reception of Rustaveli in XVI-XVIIIth centuries Georgian culture and the King Vakhtang VI's commentaries. In: Wilhelm Geerlings / Christian Schulze (eds.), The Commentary in Antike and Middle Ages , Volume 2, Brill, Leiden 2004, pp. 179-184

Web links

Commons : The warrior in the tiger skin  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Manuscript Collection of Shota Rustaveli's poem "Knight in the Panther's Skin". In: Memory of the World - Register. UNESCO , 2013, accessed June 20, 2013 .
  2. a b c Tilman Spreckelsen : The eternal knight in the tiger skin. In: FAZ , May 27, 2017, p. 18