Dramatist’s Historical Play and Historian’s Ideological Interpretation: Niko Berdzenishvili’s Review of “Kakhaber’s Sword” by Polikarpe Kakabadze

Abstract

In 1954 play “David VIII” by Polikarpe Kakabadze was published, finally named by the author as “Kakhaber’s Sword”. Niko Berdzenishvili’s review and comment regarding the play was published in 1955. The topic of the play is historical and, at first glance, it describes the life in Georgia in the Middle Ages. However, the action of the play is not very much based on real historical events. It may be said that the historical setting given in the play is somewhat generalized, or has a more mythic-folklore character. Thus, the comments of a famous historian regarding the play of the famous playwright seemed unexpected, moreover as Berdzenishvili had never commented about fiction before even if it described more or less real historical events. In his review Niko Berdzenishvili put forward much topical and essential issues of the history of medieval Georgia from approximately the 8th century to the beginning of the 19th century in particular, what is much valuable and important, as in his life, he had never written an extensive, thorough or summarizing work about the history of Georgia. It is noteworthy that the play was analysed by the historian in the context of the Marxist-Leninist ideology and the researcher tried to see the history of Georgia on the background of the class struggle and oppositions between the progressive and the reactionary classes. Berdzenishvili’s discourse about the progress of feudal Georgia is interesting, when in really the country was at the brink of demolition at the beginning of the 13th century, the reason for which, in the historian’s view, was passive development and inactivity of bourgeois class. The historian also commented about the issues of nationality and personality in the play and here, again, he founded his views on the Marxist-Leninist ideology . The researcher showed the same approach to the cultural questions and associated them to the class concept of the histo - ry as well. It is biographically important that after the World War II, Niko Berdzenishvili received the directions personally from Joseph Stalin as to how to write the history of Georgia and how to evaluate the events. As the spirit of play “Kakhaber’s Sword” is mythic, neglecting a person or a person’s value or importance, and as the historian viewing the play in the context of Marxism, clearly prioritizes a collective to a person, the approaches of the playwright and the historian to this question seem to be the same. However, such a coincidence does not mean that the two had the same views and ideological fundamentals.