IN CONVERSATION WITH TAMTA MELASHVILI

Tamta, many congratulations on your new novel! As well as being an acclaimed writer you’re also a researcher. Along with other historical female figures you have researched Marijan. As a result I’ve longed to talk to you. Having recently read your new novel Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry I observed various interesting parallels between the feelings imbued in Marijan’s texts and the very honest narrative of the novel’s protagonist, Etero. Therefore for this edition of Danarti, I decided to talk to you about both. Firstly, I wonder, how did you start to research Marijan?

A few years ago I came across a collection of texts entitled “A room of one’s own” published by the Taso Foundation (Women’s Fund and Memory Research Center, Georgia). Among other texts, there were excerpts from Marijan’s diary in which she writes about sexuality and the female body. Of course, I had heard of Marijan before, as a children’s writer. When I saw these excerpts, I remember I was hugely impressed by them. It was soon afterwards that I started to work for the Heinrich Boell Foundation project - 50 Women from Georgia. As one of their commissioned researchers, I recall wanting to work on the biographies of the artist, Elene Akhvlediani and Marijan. I was fascinated by the idea that I would write Akhvlediani’s biography as a queer biography and focus on the reflection of female sexuality with Marijan. Eventually, I was unable to write about Akhvlediani’s queerness, because her archives and primary sources remained beyond my reach, something I still can’t get over. With Marijan, I more or less followed through. In my research, I concluded that similarly to many of her contemporary female authors, she had to find refuge in children’s writing. She certainly couldn’t have kept writing openly about the female body and sexuality under the then prevalent Soviet censored social realism. I remember when I first saw a collection of Marijan’s poems from the early 1920s. They were captivating for their reflections on women’s feelings and sexuality. I also went through her subsequently published children’s literature which was heavily marked with Soviet ideology and propaganda. I had the impression I was reading two very different authors. Indeed, her later poetry, published when the censorship had been finally blunted around 1960s, expressed a great deal of regret and sorrow. It seemed that Marijan had been extremely disappointed throughout her life by not being able to fully express herself. However, I cannot definitively say that Marijan was oppressed by the system. Her situation greatly differed from that of the other female authors of the time. She had authority in the Writers’ Union and managed to have a successful career as a writer. What makes this even more obvious is that if you look at the photo documentation of the Writers’ Union, the only woman you’ll come across in the photos is Marijan. The other women writers, such as Nino Nakashidze, Lidia Megrelidze etc., achieved ‘recognition’ only shortly before their deaths, once they were already quite old. It was then, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, that the writings of women in the Soviet Georgia started to get published, their jubilee celebrations were held, and nearly all of them were buried in the Pantheon... The reason for this was the change of the official gender politics of the Soviet Union. In then bipolar world, the Soviet Union had to prove to the United States that it was truly an emancipated state that upheld gender equality. In Georgia, this political standpoint manifested itself in the multiple publications and jubilees for female authors.

You are the author of three published works. Can we say that the conditions for women writers have fundamentally changed in Georgia?

Of course, the conditions have changed, although some barriers are still present. I would say, they changed in the last 10-15 years. It was time that brought this change. Now we live in a different historical context. The 1920s were a rather turbulent time for women writers… they somehow managed to blow off steam in their texts before everything changed under the Stalinist terror and censorship. The field of literature became highly controlled by the state, mainly through the Writers’ Union, which was a masculine and patriarchal power structure. For a woman writer to reach the reader, they had to overcome all the ideological and cultural barriers imposed by the Writers’ Union. That is why, with only a few exceptions, the Writers’ Union in Georgia did not ‘produce’ a significant woman author.

Since Georgia gained independence in 1990s, one no longer needs the Writers’ Union or any similar institution to get published and reach the audience. If nothing else, the internet is accessible, which makes communication with the reader easier. The politics of publishing have changed as well. The fact that women are now in the top ranks of the publishing industry means a lot, as it paves the way for female authors. I don’t think my novels, and especially the latest one, would have been welcomed by male publishers in the generous manner that it has been received. Having said that, there are cultural barriers that still remain which is directly related to the issue of recognition. For example, if there is a piece of criticism written about contemporary authors, it is mostly written about the male authors. Sometimes I think male critics don’t even have an understanding of how to write about female authors. They are better equipped when writing about men – in the fashion of praise as if they were raising a toast. Of course, there are few exceptions with more open-minded critiques.... Every now and then, various Top 10 lists are made up to name Georgian writers and it’s only men that make it onto these lists. Very rarely, one might come across a list of top female writers but that happens separately, in a secluded, marginal manner.

Just recently, I encountered school textbooks about Georgian literature. The only woman taught at school is Ana Kalandadze and a handful of her poems. Whilst the curriculum is overloaded by some of the weakest, the least known and the most hopeless of the texts of the prolific male authors, such as Mikheil Javakhishvili or Niko Lortkipanidze. The writings of Ekaterine Gabashvili, Mariam Garikuli, and again Marijan remain out of these textbooks. When I met the students, I showed them the photos of five women authors: Ekaterine Gabashvili, Mariam Garikuli, Keti Nizharadze, Zaira Arsenishvili, and Ana Kordzaia-Samadashvili. And It’s not at all surprising that in this context no one was able to identify them.

You mentioned Ekaterine Gabashvili, one of Georgia’s most prominent feminists/writers. It is remarkable that in 1948 Marijan dedicated a poem to Gabashvili in which she said “you disapproved of the honesty of my rhyme…” It saddens me that Marijan was criticized for her openness by a fellow writer and a feminist.

The inner-circle critique and self-reflection were well established among the female authors in the 1920s Georgia. It was very important to them. Along with this criticism, there might have been some heartbreaks, but it is a normal process, and no huge conflict of sorts had taken place between these authors. On the contrary, they were very consolidated. They faced enormous barriers inflicted by the Writers’ Union, they were not being published anywhere at all. So, in mid 20s they founded an initiative with their own funds to publish an almanac for Georgian women writers. I have seen in the archives of the Writers’ Union how these women beg for some paper to print the almanac. And whatever quantity they ask for, they are given a quarter of it. Nowhere do men ask for paper, they already have it. Instead, they ask for a couple of bottles of wine, I think to celebrate the New Year, and they are given those without any problems. It is heart-breaking to look through the documentation of protocols. In general, cooperation and solidarity do not preclude criticism. It worked the same with these women. Kato Mikeladze, for example, was very radical and critical. She was very critical of women poets, including Marijan, Elene Dariani, and Safo Mgeladze. Mikeladze insisted that their poems and expressions of sexuality were extremely heteronormative and tailored to a male gaze. Yes, these poems are heteronormative, but with a strong sense of female agency and free self-expression, which I also think is very important.

In the poem written in 1931 (she would have been 41 at the time), Topic that Concerns Me Strongly, Marijan addressed herself - “what is my legacy for new generation? / What have I done? / Why have I come?”. A dialogue with oneself is also at the basis of your novel Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, - as if the text was a safe space for the author to reflect and fulminate, away from the readers’ reactions. Do you think this is a kind of self-defence mechanism? And can we generalise to say that this form characterizes women’s writing in Georgia?

Possibly, maybe. I cannot give you an answer, a literary critic ought to answer this. To be honest, I, as an author, prefer not to think about it, especially when writing. Nor do I want to have a particular, schematic knowledge in this field and then look at everything through the prism of this knowledge. I prefer to stay bold and free instead of being conscious of the form while writing.

My admiration for Marijan’s works at times intensifies and sometimes fades. I can’t make up my mind. On the one hand, I think her works of the 1920s are extremely significant, but I’m less keen on her later texts. Therefore, I keep asking myself and I want to ask you as well - why is it important to re-discover and rethink what/who has been left out by the history?

So is mine. At the end of the day, I think we try to find common threads. Because we badly need these common threads to reconnect with our female ancestors. For me, this connection was easier established with the feminist thinkers of the time, rather than the women writers. They inspired me more as feminist thinkers than as women writers. This is probably due to the fact that what remains of their texts is extremely fragmented, censored, and propagandized. You will not find anything about their personal life, especially about their queer relationships. Not much escaped the totalitarian past, and what has survived is so fragmented and minor that it does not allow me to relate to. It’s important to have this connection with history, to feel that we stem from a tradition of writing that women created in the context of this country and its language, primarily through the self-expression of womanhood and femininity. The fact, that I am not embedded in this past and that I, as an author, cannot say that I come from a tradition of Georgian literature, is very sad for me.

Published in 1926, the 2nd issue of the Georgian Women’s Art and Literature Almanac included Marijan’s text “From the Notebook: Chance Subjects” (a short excerpt is published below), where Marijan wrote: ‘I have one terrible flaw: I have to be in a bad mood to pick up a pen. Even my happy poems are provoked by anger”. Thus, I would like to bring up a subject of angry woman. How important is it to bring out anger in a piece of work? How much does an expression of anger interest others?

The anger and its expression are politically important for women, although of course no one will applaud them for that. Anger does not bring pleasure to the majority of readers unless they themselves are angry and do not realize it, because the reader is accustomed to another type of pleasure which is adapted to patriarchy. The voice of an angry woman creates discomfort in literature. I think it is very important that different non-privileged groups generate this sense of discomfort. It is necessary to release the anger and besides it could create spaces for shared experience. I like it when, for example, in my last novel, the expression of the protagonist’s Etero’s anger and bitterness caused discomfort to some readers, their reactions were quite intense. I associate this reaction precisely with the fact, that an expression of women’s anger doesn’t gratify the patriarchal ego and the associated masculine pleasures.

This edition of Danarti Magazine sees Marijan’s poem “You Were Not the First Lover” published for the first time in history. Written in 1926, the poem failed to get published at the time. We discovered the manuscript of the poem in the Giorgi Leonidze State Museum of Literature thanks to the museum’s director, Lasha Bakradze. What do you think caused the elimination of one of the most passionate poems of the 20th century from the anthology of the Georgian poetry?

And what a great poem! I hadn’t read it before. Once again, we encounter the problem of who has the power to compile and publish a collection of poetry. Again we come to face the patriarchal and totalitarian censorship. Perhaps even an example of self-censorship. We don’t know under what pressures the author found herself in the context. It might have been that she refrained from including the poem in the collection herself. We will never know for sure; we can only speculate.

Where do you think lies the boundary between the right of an author to remain invisible and an urge of a researcher to bring to light a previously unknown piece of work? I have often heard that in Georgia late authors’ descendants are overly protective of their reputation (particularly if the author is a woman) even entirely refusing to publicise the works. How much, do you think, Marijan may have wanted to publish this particular poem or in fact, reveal any of her letters that are now publicly accessible at the Ioseb Grishashvili Library-Museum?

There is a big difference between a poem and a letter. When you write a poem, no matter to what extent you write it for yourself, you are still writing it for a reader, for a slightly wider audience. A personal letter has one addressee, and it is a much more intimate affair. What a researcher does when they encounter an intimate letter is an ethical matter, as well as a matter of their positioning and personal interpretation. There are too many layers to it.

Whether anything of an intimate character remains in the women’s archives in Georgia is questionable. Generally, such documents get eradicated. If by chance you stumble upon something, it is in the archives of a male partner, with whom their paths might have crossed romantically.

There is an urban myth about the polyamorous affairs of Marijan. In fact, I am very interested in polyamory as a form of resistance, which rejects normative systems to oppose totalitarian regimes. I was hoping to explore the topic in the Soviet context, however I failed to locate any resources. These kinds of stories are more common in Europe in the biographies of avant-garde artists.

Yes, it’s encredibly hard to find much on this topic, especially in the Soviet context. When I was researching the scarce archives of Marijan’s contemporaries, I too had the impression that these women led fairly open relationships, albeit all were engaged in formal marriages. They certainly did not confine themselves. Having said that, I do not think this would be emphasized in their biographies. It does not fit in the iconography of a Georgian woman, and of a Georgian poet or writer.

When studying the biographies of female authors, I question myself as to why I fall in the framework of gender binaries, especially when the concept of gender itself is not fixed ...

So far, there is no other way. In order not to fall into these binary frameworks, groundwork needs to be done. Women, as a group, have been so removed from history that we must first tell the story from their perspective, as well as from the point of view of other underprivileged groups. You cannot overcome these binaries if you do not understand the context and the power relations from different perspectives. It is very important to re-create [literary] history including from the standpoint of women. The existence of this history gives us other kinds of courage and impulses. As an author, I wish Marijan’s courage and impulses had been passed down to me and I feel saddened that this didn’t happen. The ‘fault’ lies exactly in the fact that her voice didn’t reach me intact. This happened because of the absence of women’s histories and texts in Georgian Literature.

Interviewed by Lika Tarkhan-Mouravi

Translated by Gvantsa Jgushia

*Ana Chiladze, 2021, pencil and gouache on paper, 15x21