Revisiting Nikoloz Baratashvili and Western Romanticism (Poetic-Philosophical Resonances)

Abstract

The romanticization of the world, which thoroughly pervades the poetic thought of Nikoloz Baratashvili, entails a constant perception, insight, and sensation of the extraordinary within ordinary objects and commonplace domestic situations.

The Georgian poet’s work naturally reveals the same philosophical conviction that Novalis championed as the cornerstone of his own lyrical and epic pursuits: that "lowly being" – the realm of shadows and appearances – inherently contains an ele­ment of "higher being" or spirituality. This is the inevitable result of spirit diffusing through and permeating the material world.

The Georgian poet, much like his Western peers, was indeed a Christian, but only to the extent that the figure of Jesus Christ was reimagined. On one hand, Christ was perceived as the principle of the perfected subjectivity of the Absolute I and as the poetic symbol of this principle; on the other, He served as the principle of Diony­sian transcendence, facilitating the expansion and perfection of the limited, earthly self.

In this regard, a clear commonality emerges between Novalis’s Hymns to the Night and Nikoloz Baratashvili’s Merani. The radical oscillation of spiritual states finds its continuation in the Dionysian rapture of Merani’s lyrical hero—an ecstasy linked to the overcoming and transcending of the desacralized present.

Homeland, family, friends, and the earthly beloved are presented as the topoi of this limited present, of a humbled state of being. Through the force of Dionysian rapture, a dissolution into divine "all-oneness" is consummated, leading to a sensation of infinite divine bliss. This phenomenon embodies Romanticism’s "individual religion": the restoration of the bond with lost primordial origins through expanded consciousness and heightened subjectivity.

This striving, in turn, reveals the hero’s extreme individualism; he steps forth not in the name of humanity at large, but only in the name of an imagined elite of fellow-spirits. Just as Baratashvili’s poetry and personal correspondence are saturated with the concept of the “soul” – a hallmark of Romantic aesthetics – the Georgian poet here reveals an even deeper affinity with the German Romantics.

This affinity was not merely typological but fully conscious. German poetic and philosophical thought were likely mediated for Nikoloz Baratashvili by his gymnasium tutor and spiritual guide, Solomon Dodashvili. In his Logic, Dodashvili referenced and evaluated some thirty German philosophers, including Kant,  Fichte, and Jacobi – thinkers who played a decisive role in shaping the German Romantic worldview.

Generally, the Georgian philosopher’s ideas aligned closely with the doctrines of Schelling.

For a human being dwelling in the sensible world, the Romantic view held that longing for the supersensible realm could be fulfilled through only one path: an inward turn into one’s own subjectivity. This is precisely what Novalis affirmed.

The demand for self-knowledge was likewise of decisive significance in the thought of Dodashvili. His work drew closely upon the views of Fichte.

In the poem Napoleon, the titular figure embodies the Supreme or Absolute I. This entity stands above the phenomenal world – transcending the Kantian frame­work of time and space, and Kantian ontology itself. 

Baratashvili himself donned the mask of Napoleon and, as befitted a Romantic poet, spoke of the singular privileges of his own self – and that of his lyrical hero – above us, finite and mortal beings. Within Napoleon’s image, he gave voice to his most private feelings and thoughts, interweaving a self-portrait into the features of the Emperor. He used the mask not to obscure his true intentions but, on the con­tra­ry, to lay them bare – bringing the secret whispers of his heart to the surface. These very examples and parallels patently demonstrate that Baratashvili was a full-fledged participant in the poetic and philosophical tradition of Western Romanticism.