Paata Samugia: I write to meet myself in language

Angeliki Dimopoulou   |   September 2, 2024

Paata Samugia became known to a wide circle of readers thanks to his book Anti-Tqaosani (a pun on the famous medieval Georgian epic poem The Knight in the Tiger Skin ). The book caused a lot of backlash as it dared to challenge the country's most important literary text. All the books that followed received positive reviews, making Paata Samugia a prominent figure in Georgian poetry. He is multi-awarded and the first contemporary poet in Georgia to win the SABA literary award twice for the best collection of poems ( Akathistos , Schizozocionia ).

Your poetry book "Schizosocionia" is now available in Greek from Bacchikon publications. How do you feel about communicating this part of your work to the Greek readership?

Until now I had no contact with the Greek public, however, I know Greek literature well, I love it and I am indebted to it. Consequently, I come to Greece whom I consider my generous creditor, to whom I was indeed late in repaying my debt, but he never complained about it. I am sure that modern Greeks also love poetry and especially modern poetry. Poems are double agents: they convey the writer's story to the reader, but they also convey the reader's stories, feelings, and impressions to the writer. So me and the Greek audience already know some things about each other. But we'll keep it a secret. 

My aim is not to go out of my way to provoke the reaction of others, my aim is to write contemporary poetry, emphatically contemporary, which will be able to stir the heart of modern man.

You have been called provocative, heretical. Some even destroyed your books. Then you were awarded again and again. What are your thoughts on this?

I like that it causes a crack in the written-calculated routine, when when I write I have neither the time nor the desire to think about it. When some people threatened to kill me, and the Church announced an anathema to the media, my friend got very upset and told me that we have to stop this madness, that I am in a very dangerous phase. I answered her: Why should we stop? These people are writing my author biography with their own hands. Let them write it. Even now I think so, however, all this is transitory. My aim is not to go out of my way to provoke the reaction of others, my aim is to write contemporary poetry, emphatically contemporary, which will be able to stir the heart of modern man. I think in the end both sides get my texts right - both those who call me immoral and those who are my fans. It's just that a part of the world has different expectations of poetry, they are used to poetry having to confirm their aesthetic and moral expectations, these expectations have been filled by schools and universities with traditional - and in most cases, without having to offer something- poetry.

You are a "serial" poet, you say. You don't like being asked why you write poetry. May I ask what you give to poetry and what you get from it? How do you feel when you write poetry?

Yes, I don't like it but I will answer you. Above I have answered you about my goal, now I will also tell you about the cause. The only passion that makes me write is to understand who I am. That simple. I don't write only for self-healing, I write to meet myself in language and to recognize it. Is it excessive? Yes, it is. But that's the only truth about my writing process.

Do you ever feel more like a philosopher than a poet?

I play with scientific terms and ideas to express a romantic ideal and to be able to describe the crisis in which the modern world and modern man find themselves. This is also the process of philosophy, playing with terms and ideas, but the result is something different. Philosophy seeks answers and, for the most part, reveals them. I am convinced that literature does not reveal the answers, it raises the questions. The answer may lie with the reader, who grounds the questions raised by poetry in feelings. In that sense, I am not a philosopher, although I have nothing against those who do. On the contrary, it is pleasant to me.

A hundred people will read Euripides and a hundred conflicting emotions will arise, but, in my view, these hundred emotions are already built into the text by the author.

Your poetry is without a doubt contemporary. Do you feel, however, that we live in paranoid times, or have times always been this way and therefore good poetry is always relevant?

To understand if poetry is relevant we must first know who the poet is. My answer is: None. The "nobody" of Odysseus who must slip away from the Cyclops of time, from the established rules and trends of the market, and hide behind the flock of sheep, fears and complexes, in order to escape. But unlike Odysseus, the poet can never find peace, he can never survive, and in this non-survival I see the doomed and beautiful mission of poetry. On the other hand, a good poet can print a blank sheet of paper and "label" it poetry, as Marcel Duchamp defined the urinal as one of the basic artefacts of art, and why should we hinder this wonderful process? This is the dictatorship of the author, the opposite idea that arose in the 70s when Roland Barthes' theory of the death of the author was introduced. Barthes considers the author's belief in authority to be an atavistic gesture, which in my opinion is not exactly the case. In fact, this undoubtedly beautiful idea in practice was carried out in exactly the opposite way - it was not the author who died, but the reader, and we are now witnesses of this endless killing. The main thing is that Barthes, like all decent philosophers, is half right - that is, when we read we make sense out of the text, but at the same time we put the meaning into the text as we perceive it from one point of view or another. A hundred people will read Euripides and a hundred conflicting emotions will arise, but, in my view, these hundred emotions are already built into the text by the author. I believe so and if I believed something different I wouldn't be writing. Consequently, I believe that good poetry can be effective even in this paranoid age, it can be meaningful, a bit of a dangerous term, but whatever.

(...) poetry offers a gentle dialogue about our mistakes and defeats.

Could you talk about what you think is the most important thing you've learned about life through some of your lyrics?

Unfortunately I don't know many things about life.

Do you think we need more poetry today?

I think it was last year when the philosopher Noam Chomsky tweeted a Howard Zinn quote: “They have guns, we have poets. Therefore, we will win." I could not place such a heavy burden on poetry, but I do believe in one thing: Unlike organized religions and orderly ideologies, poetry offers a gentle dialogue about our mistakes and defeats, which is a prerequisite for being man. If we still want to remain human, poetry can help us even a little on this.

On Saturday, November 27 at 5pm, Bakchikon publications , as part of the Thessaloniki International Book Fair, will have the pleasure of hosting the important Georgian poet. Paata Samougia will be in the Cleitos Kyrou Hall (Stand 15) for the presentation of his poetry book Schizokosonia which is being released for the first time in Greek. The author talks to his translator Ekaterine Janasia. Editor Nestoras Poulakos coordinates.


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