Soviet Ideologemes and their Critique in Givi Margvelashvili's Fluchtästhetische Novelle

Abstract

German-speaking Georgian writer and philosopher Givi Margvelashvili (1927-2020), whose life was determined by the violent regime of the Soviet Union, criticizes the ideology of the Soviet Union in his metafictional works. The paper discusses his novel Fluchtästhetische Novelle (2012), in which a migrant author, along with the critique of the ideology, attempts to process a traumatic past and tries to selfmedicate. Fluchtästhetische Novelle is an auto-intertextual work. The pretext of the novel is Givi Margvelashvili's autobiographical work Captain Vakush (Kapitän Wakusch, 1991/1992) volumes I and II, which are discussed, summarized and interpreted in the novel. The work also sheds a light on the metaphorical terms and key symbols like “Goglimogli” (child's food: the egg yolk scrambled with sugar) and “Mamassachlissimus”, referring to dictator Stalin. Unlike Captain Vakush, the work Fluchtästhetische Novelle is built on metafictional narrative techniques and is a kind of metafictional experiment. The intertextual character Vakush in the novel is Givi Margvelashvili's alter-ego, thus the work acquires an auto-fictional character. The paper analyzes the purpose of intertextual, auto-fictional and metafictional elements in the work. Particular attention is paid to Vakush's introspective imagination, as this episode openly expresses the main message of the text. More precisely, the critique of Soviet ideology. In Givi Margvelashvili's artistic world, Western music and dance serve the same purpose, which aims to transform and deideologize the worldview of Soviet officials. The paper shows that in Givi Margvelashvili's artistic world, these (music and dance) and other Western realities have the ability to awaken Soviet officials and the population from an ideological slumber, to promote Western democratic values ​​and to establish a true democracy.