From Soviet Film to Post-Soviet Novel: Zaira Arsenishvili’s Woe is Life: Kakhetian Chronicles As a Case of Ideological Emancipation

Abstract

This article discusses the film by Lana Gogoberidze, Georgian director Lana Gogoberidze, “The Day is Longer than Night”, and the novel by Georgian writer Zaira Arsenishvili , Georgian writer, “Woe is Life: Kakhetian Chronicles”. The research was conducted with the assumption that the fictional text is the intermediate adaptation of the film; that the film is its “so called novelized” version.

The purpose of the article is to study the changes in the representation of over 19 years of Soviet sociopolitical issues as a result of intermedial transposition, in the conditions of the presence and then absence of ideological censorship, from the film to the novel.

The research is based on the theories of the renowned scholars in the sphere of intermediality, in particular, the typologies of Werner Wolf and Irina Rajewsky. It has been established that in both media products, the event that has caused the conflict – the Soviet revolution – is identified with the trauma. In transformation of the source medium into the target one, the critical attitude to the revolution has did not changed. In the original source it is implied, while, in the adaptation it is openly revealed. Revolution is defeated in both, in the creative world of the source, as and well as in its adaptation: in the film by Giorgi’s return, and in the novel by the restoration of justice, is realized by the “principle of “paying back”.