Samson Gelkhvidze - Pain and faith - Collection of poems - 2005
HEART ON A SPOON
(Editor's preface)
I would like to preface the second meeting of readers - lovers of poetry - with Samson Gelkhvidze with the same word “HEART”, which was present in the preface and on most pages of his first collection “The Sacrament of Confession of Verse, or Confession in Verses” (Tbilisi, 2002).
If Samson affixed the words “... my Pain... and my feelings” on the title of the first collection as defining the essence of the author, then one of his later poems “begged to be” for the title of the second collection. It is precisely called by us “Capital”.
Both of these feelings - Pain and Faith (we will not argue that “faith” is a conviction) have noticeably increased in the fate and manuscripts of Samson since 2000.
To the pain of failed and interrupted "loves" was added the most acute pain of the loss of a seriously ill mother. The natural “cure” for these losses and pains was a deepening in religion, turning to the services of “priests of churches” who mediate with Heaven. This is the deep conviction of the author, seen through the entire thickness of the “sifted” manuscript.
In the header we read:
“But truth and God
Save us from pain
Faith melts pain
Cold stream...”
And in the final stanza, the thought brilliantly expressed by Alfred de Musset also slips:
“... a verse from the tears of the living
Sometimes - an immortal verse!
Heartache is also seen in the many years of futility of attempts to give “a heart for a heart” (not an “eye for an eye”!) ... In the “Spectrum of Love” section (as in the “Heart Sounds” of the first collection), both words and between the lines are bright expressed all the throwing of the author on the "two branches" of love - Earthly and Heavenly. Just “love”, “first love”, failed, doomed, impossible, prickly, flying away ... And that’s all - “NOT”!
The sad “spectrum” of the greatest human Feeling, observed (but not “coldly”!) by the poet and confided to us...
In the section “Cherished”, in “Cherished Dream”-2, echoing the first collection, the author bitterly gives the “exact term”:
“I don’t know worse words in the world:
All my life I've lived in turmoil
Dreams and happiness “DID NOT MEET”!”
With self-irony, Samson “consoles himself” with the fact that he will have ... a cherished dream - “for the rest of his life”!
And Samson's readiness for self-sacrifice on the "horizontal branch" of earthly love is truly immeasurable. This can be seen in the first collection, but especially clearly - in this one.
The image of a living, pulsating heart-strawberry, scooped from a glass of ice cream with a white “one-time” plastic spoon in the hands of a thin-lipped, cold, gourmet beauty...
He was born into consciousness (and penetrated into the subconscious!) at the first reading of “strawberry ice cream” ...
The poet is ready to give his tender, loving, “strawberry” heart to be eaten... But, having “cooled his lips”, they left the poet ... bitterness! “And we parted with you soon ...”
"To each his own!" So it was written above the entrance of the camp in Auschwitz...
Without “black humour”, but ... the torn out hot heart of the prisoner still throbbed on the ground, thrown to the watchdogs. They reared their fur and fled from him in horror...
Do not look for analogies! When they offer a heart on a spoon, is it possible not to give yours in return, along with your hand ?!
The light, “key” image of the heart-strawberry, unfortunately, does not overshadow other, prosaic and bitter ones in the collection. Read “Mom's Death”, “Mom's Corner”, “The End of Winter”, “The Black Sea”, “All of Us”, “Waiting for the Third World War”...
There are plenty of “earthly”, modern, disease-causing “pictures” ...
And only in the section “With a share of a joke” Samson softens the blows of life “with a sledgehammer on the head” ... The cow, treated to Dutch cheese, smiles, single “kings” have fun, and a bow is tied to the hare!
Read and help a "famous critic" decide what a poet is...
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Gleb Korenetsky, Ph.D. tech. Sciences,
Associate Professor, State Technical University,
member of the Federation of Journalists of Georgia