My sincere thanks to Robert Bird, Ilya Kliger, Tamar Mirianashvili, Anna Muza, and Lina Steiner, for their insights and help.

1. In “Poety simvolisty vo Frantsii,” Vestnik Evropy (September 1892), 115-43, Zinaida Vengerova had already defined the symbol ambiguously, in sensory-subjectivist as well as religious-transcendental terms. Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, in his programmatic article “O prichinakh upadka i o novykh techeniiakh sovremennoi russkoi literatury” (1893), in Bogomolov, N. A., ed., Kritika russkogo simvolizma (Moscow, 2002), 1:47 Google Scholar, reaffirms this ambiguity by defining modernism inclusively as “mystical content, symbols, and the broadening of artistic receptivity.” For symbolism's second generation, this ambiguity became a means of differentiation, whether in terms of delineating two distinct currents within symbolism, as in Ivanov's, Viacheslav “Dve stikhii v sovremennom simvolizme” (1908), in Bogomolov, , ed., Kritika russkogo simvolizma, 1:31–73 Google Scholar, or as a set of dialectical contradictions internal to the poet, as in Aleksandr Blok's “O sovremennom sostoianii russkogo simvolizma“ (1910), in Bogomolov, ed., Kritika russkogo simvolizma, 1:236-46. The generational thesis was canonized quite early: Vengerov, cf. S. A., ed., Russkaia literatura XX veka 1890-1910 (Moscow, 1914)Google Scholar. A useful typological summary of these debates is provided by Hansen-Löve, Aage, Russkii simvolizm. Sistema poeticheskikh motivov. Rannii simvolizm (St. Petersburg, 1999), 13–19 Google Scholar.

2. The two primary scholarly works on the Russo-Georgian dialogue are Magarotto, Luigi, Marzaduri, Marzio, and Pagani, Cesa Giovanna, eds., L'Avanguardia a Tiflis: Studi, ricerche, cronache, testimonialize (Venice, 1982)Google Scholar; and Nikol'skaia, Tat'iana, Fantasticheskii gorod: Russkaia kul'turnaia zhizn’ v Tbilisi (1917-1920) (Moscow, 2000)Google Scholar. Neither of these works comes close to exhausting the Georgian responses to Russian and European debates.

3. Iashvili, P'aolo, “Grigol Robakidzes,” P'aolo Iashvili saiubileo-saarkivo gamomtsema or ts'ignad, 2 vols. (Tbilisi, 2004), 1:56–57 Google Scholar.

4. Accusations of eclecticism, derivativeness, and internal inconsistency have long been leveled at the Blue Horn poets: Asatiani, Lalicf., “Tsisperqants'elebi: ‘Kartuli simbolizmis' shesakheb,” Lit'erat'uruli ts'erilebi (Tbilisi, 1992), 54–70 Google Scholar. In my opinion these “flaws” need to be read symptomatically rather than evaluatively.

5. T'abidze, T'itsian, “Iz Avtobiografii” (1936), Avtoportret: hbrannye stikhotvoreniia i poemy (St. Petersburg, 1995), 22 Google Scholar.

6. Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Smith, Douglas (New York, 2000), 50 Google Scholar.

7. Ibid., 59.

8. Ibid., 50.

9. Ivanov, Viacheslav, “Novye maski” (1904), Sobranie sochinenii, ed. Ivanov, D. V. and Dechartes, O., 20 vols. (Brussels, 1974), 2:77–78 Google Scholar. See also Bugrov, B. S., Dramaturgiia russkogo simvolizma (Moscow, 1993)Google Scholar.

10. On the Russian response to Nietzsche, see Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer, “Introduction,“ Nietzsche in Russia (Princeton, 1986), 3–48, esp. 19-27Google Scholar.

11. Robakidze, Grigol, Portrety: Petr Chaadaev, Lermontov, Vasilii Rozanov, Andrei Belyi (Tbilisi, 1919), 26 Google Scholar. This book, of which more later, was published by the influential poet and critic Sergei Rafalovich (1875-1942), then residing in Tbilisi, who emigrated to Paris in 1922. Cf. also Magarotto's, Luigi valuable article “Vliianie Nitsshe na rannee tvorchestvo Grigola Robakidze,” Literaturnaia Gruziia 9 (1989): 148–60Google Scholar.

12. See Gourmont, Remy de, Livre des masques: Portraits symbolistes (Paris, 1896) The Russian edition of de Gourmont's book was published as Kniga masok (St. Petersburg, 1913)Google Scholar. Translated by E. M. Blinova and M. A. Kuzmin, it combined the two separate volumes of the original, published in 1896 and 1898, respectively, into one book and retained the original fifty-three illustrations by Félix Vallotton. See also Voloshin, Maksimilian, Liki tvorchestva, ed. Manuilov, V. A., Kupchenko, V. P., and Lavrov, A. V (Leningrad, 1988)Google Scholar, originally published as Liki tvorchestva: Kniga pervaia (St. Petersburg, 1914). The 1988 edition contains further volumes of Liki tvorchestva not published by Voloshin himself.

13. The term documentation physio-psychologique belongs to Charles Fedgal, Vallotton (Paris, 1931), 28. Lavater's writings on physiognomy, mostly composed between 1775 and 1778, can be found in his Essays on Physiognomy (London, 1878). For the classical and early modern traditions of physiognomy, see Stimilli, Davide, The Face of Immortality: Physiognomy and Criticism (Albany, 2004)Google Scholar.

14. Voloshin, , Liki tvorchestva, 122 Google Scholar. In a fragment from the same period, published for the first time in this 1988 edition, Voloshin states explicidy that “Russia is a country in which the culture of masks is poorly developed. Our faces are more bared [obnazhennee] and less self-conscious [soznatel'ny]. But for that reason individuality too is harder to read. Everything is muddled, undifferentiated, still not distributed according to class. For that reason it is difficult to make a quick sketch of a Russian face that would convey its character” (404).

15. Chaadaev, P. la., “Lettre prmière,” Lettres philosophiques adressees a une dame, in Polnoesobraniesochinenii i izbrannyepis'ma (Moscow, 1991), 1:195 Google Scholar.

16. Robakidze, , Portrety, 9, 16 Google Scholar.

17. Ibid., 27.

18. Ibid., 5-6.

19. Ibid., 21-28.

20. Ibid., 32.

21. Robakidze, Grigol, “Eris suli da shemokmedeba,” Sakhalkhogazeti (12 April 1913), 870, republished in Sherisgulni (Tbilisi, 1994), 313Google Scholar.

22. Robakidze, , “Eris suli da shemokmedeba,” Sherisgulni, 314, 316-17Google Scholar.

23. Berdiaev, N., Dusha Rossii (1915), republished in Sud'ba Rossii: Opyty po psikhologii voiny i natsional'nosti (Moscow, 1918), 6, 16Google Scholar.

24. Robakidze, Grigol, “Rusetis t'ragedia,” Sakartvelo 832 (21 October 1917), republished in Sherisgulni, 321-22Google Scholar. The article is essentially a critical summary of Berdiaev's theses.

25. Robakidze, , Portrety, 57 Google Scholar.

26. See Shushanashvili, Aleksandre, “Ilia Ch'avch'avadzis mk'vleloba: Dok'ument'ebis mimokhilva,” Lil'erat'uruli Sakartvelo (23 February-1 March 1996): 16–23 Google Scholar. There were in fact four assassins, two of them Bolsheviks, who were tried and sentenced to death in 1909. Another assassin, Gigla Berbich'ashvili, escaped to Iran, resurfacing in 1919. Although he never concealed his role in the assassination, he was offered positions of power after the Bolshevik takeover and drew a pension as a Bolshevik veteran. Berbich'ashvili's fate reversed dramatically with the official ideological reassessment of Ch'avch'avadze's role in 1936. He was arrested and sentenced to death in 1941; during the trial his links to the Bolshevik party were deliberately obscured. The published material of the time sought to implicate the tsarist secret service: see Gugushvili, P'aat'a, Ilia Ch'avch'avadzis mk'vleloba: Sagamomdzieblo masalebi (Tbilisi, 1938), 30 Google Scholar; and Odishvili, I., Ts'its'amuris t'ragedia (Tbilisi, 1953), 34–35 Google Scholar.

27. Robakidze, Grigol, “Kartuli renesansi,” originally in Sakartvelo 257 (1917), republished in Exrrop'a tu azia? (Tbilisi, 1997), 266 Google Scholar.

28. Robakidze, Grigol, “Kartvel mts'erlebs,” originally in Sakartvelo (1917), republished in Evrop'a tu azia? 265 Google Scholar.

29. Robakidze, Grigol, “Avt'omedalioni” (1917), 13 sonet'i (Tbilisi, 1999), 6 Google Scholar.

30. The Dionysian mask of nationhood in Robakidze closely resembles Ivanov's advocacy of theater as the “national mysterium” of a collective festive spirit: see Ivanov, , “O veselom remesle i umnom veselii” (1907), Sobranie sochinenii, 3:68–69 Google Scholar.

31. Gaprindashvili, Valerian, “Dek'laratsia: Akhali mitologia,” Meotsnebe niamorebi 7 (November 1922): 10 Google Scholar.

32. Ibid., 11.

33. “Old myths naturally turn out to be kin to the new.” Ivanov, , “O veselom remesle i umnom veselii” (1907), Sobranie sochinenii, 3:68 Google Scholar.

34. Gaprindashvili, Valerian, “Sakhelebis magia,” Meotsnebe niamorebi 6 (October 1921): 21 Google Scholar. B. A. Uspenskii and Iu. M. Lotman suggest that “the sign in mythic consciousness is analogous to the proper name,” since “it is precisely in the sphere of proper names that the identification of the word and the denoted referent, so characteristic of mythic representations, occurs.” Uspenskii, B. A. and Lotman, Iu. M., “Mif—imia—kul'tura,” in Uspenskii, , hbrannye trudy, vol. 1, Semiotika istorii. Semiotika kul'tury (Moscow, 1994), 300–301 Google Scholar. The Blue Horn poetics of the name might be read as an extreme form of this semiosis, in which the name no longer refers to its bearer but becomes the bearer, but in such a way that the bearer's attributes are erased.

35. Mandel'shtam, Osip, “Slovo i kul'tura,” Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 1990), 2:171 Google Scholar. The article was first published in the almanac Drakon in May 1921, then republished in Batumi, Georgia, in June 1922 in the newspaper Iskusstvo. During 1920-1921, Mandel'shtam visited Georgia twice: the Blue Horn group, whom he subsequently disowned, heavily mediated his acquaintance with Georgian culture. Concerning Mandel'shtam's visits to Georgia, see Parnis, Aleksandr, “Zametki o prebyvanii Mandel'shtama v Gruzii v 1921 godu,” in Magarotto, , Marzaduri, , and Cesa, , eds., L'Avanguardia a Tiflis, 211-26Google Scholar; Nerler, P. M., “Mne Tiflis gorbatyi snitsia: Osip Mandel'shtam i Gruziia,” in Mandel'shtam, Osip, Stikhotvoreniia, perevody, ocherki, stat'i, ed. Margvelashvili, G. G. and Nerler, P. M. (Tbilisi, 1990), 376-86Google Scholar; Nikol'skaia, , Fantasticheskiigorod, 173-76Google Scholar; Mandel'shtam, N. la., Vtoraiakniga (Paris, 1983), 76–84 and Tret'iakniga (Paris, 1987), 135-36Google Scholar.

36. See Mandel'shtam, Osip, “V Peterburge my soidemsia snova” (1920), Sochineniia, 1:132 Google Scholar, and Mandel'shtam's “Solominka” (1916), Sochineniia, 1:110-11, dedicated to the Georgian beauty Salomé Andronikashvili, which contains a sui generis incantation of proper names called “blessed words.” Finally, we might mention Mandel'shtam's interest, manifested in the poems of his first collection Kamen', such as “I ponyne na Afone” (1915), Sochineniia, 1:102, in the heresy of the imiabozhtsy (God-namers), who believed that the name of God was inherently divine. Irina Paperno plays down the imiabozhtsy heresy as a positive influence on Mandel'shtam. Paperno, , “On the Nature of the Word: Theological Sources of Mandelshtam's Dialogue with the Symbolists,” in Hughes, Robert P. and Paperno, Irina, ed., Russian Culture in Modern Times, vol. 2 of Christianity and the Eastern Slavs (Berkeley, 1994), 287–310 Google Scholar. Whatever their philosophical origins, the poems of “Tristia“ frequently enact a dematerialization of the word that echoes the process found in the work of the Blue Horn poets.

37. Mandel'shtam, , “Koe-chto o gruzinskom iskusstve” (January 1922), Sochineniia, 2:263 Google Scholar.

38. Gaprindashvili, Valerian, “Msakhiobi,” originally in Khelovneba 2 (November 1919), republished in Leksebi, p'oema, targmanebi, esseebi, ts'erilebi, mts'erlis arkividan (Tbilisi, 1990), 485-86Google Scholar.

39. Tseëlon, Efrat, “Introduction: Masquerade and Identities,” in Tseëlon, Efrat, ed., Masquerade and Identities: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Marginality (New York, 2001), 2–3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A historical account of the origins of the modern carnival and its relationship to eighteenth-century British fiction can be found in Terry Castle's Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivaksque in Eighteenth-Century Culture and Fiction (Stanford, 1986).

40. For a broad history of the role of the commedia in die modernist imagination, see Green, Martin and Swan's, John somewhat diffuse book The Triumph of Pierrot: The Cornmedia dell'arte and the Modern Imagination (New York, 1986), 87–95 Google Scholar. For the Russian modernist context, see Douglas, J. Clayton's richly informative Pierrot in Petrograd: Commedia dell'arte/Balagan in Twentieth-Century Russian Theatre and Drama (Montreal, 1994)Google Scholar. Olga Partan, “Recurring Masks: The Impact of the Italian Commedia dell'Arte on die Russian Artistic Imagination” (PhD diss., Brown University, 2004) informs us that die commedia dell'arte entered Russia in the eighteenth century and was fostered by Empress Anna as a form of courtly entertainment. It fused with local forms and acquired a popular valency in die nineteenth century and was elevated once more into an elite form in the modernist period. For the history of popular forms of carnivalized theater in nineteenth-century Russia, see Kelly, Catriona, Petrushka: The Russian Carnival Puppet Theatre (Cambridge, Eng., 1990)Google Scholar.

41. T'abidze, T'itsian, “Tsisperi Qants'ebit [I],” in Barbakadze, Tamar, ed., Sonet'ebi, rcheuli leksebi, esse (Tbilisi, 1999), 82–83 Google Scholar.

42. Meierkhol'd, Vsevolod, “Balagan,” Stat'i, pis'ma, rechi, besedy. Chast’ pervaia. 1891- 1917 (Moscow, 1968), 218-19Google Scholar.

43. Meierkhol'd, “O teatre,” Stat'i, pis'ma, rechi, besedy, 141. In this article Meierkhol'd discusses Ivanov's views on theater sympathetically but essentially seeks to appropriate them for his own notion of theatrical artifice.

44. Bakhtin argues that the reappearance of the grotesque in pre-Romantic and Romantic literature is in fact a “new form for the expression of an individual, subjective perception of the world quite far from the popular-carnivalesque perception of the world that had existed in past centuries.” Bakhtin, Mikhail, Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaia kul'tura srednevekov'ia i renessansa (Orange, Conn., 1986), 40–43 Google Scholar. One might argue that the modernist revival of the commedia is a later stage of the same process, whereby a new means to express subjective individuation is abstracted from a once popular form.

45. Javakhishvili, Ivane, Kartveli eris ist'oria: Ts'igni p'irveli, 5th ed. (Tbilisi, 1960), 412 Google Scholar. Cf. also Chkheidze, R., Kaldeas monat'reba (Tbilisi, 2002)Google Scholar, a survey of the Chaldean myth in Georgian literature.

46. T'abidze, T'itsian, “Magi ts'inap'ari” (1916), Leksebi, p'oemebi, proza, ts'erilebi (Tbilisi, 1985), 75 Google Scholar.

47. The clearest formulation of fin-de-siècle degeneration theory is of course Max Nordau's Degeneration (1892; Lincoln, Neb., 2006). See also Matich, Olga, Erotic Utopia: The Decadent Imagination in Russia's Fin de Siècle (Madison, 2005)Google Scholar.

48. T'abidze, T'itsian, “Balaganis mepe” (1917) and “Kaldeas balagani” (1918), Leksebi, p'oemebi, proza, ts'erilebi, 80-81, 83 Google Scholar.

49. T'abidze, T'itsian, “Ori ap'rili,” Leksebi, p'oemebi, proza, ts'erilebi, 83 Google Scholar.

50. T'itsian T'abidze, “Ironia da tsinizmi: Problema memartskheneobis p'oeziashi,“ Meolsnebe niamorebi 9 (January 1923), 10. Cf. also Nikol'skaia, T. L., Avangard i okresnosti (St. Petersburg, 2002), 28–31 Google Scholar. In fact the Blue Horn poets had earlier coexisted and even collaborated with the “41°” group on relatively amicable terms. This article reflects a rupture provoked largely by Terent'ev, and by the emergence of a Georgian futurist group that was challenging the Blue Horn poets’ domination of the Georgian literary scene.

51. T'abidze, T'itsian, “Dadaizmi da tsisperi qants'ebi,” Meolsnebe niamorebi 10 (December 1923), 14 Google Scholar.

52. Lotman, Iu. M., “The Theatre and Theatricality as Components of Early Nineteenth-Century Culture,” in Lotman, Iu. M. and Uspenskij, B. A., The Semiotics of Russian Culture, ed. Shukman, Ann (Ann Arbor, 1984), 160 Google Scholar.

53. Gaprindashvili, , “Dek'laratsia”, 10–11 Google Scholar.

54. Luigi Magarotto states that the deception remained unexposed until 1924 and recalls die figure of Louise Lalanne, a woman poet invented by Guillaume Apollinaire in 1909, as another possible precedent for Dariani. Magarotto, , “Storia e teoria dell'avanguardia georgiana (1915-1924),” in Magarotto, , Marzaduri, , and Cesa, , eds., L'Avanguardia a Tiflis, 60 Google Scholar, Cf. also Nik'oleishvili, Avtandil, XX sauk'unis kartuli mts'erloba (Kutaisi, 2002), 288-89Google Scholar.

55. See Ivanov, Viacheslav, “Vagner i Dionisovo Deistvo” (1905), Sobranie sochinenii, 2:84–85 Google Scholar.

56. Kelly, , Petrushka, 146-47Google Scholar.

57. T'abidze, , “Tsisperi Qants'ebit [I],” 92 Google Scholar.

58. Baudelaire, Charles, Constantin Guys: Lepeintre de la vie moderne (Paris, 1925), 104 Google Scholar. For Baudelaire the distinction between artifice and nature transcended the opposition between the civilized and the primitive. Evreinov exalted the primitive and dismissed the aesthetic in a way that would have been alien to Baudelaire. Their ideas converge in their shared antinaturalism.

59. Evreinov, Nikolai, “Teatralizatsiia zhizni: Ex Cathedra,” Demon teatral'nosti (Moscow, 2002), 43, 44, 46Google Scholar.

60. Evreinov's activities in Georgia, widely publicized in the local press, are described by Nikol'skaia, , Fantasticheskii gorod, 166-70Google Scholar.

61. Mits'ishvili, Nik'olo, “Barrik'adis gadaghma,” Barrik'adi, no. 1 (1920)Google Scholar, republished in Evrop'a tu azia? 219.

62. Grishashvili codified the popular traditions of old Tbilisi in Iosif Grishashvili, Literaturnaia bogema starogo Tbilisi, published originally in 1927, translated by Nodar Tarkhnishvili (Tbilisi, 1977). For a discussion of the place of old Tbilisi in the art of the modernist painter Gudiasvhili, see Degen, Iu., “VI. Gudiashvili,” Lado Gudiashvili. Kniga vospominanii. Stat'i. Iz perepiski. Sovremenniki o khudozhnike (Moscow, 1987), 220-25Google Scholar. I address the collision between Blue Horn modernism and Tbilisi's popular culture in my article “The Sonnet and the Mukhambazi: Genre Wars on the Edges of the Russian Empire,” Remapping Genres, PMLA 122, no. 5 (October 2007): 1548-70.

63. Evangulov, Georgii, “Kinto,” (1914), Belyi dukhan (Paris, 1921), 14–15 Google Scholar. Evangulov published two books in Tbilisi before emigrating to France. Belyi dukhan is a transitional volume that combines verse written in Georgia as well as in emigration.