Georgian medieval epic among world poems on walls of Dutch city Leiden

Residents of the Dutch city of Leiden go about their daily business as streets of their historical city are adorned with poems, among them a fragment from a medieval epic from Georgia’s national poet Shota Rustaveli.

Known for its architecture dating back centuries, the city in the west of the country boasts a number of precious sites and is a pioneering spot for the introduction of tulips to western Europe.

Is is also recognised as the pre-eminent location in the Netherlands for “wall poems” — pieces picked from poetry texts from around the world to be placed on urban surfaces in the city.

Among these is a fragment from The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, a 12th century work by Rustaveli now recognised as a major text of the Georgian literature.

In the wall piece, 16 lines from the epic are placed on a residential house in Leiden, as a contribution to the range of poems from across cultures and languages displayed in streets of the city.

Nowhere else in the Netherlands can so many beautiful wall poems be found as in Leiden,” a website collecting examples of poetry pieces in the city said.

The 12th century epic by Rustaveli is one of 101 poetry pieces placed on walls of the Dutch city within the “wall poems” project. Photo: Anoesjka Minnaard.

The Knight in the Panther’s Skin is the only Georgian-language text among poems in nearly 40 languages that can be seen in Leiden, from Arabic to Sanskrit.

Photographs of the fragment of the Georgian poem can be found on muurgedichten.nl, a website run by the Taalmuseum in collaboration with the TEGEN-BEELD Foundation to present the poetry on walls in the Dutch city.

The project for the launch of the plaque was realised in 2010, with the leadership of Dali de Graaf-Ubilava, the founder and artistic director of the Leiden-based ArtEcho foundation and initiator of a range of Georgian cultural projects, art projects and events in the Netherlands.

The initiator of the project told agenda.ge over 100 literary texts in various languages could be found throughout the city, with the Rustaveli poem fragment enjoying a prestigious spot next to the library of the University of Leiden, one of the earliest universities in Europe.

De Graaf was later also involved in creating audio recordings of the fragments of the poem featured on the plaque, for the Museum of Languages of the university.

For de Graaf, the project was later followed by other initiatives, including a 2012 launch of a course on Georgian languages, culture and society at the humanitarian faculty of the university, as part of the Iberia 2012 festival of Georgian culture.