Comparative Stylistic Analysis of the “Burnt Heart” as National Allegory in Niko Lortkipanidze’s Miniature “The Heart” and its English Translation

Abstract

Niko Lortkipanidze’s miniature The Heart is a profoundly allegorical work that reflects the psychological, moral, and national issues of early 20th-century Georgia. At the center of the text lies the motif of the “burnt heart,” which simultaneously represents both individual and universal moral degradation caused by the separation from one’s homeland Created against the backdrop of political instability and a crisis of national identity, the text follows a simple narrative line while highlighting essential national values.

The study employs descriptive, interpretative, and stylistic methods to conduct a comparative analysis of the original Georgian text and its English translation by Eter Churadze, demonstrating how linguistic, stylistic, and structural devices contribute to the creation of allegorical meaning. Special attention is given to repetition, parallelism, metaphor, hyperbole, personification, rhetorical questions, epithets, and syntactic structures.  These devices not only enhance the narrative’s emotional impact but also reveal historical grief, moral decline, and ideological struggle while the comparison of the original text with its translation highlights how the translation preserves, adapts, or subtly modifies these features, affecting tone, symbolism, and reader perception.

The analysis shows that Lortkipanidze’s seemingly modest miniature encompasses universal human grief and values, demonstrating how the interaction between original and translated text illuminates the transmission of symbolic, moral, and cultural meaning across languages.