Madness of the Shepherd

Kosta Levan Khetagurov (1859-1906) remains the towering figure of Ossetian literature and one of the most significant poets of the late Russian Empire. Writing in both Ossetian and Russian, he gave voice to the material suffering and political aspirations of a people caught between imperial exploitation and internal complacency... and did so with a range that moves from prophetic fury to black-comic fable.

In The Madness of the Shepherd, Matthew Franklin Cooper applies the literary-functionalist methods of Trubetskoi and Jakobson to Khetagurov's lexical choices in both languages. Tracing key Ossetian terms (like фыййау 'shepherd, ' æгъдау 'honour, ' and зарæг 'song') back through their Iranian roots to the Avestā and the Nart Sagas, and examining how Arabic and Qur'ānic resonances inform the Russian-language epic Fatima, Cooper places Khetagurov in conversation with Ferdowsī, Gogol, Lu Xun, José Martí, Rubén Darío, and the Palestinian poets of exile. What emerges is a portrait of a poet whose shepherd is at once messiah, satirical fool, and rallying cry.

Cooper's style is fresh and singular. With prophetic incision, he draws the reader into the living world of a 19th-century Caucasian poet...and then, without breaking stride, turns the same lexicographic blade on the present, holding his reader to account under the burden of current events in West Asia. Khetagurov's words, in Cooper's hands, are not museum pieces but living seeds planted directly into the complacencies of our own time.

Fr Marc Boulos

rector of St. Elizabeth OCA (St Paul, MN)

host of The Bible as Literature Podcast, author of Rise, Andalus