Abstract

This article examines the crisis of cultural literacy and artistic production in Georgia and beyond, situating recent developments within long historical trajectories of literary and artistic achievement. Drawing on historical reference, sociological reasoning, and comparative cultural evidence, the author analyses how the weakening of reading practices and public cultural institutions contributes to the devaluation of taste and the marginalisation of serious literature. The discussion also considers structural and political factors affecting key cultural bodies, including publishing, theatre and film. Finally, the article argues that culturological inquiry can function as a practical and conceptual “lifeline”: by systematising the inherited achievements of world culture, it offers contemporary audiences resources to preserve the core of humane values.