Prince Nikoloz "Tato" Baratashvili (Georgian: ნიკოლოზ "ტატო" ბარათაშვილი; 4 December 1817 –

21 October 1845) was a Georgian poet. He was one of the first Georgians to marry modern nationalism
with European Romanticism and to introduce "Europeanism" into Georgian literature. Due to his early
death, Baratashvili left a relatively small literary heritage of fewer than forty short lyrics, one extended
poem, and a few private letters, but he is nevertheless considered to be the high point of Georgian
Romanticism.[1] He was referred to as the "Georgian Byron".[2][3]

Contents

1 Biography

2 Works

2.1 Poetry

3 Ancestry

4 Notes

5 References

Biography

Nikoloz Baratashvili, affectionately known as Tato (ტატო), was born in Tiflis (Tbilisi), Georgia's capital,
which was then a principal city of Russian Transcaucasia. His father, Prince Meliton Baratashvili (1795–
1860), was an impoverished nobleman working for the Russian administration. His mother, Ephemia
Orbeliani (1801–1849), was a sister of the Georgian poet and general Prince Grigol Orbeliani and a scion
of the penultimate Georgian king Erekle II.

Baratashvili graduated, in 1835, from a Tiflis gymnasium for nobility, where he was tutored by Solomon
Dodashvili, a Georgian patriot and liberal philosopher.[4] The tragic quality of Baratashvili's poetry was
determined by his traumatic personal life as well as the contemporary political situation in his
homeland. The failure of the 1832 anti-Russian conspiracy of Georgian nobles, with which Baratashvili
was a schoolboy sympathizer, forced many conspirators to see the independent past as irremediably
lost and to reconcile themselves with the Russian autocracy, transforming their laments for the lost past
and the fall of the native dynasty into Romanticist poetry. Shortage of money prevented Baratashvili
from continuing his studies in Russian universities, while an early physical injury – his lameness – did not
allow him to enter military service as he wished. Eventually, Baratashvili had to enter the Russian
bureaucratic service and serve as an ordinary clerk in the Azerbaijani town of Ganja. The love of his life,
Princess Ekaterine Chavchavadze, rejected him and married David Dadiani, Prince of Mingrelia.
Baratashvili's hopeless infatuation: Ekaterine Dadiani, Princess of Mingrelia, by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

Baratashvili died of malaria in Ganja, unmourned and unpublished, at the age of 27. Baratashvili's
influence was long delayed, but as the next generation of Georgian literati rediscovered his lyrics, he
was posthumously published, between 1861 and 1876, and idolized.[1] Baratashvili's reinterment from
Ganja to Tbilisi in 1893 turned into a national celebration. Since 1938, his remains have lain in the
Mtatsminda Pantheon in Tbilisi.

Works

Bedi Kartlisa by Baratashvili, 1839.

A key insight into the Weltanschauung of Baratashvili can be found in his historical poem Fate of Georgia
(ბედი ქართლისა, bedi k'art'lisa; 1839), an inspiring and articulate lament for Georgia's latest
misfortunates. This poem, written by Baratashvili at the age of 22, is based on a real historical event: the
1795 ruining of Tbilisi by the Persian ruler Mohammad Khan Qajar, which forced the disappointed
Georgian king Erekle II to relegate his country's security onto the Russian Empire. However, national
problems considered in this work are viewed with a modern approach; the poem considers not only
Georgia's past, but also its future in the aftermath of the failed revolt of 1832. In this poem, Baratashvili
reproduces the debate of Erekle II with his chancellor, Solomon Lionidze who opposes the union with
Russia and thinks that this will result in the loss of Georgia's national identity. Lionidze's wife asks her
husband, in a lament that became familiar to all literate Georgians: "What pleasure does the tender
nightingale receive from honor if it is in a cage?"[4] The sympathies of the poet and reader both fall on
Solomon's side, but the objectively rational decision of the king prevails.