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Written by Donald Rayfield
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Key People: Shota Rustaveli

Related Topics: literature • Western

literature • Georgian language

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Georgian literature, the body of

written works in the Georgian
language, kartuli ena.

Origins and early

development
The origins of Georgian literature date
to the 4th century, when the Georgian
people were converted to Christianity
and a Georgian alphabet was
developed. The emergence of a rich
literary language and an original
religious literature was simultaneous
with a massive effort to translate texts
from Greek, Armenian, and Syriac.
Among the earliest works in Georgian
is the prose Tsameba tsmidisa
Shushanikisi dedoplisa (470 or later;
“The Passion of Saint Queen
Shushanik”), attributed to Iakob
Tsurtaveli. Old Georgian ecclesiastical
literature reached its acme in the 10th
century with the lyrical hymns
composed and collected by Ioane
Minchkhi and Mikael Modrekili and
with such biographies of the Church
Fathers as Tskhovreba Seraapionisi (c.
910; “The Life of Serapion”) by Basil
Zarzmeli and Grigol Khandztelis
tskhovreba (c. 950; “Grigol of
Khandzta”) by Giorgi Merchule.
Chronicles—such as Moktseva Kartlisa
(c. 950; “The Conversion of Georgia”)
and Kartlis tskhovreba (compiled
between the 10th and 13th centuries;
“The Life of Kartli”)—evolved from
legend to genuine historiography.

With the weakening of the Byzantine

Empire in the 10th century, Georgia’s
rulers achieved prosperity sufficient to
allow a secular literature to develop.
King David IV (the Builder) and, later,
Queen Tamara, his great-
granddaughter, oversaw a cultural
golden age that reached from the late
11th to the early 13th century. They
encouraged and commissioned works
in all the arts but particularly in poetry
and prose. (They themselves, like most
of Georgia’s Bagratid monarchs, were
also writers.) Influenced by Persian
literature—especially Ferdowsī’s Shāh-
nāmeh (“Book of Kings”), an 11th-
century epic—Georgian courtly
romance and epic flourished. In verse,
Georgia acquired its national
monument, Shota Rustaveli’s
extravagant but sophisticated courtly
romance Vepkhvistqaosani (c. 1220;
The Knight in the Panther’s Skin). It
was preceded and perhaps influenced
by Amiran-Darejaniani (probably c.
1050; Eng. trans. Amiran-
Darejaniani), a wild prose tale of
battling knights, attributed by
Rustaveli to Mose Khoneli, who is
otherwise unknown.

Georgia’s devastation by Genghis Khan

in the 1220s and by Timur in the 1390s
resulted in the loss of much of the
literature created during the golden age
—what survives today is only a fraction
of what was written—and effectively
ended literary production for two
centuries. A renaissance began in the
early 17th century with the harrowingly
personal, though ornate, poetry of King
Teimuraz I; among his works is Tsigni
da tsameba Ketevan dedoplisa (“The
Book and Passion of Queen Saint
Ketevan”), a gruesome account of his
mother’s martyrdom written in 1625,
soon after her death. Less-inspired
authors were content to fabricate
sequels to Rustaveli’s The Knight in the
Panther’s Skin, but contact with Italian
and French missionaries and
ambassadors in Tbilisi slowly
crystallized into fresh ideas.

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Famous Poets and Poetic

Form

The 18th and 19th

centuries
In the early 18th century, Sulkhan-Saba
Orbeliani, supported by his pupil and
nephew King Vakhtang VI, introduced
modern schooling and printing to
Georgia. Orbeliani also compiled the
first extant Georgian dictionary and
wrote a book of instructive fables,
Tsigni sibrdzne-sitsruisa (c. 1700; The
Book of Wisdom and Lies). Two major
poets emerged in the next generation:
Davit Guramishvili used colloquial
language to write revealing
autobiographical poetry that has a
Romantic immediacy, and Besiki
(pseudonym of Besarion Gabashvili)
adapted conventional poetics to
passionate love poetry. Both died in the
1790s while in exile.

During the 18th century, Georgia

sought salvation from Ottoman and
Persian rule by making an alliance with
Russia. In 1801 Russia abolished the
Georgian state, dethroned its kings,
and made Russian the language of
administration. But Russian rule was
fairly bloodless and opened routes to
European culture. A generation of
Georgian Romantic poets was inspired
by French and German literature and
philosophy. Aleksandre Chavchavadze,
father-in-law to Russian playwright
Aleksandr Sergeyevich Griboyedov, was
an original, contemplative poet;
Nikoloz Baratashvili was a visionary
genius comparable to the English poet
John Keats.

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Prose fiction, which could be sustained

only by a large educated readership,
was slower to develop. By the 1860s,
however, fiction and nonfiction prose
was flourishing. Ilia Chavchavadze and
Akaki Tsereteli had immense moral
and intellectual authority and
measurable narrative talent, as
displayed, for example, in
Chavchavadze’s Katsia-adamiani?
(1859–63; “Is That a Human Being?”),
which attacks the degenerate gentry,
and Tsereteli’s fine autobiographical
Chemi tavgadasavali (1894–1909;
“The Story of My Life”). Aleksandre
Qazbegi was the first commercially
successful prose writer in Georgia, his
melodramatic fiction drawing on the
legends and pagan ethos of the
Caucasian highlanders.

The development of Georgian theatre,

which needed prosperous city dwellers,
was stunted during the 19th century. Its
sole significant dramatist was Giorgi
Eristavi, who edited a literary journal,
directed the Georgian-language theatre
(which functioned only sporadically
until the 1880s), and translated
Russian comedies. He wrote one
effective drama, Sheshlili (written 1839,
first performed 1861; “The
Madwoman”), about women in conflict,
as well as two successful comedies,
Dava, anu tochka da zapetaia (written
1840, first performed 1850; “The
Lawsuit, or Semicolon”) and Gaqra
(1849; “The Family Settlement”). From
the 19th century through the turn of the
21st, Georgian theatre had fine actors
and directors but an impoverished
repertoire.

The 20th century

Vazha-Pshavela (pseudonym of Luka
Razikashvili) is modern Georgia’s
greatest genius. His finest works are
tragic narrative poems (Stumar-
maspindzeli [1893; “Host and Guest”],
Gvelis mchameli [1901; “The Snake-
Eater”]) that combine Caucasian folk
myth with human tragedy. Young
Georgian poets and prose writers were
subsequently inspired by European
Decadence and Russian Symbolism as
well as by the highlanders’ folklore that
imbues all Vazha-Pshavela’s language,
imagery, and outlook. His greatest
pupils were the dramatist and novelist
Grigol Robakidze and the poet
Galaktion Tabidze. Robakidze
developed the themes of Vazha-
Pshavela’s “The Snake-Eater” in The
Snake Skin, a tale of a poet’s search for
his real identity. Robakidze also led a
group known as the Tsisperqnatslebi
(“Blue Horns”); its best poet was
Titsian Tabidze, whose work was
indebted to Russian poetry. From 1918
to 1921 Georgia was an independent
state; despite war and destitution, the
period witnessed an explosion of
poetry, prose, and “happenings”—
anarchistic artistic and political
outbursts stimulated by the mixture in
Tbilisi of the refugee Russian avant-
garde and Georgian poets heady with
their liberation.

Invasion by the Soviet Red Army in

February 1921 sobered Georgian
writers. In the 1920s and ’30s the prose
writer Mikheil Javakhishvili—who,
having been sentenced to death by
Soviet authorities but later released,
went on to become a great writer—
produced inventive and captivating
prose that often tells the story of a
sympathetic doomed rogue, as in the
novels Kvachi Kvachantiradze da misi
tavgadasavali (1924; “Kvachi
Kvachantiradze and His Adventures”)
and Arsena Marabdeli (1933–36;
“Arsena of Marabda”). The most
enigmatic Georgian prose writer of the
20th century was Konstantine
Gamsakhurdia; like Robakidze, he was
influenced by German culture
(especially the philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche), and in his work he
combined the ethos of the Austro-
German poet Rainer Maria Rilke with
Caucasian folk myth. Befriended by
Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria—then Stalin’s
satrap in the Caucasus, later the
director of the Soviet secret police—
Gamsakhurdia was free to write
grandiose novels on contemporary,
mythological, and historical themes.

Georgian writers were decimated by the

Bolsheviks in the 1920s; the Great
Purge of the 1930s destroyed the
survivors. Even those few who survived
the holocaust overseen by Beria lost
friends, family, nerve, and inspiration.
The post-Stalinist thaw was slower in
Georgia than in Russia. Fine lyrical
poets achieved great popularity in the
1960s: Ana Kalandadze (who had been
a harbinger of literary renewal in the
1940s, when her earliest work was
published), Murman Lebanidze, and
Mukhran Machavariani. The relative
liberalism experienced under Eduard
Shevardnadze after his appointment in
1972 as first secretary of the
Communist Party in Georgia
empowered two important novelists.
Chabua Amirejibi continued in the
spirit of Javakhishvili’s novels centred
on rogues with the magnificent Data
Tutashkhia (1972) and the
autobiographical Gora Mborgali
(1995), while Otar Chiladze, with Gzaze
erti katsi midioda (1972–73; “A Man
Went Down the Road”) and Qovelman
chemman mpovnelman (1976;
“Everyone That Findeth Me”), began a
series of lengthy atmospheric works
that fuse Sumerian and Hellenic myth
with the predicaments of a Georgian
intellectual.

Independence and
beyond
The civil war, economic collapse, and
emigration that followed independence
in the 1990s crippled Georgian
publishing and theatre and created an
environment where literature could not
flourish. But as the country stabilized
in the mid-1990s under Shevardnadze,
who had by then become its head of
state, destitute writers were able to
begin again. Chiladze’s novel Avelum
(1995), for example, was a notable
account of a Georgian intellectual
watching his personal “empire of love”
crumble together with the Soviet
empire. Georgia’s Rose Revolution of
2003 and the emergence of a relatively
well-off middle class enabled
publishers and theatres to operate.
While the older generation of writers
remained active—Chiladze published
the novel Godori (“The Basket”) in
2003, and Amirejibi’s Giorgi
brtsqinvale (“George the Brilliant”), a
historical novel preaching national
pride, appeared in 2005—a new
generation of prose writers appeared,
notably the prolific Aka Morchiladze
(pseudonym of Giorgi Akhvlediani).
His best work includes Mogzauroba
Karabaghshi (1992; “Journey to
Karabakh”) and a series of semi-
fantastic novels about an archipelago
called Madatov that is populated by
Georgians. Morchiladze’s work shows
Georgian literature’s reorientation in
the early 21st century from Russian
toward English and American
influences. The work (some of it written
in English) of playwright Lasha
Bughadze also attracted international
acclaim. A new generation of poets—
including Maia Sarishvili, Rati
Amaghlobeli, and Kote Qubaneishvili
(Kote Kubaneishvili)—showed an
inventiveness and irreverence derived
from their working as public
performers and participating in
international festivals.

Donald Rayfield

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