Grigol Robakidze

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Grigol Robakidze (Georgian: გრიგოლ რობაქიძე) (1882 – 1962) was a Georgian writer, publicist, and public figure primarily known for his exotic prose and anti-Soviet émigré activities.

He was born on October 28, 1882, in the village of Sviri, Imereti (west Georgia), then Kutaisi Guberniya of the Russian Empire. After the graduation from Kutaisi Gymnasium, he took courses at the University of Tartu (Estonia) and the University of Leipzig (Germany). Robakidze returned from Germany in 1908, and gradually became a leading person among the young Georgian symbolists. In 1915, he founded and led the Blue Horns, a new group of symbolist poets and writers which would later play an important role, particularly during the next two decades. Heavily influenced by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, his prose centered "on the search of mythological archetypes and there realisation in the life of a nation, and although its intrigue is always artificial and displays much of pose, he was highly respected both by his compatriots and a number of important European literary figures, such as Stefan Zweig and Nikos Kazantzakis."^[1] In 1917, he played a role in founding of the Union of Georgian Writers. Involved in national-liberation movement of that time, he got a diplomatic post in 1919, when he took part in Paris Peace Conference as a secretary of the delegation of the Democratic Republic of Georgia.

After Soviet Russian forces took control of Georgia in 1921, he remained in the country, but was known for his anti-Soviet sentiments. His famous play Lamara was staged by the leading Georgian director Sandro Akhmeteli in 1930, a performance which became a prize-winner at the 1930 Moscow Drama Olympiad. The success was so notable indeed that even after Grigol Robakidze defected to Germany the same year, Lamara continued to be staged to prove the achievements of Soviet theatrical art, although without the name of the playwright on the announces. His defection, along with Vladimir Mayakovsky’s suicide silenced most of his fellow poets for a long while. As an émigré, Robakidze had rather unhappy life. During the World War II, he participated in the right-wing patriotic émigré organizations such as the Committee of Independence of Georgia (1941), the Union of Georgian Traditionalists (1942) and Tetri Giorgi. After the war, his several books on Mussolini and Hitler were believed to favour Nazism. Robakidze himself rejected this claim, but was never able to reestablish his fame in the west, while in the USSR all his books were extinguished and even his name hardly mentioned at all, if not as an ideological scapegoat. He died as broken man in Geneve on November 19, 1962. He was later reburried to the Cemetery of Leuville-sur-Orge, France, a burial ground of the Georgian emigration to Europe.

[edit] Main works

"Georgian poet Vazha Pshavela".-"Russkaya Mysl", August, 1911 (in Russian)
"Georgian Modernism".-Russian journal "ARS", Tbilisi, 1918 (in Russian)
"Portraits", Tbilisi, 1919 (in Russian)
"Lamara", Tbilisi, 1928 (in Georgian)
"Das Schlangenhemd". Ed. by Stefan Zweig, Jena, 1928 (in German)
"Megi - Ein georgisches Mädchen", Tübingen, 1932 (in German)
"Die gemordete Seele", Jena, 1933 (in German)
"Vrazdena Duse", Prague, 1934 (in Czech)
"Der Ruf der Göttin", Jena, 1934 (in German),
"Die Hüter des Grals", Jena, 1937 (in German),
"Dämon und Mythos", Jena, 1935 (in German)
"Kaukasische Novellen", Leipzig, 1932; München, 1979 (In German)
"La Georgie en son image du monde".- "Bedi Kartlisa"- Le destin de la Georgie", No 16, Paris, 1954 (in French)
"Vom Weltbild der Georgier".- "Atlantis", October, 1961, Zürich (in German)
"Hymne an Orpheus" (Poem).- Collection "Grigol Robakidze", Munich, 1984 (in German).

[edit] Literature

Dichter schreiben über sich selbst, Jena, 1940 (in German)
Nikos Kazantzakis. Toda Raba, Paris, 1962 (in French)
"Grigol Robakidze" (Collection), Published by Dr. Karlo Inasaridze, Munich, 1984 (in Georgian, German and French)