Nikoloz Baratashvili
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Nikoloz Baratashvili (Georgian: ნიკოლოზ ბარათაშვილი) (December 4, 1817 - October 21, 1844) was a Georgian poet, one of the first Georgians to marry a modern nationalism with European Romanticism and to introduce "Europeanism" into Georgian literature. Despite his early death and a tiny literary heritage of fewer than forty short lyrics, one extended poem, and a few private letters, Baratashvili is considered to be the high point of Georgian Romanticism.[1]
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[edit] 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 Grigol Orbeliani and a scion of the penultimate Georgian king Erekle II.
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 disease-ridden Azerbaijani town of Ganja. The love of his life, Princess Ekaterine Chavchavadze, rejected him and married David Dadiani, Prince of Mingrelia.
Baratashvili died of malaria in Ganja, unmourned and unpublished, at the age of 27.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.[2] 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.
[edit] Works
A key insight into the weltanschauung of Baratashvili can be found in his historical poem Fate of Georgia (ბედი ქართლისა; 1839), an inspiring and articulate lament for Georgia’s latest misfortunates. This poem, the longest piece written by Baratashvili, is based on a real historical event: the 1795 ruining of Tbilisi by the Persian ruler Mohammad Khan Qajar, which forced the dissapointed 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, Erekle II, a realist politician, realizes Georgia should rely on Russia, a decision he deems to be inevitable. Another character, the royal chancellor Solomon Lionidze, thinks that this will result in the loss of Georgia’s national identity. The sympathies of the poet and reader both fall on Solomon’s side, but the objectively rational decision of the king prevails.
During his short creative life (1833-45) Baratashvili developed difficult concepts of art and ideas. In the words of the British scholar Donald Rayfield, Baratashvili "evolved a language all his own, obscure but sonorous, laconically modern, sometimes splendidly medieval, with pseudo-archaisms."[3] In his earlier poem Dusk on Mtatsminda (შემოღამება მთაწმინდაზე; 1833-36) the reader can feel a romantic aspiration to be freed of earthly burdens and joined with secret natural forces. His most significant works are the poems “The Evil Spirit” (1843), “Thought on the Riverside of Mtkvari”(ფიქრი მტკვრის პირას) (1837), and “Merani” (მერანი) (1842), in which the omnipotent mind, inspired by faith, calls for the poem’s lyrical hero to knowingly sacrifice himself in the name of his brethren. The tragic optimism of “Merani” is a striking manifestation of the romantic spirit: active, life-asserting, and full of revolutionary aspirations. “Merani” is a prominent work of Georgian romanticism both from an ethical-philosophical view, and from an artistic-aesthetic point of view.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- (English) Rayfield, Donald (2000), The Literature of Georgia: A History. Routledge, ISBN 0-7007-1163-5.
- (German) Gaga Shurgaia (Hrsg., 2006) Nikoloz Baratasvili: Ein georgischer Dichter der Romantik. Königshausen und Neumann, Würzburg, ISBN 3-8260-2857-0.
