Nikoloz Baratashvilli

Nikoloz Baratashvilli was a Georgian poet. He was born in Tblisi, Georgia on 4th December 1817 and died in Ganja, Azerbaijan on 21st October 1845 aged 27.

“Dusk on Mtatsminda” (1833–36)
“Thought on the Riverside of Mtkvari” (1837)
“The Orphaned Soul” (1839)
“Fate of Georgia” (1839)
“The Evil Spirit” (1843) 
“Pegasus” (1842)

1817: Nikoloz Baratashvili was born on 4th December in Tbilisi, Russian Transcaucasia and has been described as the “Georgian Lord Byron”. His father Prince Meliton was an aristocrat but had no fortune left and was in the service of the Emperor. His mother Efemia was the sister of Prince Grigol Orbeliani who was the granddaughter of King Erekle II. His mother had a love of literature and Baratashvili came into contact with statesmen and writers who visited their house.

1827: He goes to the Tbilisi gymnasium and is taught by Solomon Dodashvili.

1832: The Georgian nobles form a conspiracy against the Russian state which ultimately fails. Baratashvili is quietly sympathetic.

1835: He graduates from school and starts work as a clerk in Ganja in Azerbaijan as the family can’t afford to send him to university. A minor disability meant he couldn’t join the army. His only love Princess Ekaterine Chavchavadze rejects him and marries David Dadiani, Prince of Mingrelia, instead. 

1836: He writes “Twilight over the Mtatsminda”.

1837: He writes “Reflections on the Kura’s Banks”.

1839: He writes his longest poem “Fate of Georgia”. It depicts the assault on Tbilisi in1795 by the hordes of the Iranian Shah Agha Muhammad Khan and the poet laments the tragic fate of his native land. He also writes “Lonely Soul”.

1843: He writes the poem “The Evil Spirit”. 

1844: He is promoted deputy governor of the province of Ganja.

Nikoloz Baratashvili died on 21st October 1845 in Ganja of malaria leaving most of his poetry unpublished at the time and he was only idolised after his death when they gradually began to be published from 1861 onwards. In 1893 his remains were removed to Georgia with full state ceremony and since 1938 they have been held in the Mtastminda Pantheon.

Nikoloz Baratashvili was originally influenced by his mother’s love of literature and the fact that many famous Georgian writers and statesmen visited his home in Tbilisi. His second major influence was his teacher Solomon Dodashvili from 1827 to 1835. He fell in love with the sister of Nino Griboedova, Princess Ekaterina Chavchavdze but she married someone else but he carried a flame for her throughout his life and gave him a penchant for lyric poetry much of which he dedicated to her including the “Blue Flower”.

He was surrounded by other notable writers, Grigol Orbeliani was his uncle and Alexander Chavchavdze was a friend of his father’s. The writer Ilia Chavchavadze considered him to be the man who introduced Europeanism to Georgian literature and his work is a mixture of Georgian nationalism and European Romanticism. His lyric poetry is littered with pessimism, solitude, and a deep sadness about the insufficiency of the real world even though he had a deep learning in the sciences at st Petersburg. One of his famous poems reflects on the struggle of a man against his destiny. In his poems Baratashvili spoke of high moral ideals and wanted to improve society and spoke of the Georgian people’s will for national and social liberation. 

Although he left behind a small body of unpublished poems when he died aged 27 he was rediscovered by later writers and became known as the “Georgian Byron” and posthumously published between 1861 and 1876. He is now the most famous Georgian poet and his works have had a huge influence on Georgian literature. In particular his poem “Pegasus” written in 1842 fascinated poets due to its mystic and apocalyptic vision of the future.

The writer Boris Pasternak who translated Baratashvili’s poems into Russian, wrote in the twentieth century “The genius which fills them imparts ultimate perfection to them”. 

Examples of poetry by Baratashvilli.