Nikoloz Baratashvili Biography

Nik'oloz Baratashvili (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.

A key insight into the weltanschauung of Baratashvili can be found in his historical poem Fate of Georgia , 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?"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. In his earlier poem Dusk on Mtatsminda , the reader can feel a romantic aspiration to be freed of earthly burdens and joined with secret natural forces. Baratashvili's love-poetry reached its acme with his unhappy obsessive love for Princess Chavchavadze and is impregnated with an idea of the oprhaned soul as in The Oprhaned Soul . Despaired of human happiness, Baratashvili admires the superhuman historical figures, such as Erekle II and Napoleon, whom he deems to be beyond joy and misery.Among his most significant works are the poems The Evil Spirit , Thought on the Riverside of Mtkvari , and Pegasus . This latter poem fascinated later Georgian poets as a mystic, apocalyptic vision of the future. In it 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.