Giorgi Leonidze (December 27, 1899 – August 9, 1966) was a Georgian

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

 poet, prose writer, and literary scholar.

Leonidze was born in the village of Patardzeuli

Patardzeuli

Patardzeuli , is a village in Eastern Georgia, Sagarejo District, Kakheti Region. It is famous mainly because of Georgian writer, Giorgi Leonidze, who was born in this village.-References:...

 in the eastern Georgian province of Kakheti

Kakheti

Kakheti is a historical province in Eastern Georgia inhabited by Kakhetians who speak a local dialect of Georgian. It is bordered by the small mountainous province of Tusheti and the Greater Caucasus mountain range to the north, Russian Federation to the Northeast, Azerbaijan to the Southeast, and...

. He graduated from the Tbilisi

Tbilisi

Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...

 Theological Seminary in 1918 and continued his studies at the Tbilisi State University

Tbilisi State University

Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University , better known as Tbilisi State University , is a university established on 8 February 1918 in Tbilisi, Georgia. TSU is the oldest university in the whole Caucasus region...

. His first poems appeared in Georgian press in 1911, and then, briefly collaborated with the Symbolist

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

 group Blue Horns

Blue Horns

Tsisperqantselebi was a group of Georgian Symbolist poets and prose-writers which dominated the Georgian literature in the 1920s. It was founded as a coterie of young talented writers in the Kutaisi city in 1915 and was suppressed under the Soviet rule early in the 1930s.The group originated in...

. His real talent emerged in 1925 with a series of nature lyrics, responding with Romantic animation to the landscapes of Leonidze’s native Kakheti. Throughout the Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 period, he tried to pursue the "correct" political line; his poetry became more historical and patriotic, the eventful history of Georgia providing him with the colorful medieval imagery which Leonidze translated into impulsive rhythms and metaphors. He quickly established himself as one of the most popular poets of Georgia, but, when the purges

Great Purge

The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...

 of the 1930s took lives of many of his fellow writers and his own brother, microbiologist Leon Leonidze, he was forced to direct his talents into panegyrics to Stalin. This was an unfinished 1936 epic dedicated to Stalin’s childhood and youth, remarkable for its simulated verve and a total of absence of biographic details, factual or invented.

He also wrote scrupulous literary studies of earlier Georgian poets such as Besiki

Besiki

Besarion Gabashvili , commonly known by his penname Besiki was a Georgian poet, politician and diplomat, known as an author of exquisite love songs and heroic odes as well as for his political and amorous adventures....

 and Baratashvili

Nikoloz Baratashvili

Nik'oloz Baratashvili was a Georgian poet, one of the first Georgians to marry a modern nationalism with European Romanticism and to introduce "Europeanism" into Georgian literature...

, and produced evocative prose based on his childhood memoirs and experiences – The Tree of Desire (ნატვრის ხე), which was filmed, in 1976, by Tengiz Abuladze

Tengiz Abuladze

Tengiz Abuladze was a Georgian film director.Abuladze studied theatre direction at the Shota Rustaveli Theatre Institute, Tbilisi, Georgia, and filmmaking at the VGIK in Moscow. He graduated VGIK in 1952 and in 1953 he joined Gruziya-film as a director...

 as the first part of his famous trilogy. In his later years, Leonidze directed his wealth to the benefit of his native village and presided over the Institute of Georgian Literature at the Georgian Academy of Sciences

Georgian Academy of Sciences

The Georgian National Academy of Sciences is a main learned society of the Georgia. It was named Georgian SSR Academy of Sciences until November 1990...

 from 1958 until his death in 1966. He is buried at the Mtatsminda Pantheon

Mtatsminda Pantheon

The Mtatsminda Pantheon of Writers and Public Figures is a necropolis in Tbilisi, Georgia, where some of the most prominent writers, artists, scholars, and national heroes of Georgia are buried. It is located in the churchyard around St. David’s Church "Mamadaviti" on the slope of Mount Mtatsminda...

at Tbilisi.