Vladimir Asatiani (14 January, 1917 — 23 June, 1943) 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

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

. His poetic career, lasting only for seven years, made him one of the best-loved Georgian poets of the 20th century.

Lado Asatiani was born in Kutaisi

Kutaisi

Kutaisi is Georgia's second largest city and the capital of the western region of Imereti. It is 221 km to the west of Tbilisi.-Geography:...

 and graduated from that city's pedagogical institute in 1938. In 1939, Asatiani — ill of tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 — was conscripted to 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....

 Red Army

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

, but was soon dismissed because of his illness. He debuted in the Georgian press in 1936 and had his first poetic collection published in 1941. His career flourished shortly after Lavrenti Beria's bloody crackdown on Georgian writers. Protected by his fatal illness, Asatiani was one of the fewest, who managed to escape constraints of Stalinist ideology. His poetry, using lively colloquial Georgian with a touch of irony, a celebrated everyday pleasures and innocuous hedonism

Hedonism

Hedonism is a school of thought which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure .-Etymology:The name derives from the Greek word for "delight" ....

, tributes to friends, to Georgia and its classic poets. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union

Operation Barbarossa

Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...

 in June 1941, when Soviet poets were required to compose patriotic lyrics by evoking the memories of heroic historical battles, Asatiani switched to dramatic descriptions of the Georgian past. But his new poems were dismissed as nationalistic and the print-run was cut to ten copies. He died of complications of tuberculosis at the age of 26 in 1943. In 1968, he was reburied to 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...

 Didube Pantheon

Didube Pantheon

The Didube Pantheon is a burial in Tbilisi, Georgia, where some of the most prominent writers, artists, scholars, scientists and political activists of Georgia are buried. It was opened in 1939.- See also :* Mtatsminda Pantheon* Saburtalo Pantheon...

of writers.

External links

• Mikaberidze, Alexander (ed., 2006), Asatiani, Lado. Dictionary of Georgian National Biography Lado Asatiani's poetry