Mikheil Javakhishvili
Encyclopedia
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...
novelist who is regarded as one of the top twentieth-century Georgian writers. His first story appeared in 1903, but then the writer lapsed into a long pause before returning to writing in the early 1920s. His recalcitrance 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....
ideological pressure cost him life: he was executed during Stalin's Great Purge
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...
and his writings were banned for nearly twenty years. In the words of the modern British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
scholar of Russian and Georgian literature, Donald Rayfield
Donald Rayfield
Donald Rayfield is professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary, University of London. He is an author of books about Russian and Georgian literature, and about Joseph Stalin and his secret police...
, "his vivid story-telling, straight in medias res, his buoyant humour, subtle irony, and moral courage merit comparison with those of Stendhal
Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...
, Maupassant
Guy de Maupassant
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents....
, and Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
. In modern Georgian prose only Konstantine Gamsakhurdia
Konstantine Gamsakhurdia
Konstantine Gamsakhurdia was a Georgian writer and public figure, who, along with Mikheil Javakhishvili, is considered to be one of the most influential Georgian novelists of the 20th century...
could aspire to the same international level."
Early life and career
He was born as Mikheil Adamashvili in the village of Tserakvi in what is now the Kvemo Kartli
Kvemo Kartli
Kvemo Kartli is a historic province and current administrative region in southeastern Georgia. The city of Rustavi is a regional capital. The population is mixed between Azeris and Georgians .The current governor is Davit Kirkitadze.- External links :* *...
region, Georgia (then part of Imperial Russia). The mismash with his real family name was later explained by writer himself. According to him, his grandparent, born as Javakhishvili
Javakhishvili
Javakhishvili is a Georgian noble family, a branch of the Toreli , known from the 10th century.The surname Javakhishvili, literally "son of Javakh", derives from the 14th-century nobleman Javakh , a participant of Georgia’s resistance to Timur’s attacks...
(noble family from the province Kartli
Kartli
Kartli is a historical region in central-to-eastern Georgia traversed by the river Mtkvari , on which Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, is situated. Known to the Classical authors as Iberia, Kartli played a crucial role in ethnic and political consolidation of the Georgians in the Middle Ages...
) killed a man, therefore had to flee away to 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...
where he took a new name Toklikishvili. Mikheil's grandfather Adam
Adam
Adam is a figure in the Book of Genesis. According to the creation myth of Abrahamic religions, he is the first human. In the Genesis creation narratives, he was created by Yahweh-Elohim , and the first woman, Eve was formed from his rib...
returned in Kartli
Kartli
Kartli is a historical region in central-to-eastern Georgia traversed by the river Mtkvari , on which Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, is situated. Known to the Classical authors as Iberia, Kartli played a crucial role in ethnic and political consolidation of the Georgians in the Middle Ages...
. His son Saba was registered as Adamashvili. Mikheil was also wearing this name in his youth but later he returned the family name of ancestors-Javakhishvili
Javakhishvili
Javakhishvili is a Georgian noble family, a branch of the Toreli , known from the 10th century.The surname Javakhishvili, literally "son of Javakh", derives from the 14th-century nobleman Javakh , a participant of Georgia’s resistance to Timur’s attacks...
.He enrolled into the Yalta
Yalta
Yalta is a city in Crimea, southern Ukraine, on the north coast of the Black Sea.The city is located on the site of an ancient Greek colony, said to have been founded by Greek sailors who were looking for a safe shore on which to land. It is situated on a deep bay facing south towards the Black...
College of Horticulture and Viticulture, but a family tragedy forced him to abandon his studies: robbers killed his mother and sister, and his father died shortly thereafter. Returning to Georgia in 1901, he worked at a copper smeltery in 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...
. His first story was published in 1903 under the penname of Javakhishvili, followed by a series of journalistic articles critical of the Russian authorities. In 1906, the Tsarist political repressions forced him to retire to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, where he studied art and political economy at the University of Paris
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
. After the extensive travels to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
from 1908 to 1909, he clandestinely returned to his homeland only to be arrested and exiled from Georgia in 1910. He returned in 1917 and, after almost fifteen years of pause, resumed writing. In 1921, he joined the National Democratic Party of Georgia and was in opposition 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....
government established in Georgia the same year. In 1923, during the Bolshevik crackdown on the party, Javakhishvili was arrested and sentenced to death, but was exonerated through the mediation of the Georgian Union of Writers and released after six months of imprisonment. Javakhishvili’s reconciliation with the Soviet regime was only superficial and his relations with the new authorities remained uneasy.
Best works
Javakhishvili skillfully incorporated folk phraseology into the normalized narrative language. In his best writings, the novelist combines the devastating realism and characteristic humorous touches with underlying pessimism and anarchy to contrast country and city life, tsarist and Soviet times. His plots, sometimes overtly rebellious, violent, and sexually passionate, intersect traditional taboos and belie any reconciliation with the new world and have a common ground: the rise of the Georgian kulak
Kulak
Kulaks were a category of relatively affluent peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union...
, the life of the Georgian aristocratic intellectual and dilettante, and the impact on them both of the revolutionary upheaval of 1917
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
and the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
takeover of 1921.
In his most typical and influential novella, Jaqo's Dispossessed
Jaqo's Dispossessed
Jaqo's Dispossessed is a novel by Georgian novelist Mikheil Javakhishvili. It was first published in magazine "Mnatobi" . in author's life, it was published twice as a book, in 1925 and 1926. It took author 20 years to write this novel....
(ჯაყოს ხიზნები; Jakos Khiznebi), first published in 1924, Javakhishvili contrasts the swashbuckling, grasping, and swindler Jaqo with his victim, Prince Teimuraz Khevistavi, the amiable intellectual and ineffectual philanthropist whom his trustee, Jaqo, robs of his fortune, his beautiful and beloved wife Margo, and even of his sanity. In the person of Teimuraz, we follow the decline and fall of the old nobility, the disillusionment in the revolution and demoralization following the fall of a short-lived independent Georgia
Democratic Republic of Georgia
The Democratic Republic of Georgia , 1918–1921, was the first modern establishment of a Republic of Georgia.The DRG was created after the collapse of the Russian Empire that began with the Russian Revolution of 1917...
. Another major work, the satirical Kvachi Kvachantiradze (კვაჭი კვაჭანტირაძე; 1924), was dramatized in 1927 for Sandro Akhmeteli
Sandro Akhmeteli
Sandro Akhmeteli was a Georgian theater director whose innovative conceptions and skill at mass scenes profoundly influenced the evolution of Soviet and post-Soviet Georgian theater tradition...
’s Rustaveli Theater, but the project was aborted when the leading pro-Bolshevik critics denounced it as pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
(the play has since been lost). In his 1926 novel The White Collar (თეთრი საყელო), Javakhishvili describes the fate of the freedom-loving and stoical Georgian mountaineers – Khevsurs – in the new Soviet reality. 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...
an Elizbar, irritated to despise by his highly sexed, but stupid cosmopolitan wife, Tsutskia, withdraws into the Khevsuretian highlands and while prospecting for copper fells in love and marries a strongly traditional but loving and vivacious Khevsur clanswoman Khatuna. Although welcomed and befriended by the local mountainous community, Elizbar, longing to return to the city’s life (symbolized in the story by a white collar), brings Khatuna to Tbilisi and abandons his highlander friends and in-laws in the face of a forthcoming disaster preceded by the Khevsur armed resistance to the Soviets.
The crowning merit of Javakhishvili’s work – the novel Arsena Marabdeli (არსენა მარაბდელი) – was composed between 1933 and 1936. The writer spent years on research and rewriting a Russian as well as a Georgian version of the novel. The plot is based on the life of a real historical figure, the brigand Arsena
Arsena Odzelashvili
Arsena Odzelashvili commonly known as Arsena of Marabda was a Georgian outlaw said to have robbed the rich to help the poor...
, who is also a favorite hero of Georgian folklore. Javakhishvili focuses on the tragic necessity that makes the chivalrous peasant Arsena to degenerate into the typical 19th-century bandit. Although the story of an outlaw fighting against the gentry was considered "ideologically correct", the "left" critics were suspicious of Javakhishvili’s recognizable parallels between Imperial Russia and the Soviet state. Javakhishvili put many of his thoughts into Arsena’s mouth. One example is his famous phrase: "Russia is galloping after Europe and the bleeding body it is dragging after it on a rope is Georgia". The work won great popularity from the common reader and bitter attacks from the Communist critics and proletarian writers who accused him of corruption, misrepresentation, slander, and subversion; even the fact that his nephew worked as a tram conductor in Greece was used against him.
Politic views and Last years
Because of his patriotic views JavakhishviliJavakhishvili
Javakhishvili is a Georgian noble family, a branch of the Toreli , known from the 10th century.The surname Javakhishvili, literally "son of Javakh", derives from the 14th-century nobleman Javakh , a participant of Georgia’s resistance to Timur’s attacks...
was arrested and exiled several times even during Imperial Russia. After crash of The First Georgian Democratic Republic and annexing of the country by Russian Bolshevik Regime the writer always was under special surrveillance because of his views and former membership of National-Democratic Party. At 1924 had been suspected in participation into patriotic rebellion he was impreasoned and after series of interrogations and tortures proscribed to death. He survived only because of "kind mood" of Sergo Orjonikidze who was personally asked by Javakhishvili's close friends cryticist Pavle Ingorokva
Pavle Ingorokva
Pavle Ingorokva was a Georgian historian, philologist, and public benefactor.He graduated from the University of St. Petersburg . In 1917 he was one of the founders of the Union of Georgian Writers...
and famous physician Nikoloz Kipshidze.
Ahthough relations between writer and gouverning regime were always tense.In 1930, Javakhishvili clashed with Malakia Toroshelidze, president of the Union of Writers and People's Commissar for Education, suspected to be Trotskist, after the latter’s ban on the classics of Georgian literature. Upon Lavrenty Beria’s coming to power, the ban was revoked, and Javakhishvili for a short time gained favor. His Arsena Marabdeli was republished, and both dramatized and filmed. However, he was not able to escape bitter criticism from the Bolsheviks even after he published, in 1936, the moderate A Woman’s Burden (ქალის ტვირთი), an attempt at a Socialist realist novel. That was a story of a revolutionary but bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
woman, Ketevan, whose lover, a Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
underground worker Zurab, persuades her to merry a Tsarist gendarme
Gendarmerie
A gendarmerie or gendarmery is a military force charged with police duties among civilian populations. Members of such a force are typically called "gendarmes". The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary describes a gendarme as "a soldier who is employed on police duties" and a "gendarmery, -erie" as...
officer, Avsharov, whom she is to kill. The Soviet ideologist Vladimir Ermilov condemned the novel, claiming that it illustrated Bolsheviks as pure terrorists and made gendarmes too chivalrous. Soon, Beria resented Javakhishvili’s refusal to seek his advice over the representation of Bolshevik activities in pre-revolutionary Georgia. Furthermore, Javakhishvili was suspected of warning the writer Grigol Robakidze
Grigol Robakidze
Grigol Robakidze was a Georgian writer, publicist, and public figure primarily known for his exotic prose and anti-Soviet émigré activities....
of impeding arrest and assisting him in defecting to Germany back in 1930. The matters went to a head when, in 1936, he was accused of praising the French author André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
whose Retour de l’URSS and the book’s praise of Georgian writers reclassified both Gide and Javakhishvili into enemies. On July 22, 1937, when the poet Paolo Iashvili
Paolo Iashvili
Paolo Iashvili was a Georgian poet and one of the leaders of Georgian symbolist movement. Under the Soviet Union, his obligatory conformism and the loss of his friends at the height of Stalin’s Great Purge heavily affected Iashvili who committed suicide at the Writers’ Union of Georgia.Born near...
shot himself in the Union of Writers building, and the Union’s session went on to pass a resolution denouncing the poet’s move as an anti-Soviet provocation, Javakhishvili was the sole person present to praise the poet’s courage. Four days later, on July 26, the presidium of the Union voted: "Mikheil Javakhishvili, as an enemy of the people, a spy and diversant, is to be expelled from the Union of Writers and physically annihilated." His friends and colleagues, including those already in prison, were forced to incriminate Javakhishvili as a counter-revolutionary terrorist. Only the critic Geronti Kikodze left the Union’s session in protest rather than give his consent to the resolution. The novelist was arrested on August 14 1937 and tortured in the presence of Beria until he signed a "confession". He was shot on September 30, 1937. His property was confiscated, and his archives destroyed, his brother shot, and his widow sent into exile. Javakhisvhili remained censored until the late 1950s when he was rehabilitated
Rehabilitation (Soviet)
Rehabilitation in the context of the former Soviet Union, and the Post-Soviet states, was the restoration of a person who was criminally prosecuted without due basis, to the state of acquittal...
and republished.
Some episodes from his biography like those from Dimitri Shevardnadze
Dimitri Shevardnadze
Dimitri Shevardnadze was a Georgian painter, art collector and intellectual purged during the Stalinist repressions....
were further used 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...
in his film Repentance
Repentance
Repentance is a change of thought to correct a wrong and gain forgiveness from a person who is wronged. In religious contexts it usually refers to confession to God, ceasing sin against God, and resolving to live according to religious law...
(მონანიება).