Nik'oloz Baratashvili (December 4, 1817 - October 21, 1844) 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, one of the first Georgians to marry a modern nationalism

Nationalism

Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

 with Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an Romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 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.

Biography

Nik'oloz Baratashvili, affectionately known as Tato (ტატო), was born in Tiflis (Tbilisi), Georgia's capital, which was then a principal city of Russian

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 Transcaucasia. His father, Prince Meliton Baratashvili

Baratashvili

Baratashvili is a Georgian noble family, appearing at the end of the 15th century as a continuation of the Kachibadze , which were possibly related to the Liparitids-Orbeli....

 (1795–1860), was an impoverished nobleman working for the Russian administration. His mother, Ephemia Orbeliani (1801–1849), was a sister of the Georgian poet and general Grigol Orbeliani

Grigol Orbeliani

Grigol Orbeliani was a Georgian Romanticist poet and soldier in the Imperial Russian service. One of the most colorful figures in the 19th-century Georgian culture, Orbeliani is noted for his patriotic poetry, lamenting Georgia's lost past and independent monarchy...

 and a scion of the penultimate Georgian king Erekle II

Erekle II

Erekle II was a Georgian monarch of the Bagrationi Dynasty, reigning as the king of Kakheti from 1744 to 1762, and of Kartli and Kakheti from 1762 until 1798. In the contemporary Persian sources he is referred to as Erekli Khan, while Russians knew him as Irakli...

.
Baratashvili graduated, in 1835, from a Tiflis gymnasium for nobility, where he was tutored by Solomon Dodashvili

Solomon Dodashvili

Solomon Dodashvili also known as Solomon Ivanovich Dodaev-Mogarsky was a Georgian philosopher, journalist, historian, grammarian, belletrist and enlightener....

, a Georgian patriot and liberal philosopher. The tragic quality of Baratashvili’s poetry was determined by his traumatic personal life as well as the contemporary political situation in his homeland. The failure of the 1832 anti-Russian conspiracy of Georgian nobles, with which Baratashvili was a schoolboy sympathizer, forced many conspirators to see the independent past as irremediably lost and to reconcile themselves with the Russian autocracy, transforming their laments for the lost past and the fall of the native dynasty into Romanticist poetry. Shortage of money prevented Baratashvili from continuing his studies in Russian universities, while an early physical injury – his lameness – did not allow him to enter military service as he wished. Eventually, Baratashvili had to enter the Russian bureaucratic service and serve as an ordinary clerk in the disease-ridden Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...

i town of Ganja

Ganja, Azerbaijan

Ganja is Azerbaijan's second-largest city with a population of around 313,300. It was named Yelizavetpol in the Russian Empire period. The city regained its original name—Ganja—from 1920–1935 during the first part of its incorporation into the Soviet Union. However, its name was changed again and...

. The love of his life, Princess Ekaterine Chavchavadze, rejected him and married David Dadiani

Dadiani

Dadiani was a Georgian family of nobles, dukes and princes, and a ruling dynasty of the western Georgian province of Samegrelo.- The House of Dadiani :...

, Prince of Mingrelia

Principality of Mingrelia

The Principality of Mingrelia was a historical state in Georgia ruled by the Dadiani dynasty. Established as an independent Principality in 1557 by Levan I Dadiani as a hereditary mtavari , it remained independent until it became subject to Imperial Russia in 1803...

.

Baratashvili died of malaria

Malaria

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...

 in Ganja, unmourned and unpublished, at the age of 27. Baratashvili’s influence was long delayed, but as the next generation of Georgian literati rediscovered his lyrics, he was posthumously published, between 1861 and 1876, and idolized. Baratashvili’s reinterment from Ganja to Tbilisi in 1893 turned into a national celebration. Since 1938, his remains have lain in 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...

 in Tbilisi.

Works

A key insight into the weltanschauung of Baratashvili can be found in his historical poem Fate of Georgia (ბედი ქართლისა, bedi k'art'lisa; 1839), 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

Battle of Krtsanisi

The Battle of Krtsanisi was fought between Persian and Georgian armies at the place of Krtsanisi near Tbilisi, Georgia, from September 8 to September 11, 1795, as part of the war intended by the Persian ruler Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar as a reprisal for King Heraclius II of Georgia’s alliance with...

 of Tbilisi by the Persian ruler Mohammad Khan Qajar

Mohammad Khan Qajar

Agha Muḥammad Khān Qājār ‎‎ was the chief of the Qajar tribe, succeeding his father Mohammad Hassan Khan, who was killed on the orders of Adil Shah. He became the Emperor/Shah of Persia in 1794 and established the Qajar dynasty...

, 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

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...

, 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 (შემოღამება მთაწმინდაზე, shemoghameba mt'ats'mindaze; 1833–36) 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 (სული ობოლი, suli oboli; 1839). 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 (სული ბოროტი, suli boroti; 1843), Thought on the Riverside of Mtkvari (ფიქრი მტკვრის პირას, p'ik'ri mtkvris piras; 1837), and Pegasus (მერანი, merani; 1842). 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.

Baratashvili Bridge

Baratashvili Bridge

Baratashvili Bridge is a traffic and pedestrian bridge over the Kura River in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia. It was built in 1966 in place of the previously dismantled Mukhrani Bridge honoring Princess Mukhrani.-Design:...

, an avenue in Tbilisi are named after the poet with his monument standing in the center district of the capital of Georgia.