Titsian Tabidze
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...
poet and one of the leaders of Georgian 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...
movement. He fell victim to 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...
, being arrested and executed on trumped-up charges of treason. Tabidze was a close friend of the well-known Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n writer Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...
who translated his poetry into Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
. He was commonly renowned simply as Titsian.
Poet's biography
Tabidze was born to a Georgian Orthodox priest in the province of ImeretiImereti
Imereti is a province in Georgia situated along the middle and upper reaches of the Rioni river. It consists of the following Georgian administrative-territorial units:#Kutaisi #Baghdati region#Vani region#Zestafoni region...
, western Georgia, then part of Kutais Governorate, Imperial Russia. Educated at the University of Moscow, he returned to Georgia to become one of the cofounders and main idealogues of the 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...
, a coterie of young Georgian symbolists founded in 1916. Later, Tabidze's combined European and Oriental trends into much eclectic
Eclecticism
Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases.It can sometimes seem inelegant or...
poetry with a significant lean towards Futurism
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
and Dadaism, also paying tribute to the classics of Georgian literature, which had so notoriously been attacked by the early Blue Horns. After the establishment of Soviet rule in Georgia in 1921, he chose a conciliatory line with 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....
regime, but did not abandon his Futuristic and decadent
Decadent movement
The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...
style despite his half-hearted attempts at praising the "builders of socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
".
Tabidze was a close friend of the conspicuous Russian writer Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...
and a correspondent in his Letters to Georgian Friends. Pasternak knew Titsian as "a reserved and complicated soul, wholly attracted to the good and capable of clairvoyance and self-sacrifice." and translated his poetry into Russian.
Repression
Early in 1936, the Soviet press published several articles critical of formalism in the arts. Titsian Tabidze and several of his colleagues such as Konstantine GamsakhurdiaKonstantine 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...
, Simon Chikovani
Simon Chikovani
Simon Chikovani was a Georgian poet who set out to be the leader of Georgian Futurist movement and ended up as a Soviet establishment figure.Born near the town Martvili, he was educated at the Kutaisi Realschule and Tbilisi State University from which he graduated in 1922. As a teenager, he was...
, and Demna Shengelaia came under fire for their "failure to free themselves from the old traditions and forge closer contact with the people." Some writers, horrified by the emerging political purges in the Soviet Union, accepted the criticism in public recantations, but Tabidze was among those who refused to do so and even counterattacked. Foreseeing the consequences of Tabidze's defiance, Pasternak, in a sincere private letter, urged his friend to disregard the attacks on formalism: "Rely only on yourself. Dig more deeply with your drill without fear or favor, but inside yourself, inside yourself. If you do not find the people, the earth and the heaven there, then give up your search, for then there is nowhere else to search."
On October 10, 1937, Tabidze was expelled from the Union of Georgian Writers and arrested the same day. He was charged for treason and tortured in a prison, naming, with a bitter humor, only the 18th-century Georgian poet 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....
as his accomplice in anti-Soviet activities. Within two months, he was executed, although no announcement of this was leaked. Tabidze’s disappearance was a shock: his life-long friend and fellow symbolist 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...
, having earlier been forced to denounce several of his associates as the enemies of the people
Enemy of the people
The term enemy of the people is a fluid designation of political or class opponents of the group using the term. The term implies that the "enemies" in question are acting against society as a whole. It is similar to the notion of "enemy of the state". The term originated in Roman times as ,...
, shot himself with a hunting gun in the building of the Writers’ Union.
Tabidze’s family and friends entertained hopes that Titsian was still alive. In 1940, Pasternak, whose grief at the destruction of his Georgian friends was something he carried through life, helped Tabidze’s wife Nina to draft a petition on Titsian’s behalf to Lavrenty Beria. It was not until the mid-1950s, after the death of Stalin, that the truth about the poet’s fate emerged.