Vazha-Pshavela (pseudonym of Luka Razikashvili) is modern Georgia’s greatest genius. His finest works are tragic narrative poems (Stumar-maspindzeli [1893; “Host and Guest”], Gvelis mchameli [1901; “The Snake-Eater”]) that combine Caucasian folk myth with human tragedy. Young Georgian poets and prose writers were subsequently inspired by European Decadence and Russian Symbolism as well as by the highlanders’ folklore that imbues all Vazha-Pshavela’s language, imagery, and outlook. His greatest pupils were the dramatist and novelist Grigol Robakidze and the poet Galaktion Tabidze. Robakidze developed the themes of Vazha-Pshavela’s “The Snake-Eater” in The Snake Skin, a tale of a poet’s search for his real identity. Robakidze also led a group known as the Tsisperqnatslebi (“Blue Horns”); its best poet was Titsian Tabidze, whose work was indebted to Russian poetry. From 1918 to 1921 Georgia was an independent state; despite war and destitution, the period witnessed an explosion of poetry, prose, and “happenings”—anarchistic artistic and political outbursts stimulated by the mixture in Tbilisi of the refugee Russian avant-garde and Georgian poets heady with their liberation.

Invasion by the Soviet Red Army in February 1921 sobered Georgian writers. In the 1920s and ’30s the prose writer Mikheil Javakhishvili—who, having been sentenced to death by Soviet authorities but later released, went on to become a great writer—produced inventive and captivating prose that often tells the story of a sympathetic doomed rogue, as in the novels Kvachi Kvachantiradze da misi tavgadasavali (1924; “Kvachi Kvachantiradze and His Adventures”) and Arsena Marabdeli (1933–36; “Arsena of Marabda”). The most enigmatic Georgian prose writer of the 20th century was Konstantine Gamsakhurdia; like Robakidze, he was influenced by German culture (especially the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche), and in his work he combined the ethos of the Austro-German poet Rainer Maria Rilke with Caucasian folk myth. Befriended by Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria—then Stalin’s satrap in the Caucasus, later the director of the Soviet secret police—Gamsakhurdia was free to write grandiose novels on contemporary, mythological, and historical themes.

Georgian writers were decimated by the Bolsheviks in the 1920s; the Great Purge of the 1930s destroyed the survivors. Even those few who survived the holocaust overseen by Beria lost friends, family, nerve, and inspiration. The post-Stalinist thaw was slower in Georgia than in Russia. Fine lyrical poets achieved great popularity in the 1960s: Ana Kalandadze (who had been a harbinger of literary renewal in the 1940s, when her earliest work was published), Murman Lebanidze, and Mukhran Machavariani. The relative liberalism experienced under Eduard Shevardnadze after his appointment in 1972 as first secretary of the Communist Party in Georgia empowered two important novelists. Chabua Amirejibi continued in the spirit of Javakhishvili’s novels centred on rogues with the magnificent Data Tutashkhia (1972) and the autobiographical Gora Mborgali (1995), while Otar Chiladze, with Gzaze erti katsi midioda (1972–73; “A Man Went Down the Road”) and Qovelman chemman mpovnelman (1976; “Everyone That Findeth Me”), began a series of lengthy atmospheric works that fuse Sumerian and Hellenic myth with the predicaments of a Georgian intellectual.

Independence and beyond

The civil war, economic collapse, and emigration that followed independence in the 1990s crippled Georgian publishing and theatre and created an environment where literature could not flourish. But as the country stabilized in the mid-1990s under Shevardnadze, who had by then become its head of state, destitute writers were able to begin again. Chiladze’s novel Avelum (1995), for example, was a notable account of a Georgian intellectual watching his personal “empire of love” crumble together with the Soviet empire. Georgia’s Rose Revolution of 2003 and the emergence of a relatively well-off middle class enabled publishers and theatres to operate. While the older generation of writers remained active—Chiladze published the novel Godori (“The Basket”) in 2003, and Amirejibi’s Giorgi brtsqinvale (“George the Brilliant”), a historical novel preaching national pride, appeared in 2005—a new generation of prose writers appeared, notably the prolific Aka Morchiladze (pseudonym of Giorgi Akhvlediani). His best work includes Mogzauroba Karabaghshi (1992; “Journey to Karabakh”) and a series of semi-fantastic novels about an archipelago called Madatov that is populated by Georgians. Morchiladze’s work shows Georgian literature’s reorientation in the early 21st century from Russian toward English and American influences. The work (some of it written in English) of playwright Lasha Bughadze also attracted international acclaim. A new generation of poets—including Maia Sarishvili, Rati Amaghlobeli, and Kote Qubaneishvili (Kote Kubaneishvili)—showed an inventiveness and irreverence derived from their working as public performers and participating in international festivals.