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Giorgi Leonidze, the Georgian poet, writer and philologist, was born in
the Kakhetian village Patardzeuli (near Sagarejo, ca. 20 km east of
Tbilisi) the 27th of December 1897. His parents were Nicolaus Leonidze,
a local priest and teacher, and Sofio Gulisashvili. Though his poems were
systematically published already from 1911, only later, after his article
about Oscar Wilde (1915), his literary views, tending to modernism,
could be revealed. He issued the almanach “Saphironi” (“sapphire”) by
the money obtained from the selling his father’s house in Tbilisi.
Though Giorgi Leonidze paid a big tribute to the modernism in his early
years, he is a very distinctive and deeply national poet who was
connected more than his contemporaries with the ancient Georgian
literary roots, existing from the 5th century A.D. In the opinion of John
Steinbeck, Leonidze was a most original poet, more than anyone else
closely bound up with the mysteries of the language in which he wrote
[Boris Pasternak, in: Nobel Prize Library, By William Faulkner, John
Steinbeck, Eugene O'Neill. 1971, p. 280]. English writers coming to
Georgia considered him as ever-genial with a gargantuan, truly leonine
figure with an unbounded capacities for good food, drink and talk. Gogla
has taken an active role in every Georgian literary movement for the last
half-century [The Anglo-Soviet Journal By Society for Cultural Relation
witth the USSR (Great Britain), vol. 23-25, 1962-1965, pp. 29, 36] John
Lehmann, who translated Leonidze’s The Guinea Fowl, [see: John
Lehmann. Collected Poems 1930-1963. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode,
1963, p. 87, or The Age of the Dragon. Poems, 1930-1951. New York:
Harcourt, Brace, 1952, p. 53, or Forty Poems. London: Hogarth Press,
1942, p. 41], characterizes him as, huge and courteous who gave him
impression of a powerful intellect [John Lehmann. Promotheus and the
Boolsheviks, New York: A.A. Knopf, 1938, p. 178].
His poems bear the tint of an extraordinary merging of the old chivalrous
traditions with the asthetism. Being a very good expert of the Georgian
history, he dedicated many poems to the past of his homeland. One of
them, a long poem “Samgori”, where he assigned to Georgia the role of a
defender of civilized societies from the invasion of nomadic northern
tribes. At the same time he expressed the idea of its common fate with the
western world. The reason why he was severely criticized by the
governmental newspaper “Komunisti”in the article “Splinters of
symbolism”.
His closest friends and brothers in poetry, Titsian Tabidze and Paolo
Iashvili, as well as his brother Professor Leon Leonidze (microbiologist),
became victims of Communist repressions of 1937-1938. The fact that G.
Leonidze already worked on the long poem dedicated to Stalin, “Stalin,
vol. I: The childehood and adolescence” (1936), had saved his life from
the same destiny. This long poem describes in reality the nature, history
and habits of Georgia and the Georgians with a great mastery. This was
the main reason why the poet could not fulfil his task to write the second
part of the same long poem dedicated to the revolutionary past of the
Soviet leader, though Georgia’s Communist government put a big
pressure on him. It is interesting how G. Leonidze became the member of
the Communist party: he, together with the well-known Georgian writer,
prince Shalva Dadiani, were summoned before the Central bureau of
Communist party in the end of 1944 and they were told that, as to the
decision of party, they had to become its members.
The letter written by the Russian poet Boris Pasternak to Nino Tabidze,
the wife of Titsian, is very informative to characterize Giorgi Leonidze’s
personality: “I bow my head before the poet Leonidze and his poetry with
the same low bow as before his wife, his fate and his house. I can even
force myself to be more strict: I bow my head before a spark of
childishnessity, skipping through his hands and manuscripts and going
down to his children. And I am speaking not at all about that pseudo-
Rafaelistic imagination of childehood which does not exist in the world,
exept on the top of candy boxes. But I speak about the simplicity,
nonsensnence and defencelessnence of a childe, about its conductivity.
About the childe’s ability to create at the same time a whole world by his
toys and the danger to be run over by crossing a street. About a sight of a
childe among a big, far (by that time) going life, which it manages in a
childlike simple, nonsensical, efficient and defenceless way.” [From a
book: Giorgi Leonidze. The Selected Poetry. Ed.: G.Margvelashvili.
Tbilisi. Publishing House Merani, 1986 (in Russian), pp. 15-16].
Leonidze served as the real prototype of the Pasternak’s Artist. This Cycle
– “The Artist” – is connected with Pasternak’s visit to the Caucasus
[Krystyna Pomorska. Jacobsonian Poetics and Slavic Narrative: From
Pushkin to Solshenitsyn. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992, p.
133].
SELF-PORTRAIT
1921
1923
THE GUINEA-FOWL
Come,
It is I calling you after a thousand years,
Reduced to ashes by your body's lightning.
Roses are opening again – it is our sign –
Our time has come for another meeting.
1928
OLE
1.
2.
3.
5.
6.
Ole,
Ole,
By Liakhvi
I watched you that moment:
Inside, something was burning you,
Poisoned by loneliness
From inside, stratum by stratum,
Split layer by layer,
Bark opened by pecking ravens,
A tree – yet so tiny!
*
High above the sky was sparkling,
Below – the Caucasus.
You resemble a hanged eagle,
Your mangled wings dangling...
7.
Now come to me
Before thunder
Strikes you,
Leaves you smoking
Blackened, crackled,
Ravaged, old and
Solitary
Ole!
1931
I SING TO MY COUNTRY
TO NINA CHAVCHAVADZE
GEORGIAN LANGUAGE
O Georgian language
Light and soft as silk!
I drank you in
Like children drink their milk.
Now I am both
Your servant and your lord;
At times I’m tortured
By a wayward word,
As others,
With cold dew upon my brow,
I haul them
On my back
I don’t know how.
O Georgian language,
You are all my life,
A vineyard
Which I tend in toil and strife.
Inspiring
Both the youngster and the sage,
You, like our people,
Know no end nor age.
How glad am I
To serve you, staunch and true,
To speak and write
In you, of you, for you!
1956
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