Vazha-Pshavela


Vazha-Pshavela, simply referred to as Vazha , is the pen name of the Georgian poet and writer Luka Razikashvili.
"Vazha-Pshavela" literally means "a son of Pshavians" in Georgian.

Life

Vazha-Pshavela was born into a family of clergymen in the little village of Chargali, situated in the mountainous Pshavi province of Eastern Georgia. He graduated from the Pedagogical Seminary in Gori 1882, where he associated closely with Georgian populists. He then entered the faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University in 1883, as a non-credit student, but returned to Georgia in 1884 due to financial constraints. Here he found employment as a teacher of the Georgian language. He also attained prominence as a famous representative of the National-Liberation movement of Georgia.
Vazha-Pshavela embarked on his literary career in the mid-1880s. In his works, he portrayed the everyday life and psychology of his contemporary Pshavs. Vazha-Pshavela is the author of many world-class literary works – 36 epics, about 400 poems, plays, and stories, as well as literary criticism, journalism and scholarly articles of ethnographic interest. Even in his fiction he evokes the life of the Georgian highlander with a near-ethnographic precision and depicts an entire world of mythological concepts. In his poetry, the poet addresses the heroic past of his people and extols the struggle against enemies both external and internal., A Letter of a Pshav Soldier to His Mother.
In the best of his epic compositions, Vazha-Pshavela deals powerfully with the problems raised by the interaction of the individual with society, of humankind with the natural world and of human love with love of country. The conflict between an individual and a temi is depicted in the epics Aluda Ketelauri and Guest and Host. The principal characters in both works come to question and ultimately to disregard outdated laws upheld by their respective communities,in their personal journey toward a greater humanity that transcends the merely parochial.
The poet's overarching theme is that of a strong-willed people, its dignity, and its zeal for freedom. The same themes are touched upon in the play The Rejected One. Vazha-Pshavela idealizes the Pshavs' time-honoured rituals, their purity, and their 'non-degeneracy' comparing and contrasting these with the values of what he considers 'false civilization'. He argues that 'Every true patriot is cosmopolitan and every genuine cosmopolitan is a patriot'.
The wise man Mindia in the epic Snake-Eater dies because he cannot reconcile his ideals with the needs of his family and those of society. The catalytic plot device of Mindia's consumption of serpent's flesh in an attempt at suicide – which results instead in his obtaining of occult knowledge, constitutes a literary employment of the central, folk tale motif present in The White Snake which epitomizes tale type 673 in the Aarne-Thompson classification system.
The epic Bakhtrioni tells of the part played by the tribes of the Georgian highlands in the uprising of Kakheti against the Iranian oppressors in 1659.
Vazha-Pshavela is also unrivalled in the field of Georgian poetry in his idiosyncratic and evocative depictions of Nature – for which he felt a deep love. His landscapes are full of motion and internal conflicts. His poetic diction is saturated with all the riches of his native tongue, and yet this is an impeccably exact literary language. Thanks to excellent translations into Russian,into English,into French, and into German, the poet's work has found the wider audience that it undoubtedly deserves.
Furthermore, Vazha-Pshavela's compositions have also become available to representatives of other nationalities of the ex-USSR. To date, his poems and narrative compositions have been published in more than 20 languages
Vazha-Pshavela died in Tiflis on 10 July 1915 and was buried there, in the ancient capital city of his native land, being accorded the signal honour of a tomb in the prestigious Pantheon of the Mtatsminda Mountain, in recognition both of his literary achievements and his role as a representative of the National Liberation movement of Georgia.
The mountaineer poet Vazha-Pshavela is indeed, as Donald Rayfield writes, "qualitatively of a greater magnitude than any other Georgian writer".
The five epic poems of Vazha-Pshavela, 'Bakhtrioni', 'Host and Guest', 'The Avenger of the Blood' and 'Snake Eater' ) are composed on the principle of the Golden ratio, and thus invite comparison with the works of Ancient and Renaissance authors similarly inspired.
In 1961, a museum and memorial was built in Chargali to honor Vazha-Pshavela, its most famous son.

Works

Epic poems