Sandro Shanshiashvili ( ka, სანდრო შანშიაშვილი, 1888-1979) was a

Georgian Georgian may refer to: Common meanings * Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country) ** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group **Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians **Georgian scripts, three script ...

poet and playwright. Shanshiashvili was born in the small village Jugaani near

Sighnaghi Signagi or Sighnaghi ( ka, სიღნაღი) is a town in Georgia's easternmost region of Kakheti and the administrative center of the Signagi Municipality. Although it is one of Georgia's smallest towns, Signagi serves as a popular tourist ...

(then part of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the List of Russian monarchs, Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended th ...

). In the 1900s, he was noted for his dramas in verse and prose. At the same time, he engaged in revolutionary movement against the Tsarist rule and was put in prison in 1908. He then began writing long poems based on

Greek legends A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities ...

Colchis In Greco-Roman geography, Colchis (; ) was an exonym for the Georgian polity of Egrisi ( ka, ეგრისი) located on the coast of the Black Sea, centered in present-day western Georgia. Its population, the Colchians are generally though ...

and composed his conventionally titled book of lyrics, ''The Garden of Sadness'' (სევდის ბაღი, 1909) influenced by the 18th-century Georgian poet

Besiki Besarion Zakarias dze Gabashvili ( ka, ბესარიონ ზაქარიას ძე გაბაშვილი), commonly known by his pen name Besiki ( ka, ბესიკი) (1750 – 25 January 1791), was a Georgian poet, politici ...

and his contemporary

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with France ...

Symbolist

Paul Verlaine Paul-Marie Verlaine (; ; 30 March 1844 – 8 January 1896) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement and the Decadent movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the ''fin de siècle'' in international and F ...

. Around 1910, he was praised by critics as the most promising and the most

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...

anized Georgian poet. Study at

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

Zurich Zurich (; ) is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 443,037 inhabitants, the urban area 1.315 mill ...

, and

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

(1911-1914) brought more pronounced influence of Symbolist narrative poetry. During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, he joined the Georgian National Democratic Party advocating the independence from Russia and edited the newspaper '' Sakartvelo'' and the magazine ''Merani''. In 1925, Shanshiashvili gathered twenty years of his lyrics into ''The High Road I Have Travelled'' (გავლილი გზა), followed by a series of heroic poems. At last, in 1930, he achieved fame throughout the Soviet Union with ''Anzor'', an adapted translation into a

Caucasian Caucasian may refer to: Anthropology *Anything from the Caucasus region ** ** ** ''Caucasian Exarchate'' (1917–1920), an ecclesiastical exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Caucasus region * * * Languages * Northwest Caucasian l ...

setting of

Vsevolod Ivanov Vsevolod Vyacheslavovich Ivanov (russian: Все́волод Вячесла́вович Ива́нов, ; , Lebyazhye, Semipalatinsk Oblast – 15 August 1963, Moscow) was a Soviet and Russian writer, dramatist, journalist and war correspondent. ...

’s civil-war play ''

Armoured Train 14-69 ''Armoured Train 14–69'' (russian: Бронепоезд 14–69, translit=Bronepoezd 14–69) is a 1927 Soviet play by Vsevolod Ivanov. Based on his 1922 novel of the same name, it was the first play that he wrote and remains his most important. ...

''.

Sandro Akhmeteli Sandro Akhmeteli ( ka, სანდრო ახმეტელი; real name: Aleksandre Akhmetelashvili, ალექსანდრე ახმეტელაშვილი) (April 13, 1886 – June 27, 1937) was a Georgian theater director w ...

, director of the

Rustaveli Theatre Rustaveli National Theatre ( ka, შოთა რუსთაველის სახელობის აკადემიური თეატრი ) is the largest and one of the oldest theaters of Georgia, located in its capital Tbilisi on ...

, transformed the play into a

Wagnerian Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...

spectacle. The "left" Soviet critics immediately attacked ''Anzor'' for trivializing the revolution. In the 1930s, endangered by the Stalinist

purges In history, religion and political science, a purge is a position removal or execution of people who are considered undesirable by those in power from a government, another organization, their team leaders, or society as a whole. A group unde ...

due to his ties with the purged Georgian intellectuals, he made half-hearted attempts to praise

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...

and

Lavrentiy Beria Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; rus, Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, Lavréntiy Pávlovich Bériya, p=ˈbʲerʲiə; ka, ლავრენტი ბერია, tr, ; – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Bolshevik ...

. His later dramas draw factually on the misfortunes of the 18th-century Georgia and the civil war catastrophes. He was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1949. Sandro_Shanshiashvili

References

Rayfield, Donald Patrick Donald Rayfield OBE (born 12 February 1942, Oxford) is an English academic and Emeritus Professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary University of London. He is an author of books about Russian and Georgian literature, and about ...

(2000), '' The Literature of Georgia: A History'': 2nd edition, pp. 245–6. Routledge, . {{DEFAULTSORT:Shanshiashvili, Sandro 1888 births 1979 deaths Male poets from Georgia (country) Dramatists and playwrights from Georgia (country) 20th-century poets from Georgia (country) 20th-century dramatists and playwrights from Georgia (country) 20th-century male writers