Giorgi Eristavi

Who was Giorgi Eristavi?

Giorgi Eristavi was a Georgian playwright, poet, journalist, and the founder of modern Georgian theatre.

Prince Giorgi Eristavi was born in the village of Odzisi of a prominent noble family, who had once served as the eristavi of Ksani for the kings of Georgia. He received his early education in Tiflis and Moscow. On return to Georgia, he became involved with the underground society which plotted a coup against the Imperial Russian rule. He had his first poem published in 1832. This was An Ossetic Tale, a story of ill-fated lovers set against the background of the struggle of Georgian and Ossetian mountaineers against the Persian armies of Shah Abbas I in the 17th century.

After the collapse of the anti-Russian plot in 1832, Eristavi spent a year in prison and four years as an exiled infantryman in Wilno, where he mastered Polish and came under the influence of Adam Mickiewicz's Romanticism. In 1842, he was able to permanently return to Georgia where he married and joined the Russian civil service soon to become assistant to the Viceroy of the Caucasus Mikhail Vorontsov.