Giorgi Leonidze

Who was Giorgi Leonidze?

Giorgi Leonidze was a Georgian poet, prose writer, and literary scholar.

Leonidze was born in the village of Patardzeuli in the eastern Georgian province of Kakheti. He graduated from the Tbilisi Theological Seminary in 1918 and continued his studies at the Tbilisi State University. His first poems appeared in Georgian press in 1911, and then, briefly collaborated with the Symbolist group Blue Horns. His real talent emerged in 1925 with a series of nature lyrics, responding with Romantic animation to the landscapes of Leonidze’s native Kakheti. Throughout the Soviet period, he tried to pursue the "correct" political line; his poetry became more historical and patriotic, the eventful history of Georgia providing him with the colorful medieval imagery which Leonidze translated into impulsive rhythms and metaphors. He quickly established himself as one of the most popular poets of Georgia, but, when the purges of the 1930s took lives of many of his fellow writers and his own brother, microbiologist Leon Leonidze, he was forced to direct his talents into panegyrics to Joseph Stalin.