My eyes have never seen the moon so lovely as tonight;
In silence wrapt it is the breathless music of the night.
Moonbeams embroider shadows with fine thread of silver light;
O, eyes have never seen the sky so lovely as tonight!

The moon adorned in beams of pearls seems like a queen divine;
The stars like fire-flies tangled in a web about her shine.
The Mtkvari flows a silver stream of lambent beauty bright;
O, eyes have never seen the sky so lovely as tonight!

Here in immortal calm and peace the great and noble sleep
Beneath the soft and dewy turf in many a mouldering heap.
Here Baratashvili came with wild desires to madness wrought,
Oppressed by raging fires of passion, and perplexing thought.

O, could I like the swan pour forth my sould in melody
That melts the mortal heart and breathes of immortality !
Let my free song fly far beyond this world to regions high
Where on the wings of poesy it will glorify the sky.

If death approaching makes the fragrance of the roses sweeter,
Attunes the soul to melodies that make all sadness dearer,
And if that swan's song thus becomes a denizen of heaven,
If in that song she feels that death will be but ecstasy, then, -
Let me like her sing one last song, and in death find delight.
So breathless still and lovely I have never seen the night!

O, mighty dead, let me die here beside you as I sing.
I am a poet, and to eternity my song I fling,
And let it be the fire that warms and lights the spirit's flight.
O, eyes have never seen the sky so lovely as tonight!

The day has dawned: A sun of fire glides up...
Let the banners wave on high !
The soul's athirst for Liberty and Right
As wounded deer that seek a streamlet bright.
Let the banners wave on high !

Glory to those with souls devoid of fear,
Who for the people's cause did bravely die...
Their names shine bright like torches in the night...
Let the banners wave on high !

Glory to him who fills our hearts with hope,
Braves foes with matchless worth and fearless eye !
The day has dawned! United let us fight!
Let Freedom's banner over us wave on high !







  David Kldiashvili (August 29, 1862 – April 24, 1931) was a Georgian prose-writer whose novels and plays are concentrated on the degeneration of the country’s gentry and the miseries of the peasantry, boldly exposing the antagonisms of Georgian society.

Born to an impoverished petite noble family in the province of Imereti, Georgia (then part of the Russian Empire), he was educated at the military schools of Kiev and Moscow (1880-1882). Returning to Georgia, he joined the Russian army. While serving in Batumi, he was close to the local intelligentsia and engaged in cultural activities. Deemed to be a non-reliable officer, he was forced to resign as a non-reliable officer during the Russian Revolution of 1905. During World War I, he was remobilized in the army and served on the Ottoman front. Following the 1917 February Revolution, he was demobilized and, sick and tired, returned to his native village.

Kldiashvili’s best works belong to the first half of his life. He is said to have forgotten his Georgian while studying in Ukraine and to have had to relearn it. Nevertheless, he is regarded as an exemplary prose stylist with superb humor and gentler social satire. Since 1880s, his translations and original works were regularly published in Georgian press. The first major novel, Solomon Morbeladze appeared in 1894, followed by Samanishvili's Step-Mother  1897, The Misfortunes of Kamushadze  1900, Rostom Mashvelidze  1910, and Bakula's Pigs 1920. His plays, especially Irine’s Happiness 1897 and The Misfortunes of Darispan 1903 resemble the French comedies of the 1840s only set in an Imeretian village at the turn of the 20th century. They are typically tragicomic impregnated with what the author himself referred to as "tears mixed with a smile".

In the 1920s, Kldiashvili returned to writing and produced his memoirs On the Road of My Life 1925, as well as two new novellas published between 1924 and 1926. In 1930, he was awarded the title of People's Artist of Georgia.
  Irakli Abashidze (10 September 1909 Khoni, Kutais Governorate, Russian Empire - 14 January 1992) was a Georgian poet, literary scholar and politician.

He graduated from Tbilisi State University in 1931 and attended the 1st Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934, when socialist realism was laid down as the cultural orthodoxy. From 1953 to 1967, he chaired the Union of Georgian Writers.

In 1970, he also became a vice-president of the Georgian Academy of Sciences. In 1960 he organized an expedition to the Georgian-built Monastery of the Cross at Jerusalem where his team rediscovered a fresco of Shota Rustaveli, a medieval Georgian poet. He chaired the special academic commission for the Rustaveli studies since 1963 and became the founder and an editor-in-chief of The Georgian Soviet Encyclopedia in 1967.


His poems are viewed as classical works of Georgian literature. His poetry was mostly patriotic based on Georgian cultural and religious values, but normally loyal to Soviet ideology. He welcomed Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and supported the Soviet-era dissident Zviad Gamsakhurdia when he came to power and led Georgia to the declaration of independence in 1991. Abashidze died in Tbilisi in 1992 and was afforded a state funeral. He was 82.

A Word on Shot'ha Rust'hveli

Translated from the Georgian by Lyn Coffin and Nato Alhazishvili


    Monastery in the Hills
    (Monk's Song)

    Each morning I fetch water from a hidden spring
    and quietly watch the changing clouds.
    I do not know if I will see another winter
    but I am still happy, surrounded by mountains and green places
    where so many mortals—so many weak ones—live.
    I do not think about the pines because they're me.
    Each time they think of me,
    I stop wondering why the white walls of my retreat
    do not look like snow on the bamboo fence.
    The paths of fishermen and woodcutters intertwine
    and even after a hundred years I would not want to untangle them
    Nor am I tired by memories of a past I never had
    Nor do I believe my prayers are heard by
    a blue deer, kneeling, whose quiet breathing I can almost touch fully, with my body.
    I wonder where Sesson is now.
    These plum branches await only night and the moon
    to startle my long ago dreams
    and scatter them on these roofs and this place
    numerously inhabited by clouds and forests and squirrels
    and these wild geese
    and the spring hidden to everyone
    and that which wanders on mountain paths
    and cold cruel winds and dry brush
    gathered near the monastery
    on which to cook beans for forty years.
    Every twilight, cranes follow the wind toward my thoughts
    but they do not think of me at all;
    I cannot find the way home because
    I have never wished to find it.
    I lie on the ground like a branch
    My bones are as dry as brushwood.
    If they asked me, I could not tell them the name
    of the woman who was with me once,
    who was with me once and warmed my heart.
    The rain is sleeping.
    Every branch, every treetop, is a warm human soul and
    (now I realize) every breath of the wind
    every snow-covered leaf on the slope of a hill is like this.
    I fetch water from the hidden spring.


    Cranes in Flight

    Each of them: not in the sky or the mirror of an old lake,
    but in the field of nearly imperceptible resistance
    created by the wave of
    one wing to the left or one wing to the right—
    A wave of birds

    Each of them: not advancing with respect to another
    but—in an unending current
    towards fate,
    fate not reduced to
    any of the possible triangles or heavens
    neither to the sight-defying touch of the
    crossable or the transformed into sorrow

    Each of them
    exists, not in a separate being or in separate seconds,
    but in a moving mystery,
    bestowable
    the first touch being the sound
    accompanying
    discovered
    Each of them: not against trees or Earth
    or memory
    but into the law unknown to them:
    marking line and curve

    Each
    in unending movement

    Every second in the fragile
    thick lake of the mirror


    Still Life with Snow
    (To Carmela Uranga)

    on airy balconies, heavy houses,
    speeding cars, all these snows—

    snow burying its head in someone's airy balcony
    or living on the roof of an instantaneous car

    or running stealthily after silly children—
    lost street by street, all these snows

    or at night in small parks of gathered friendships
    trampled by thousands of feet
    all these hearts of all these snows
    fall like silent touches

    unnoticed reprimands

    the whole life of half-melted snow
    sunrise to sunset,
    the whole half-melted life of snow

    an everyday this or that person
    wakes up to a this or that surprise
    that this snow is completely other

    and under the cover of some other unknown snow

    an everyday other unknown person
    sees another dream, and in the dream
    more than one other snow:

    in a corner of the house, unnoticed, it is bitterly burying its head
    or step by step ascending a mountain's far off slopes
    or paling after chasing silly children

    or, as it often happens,
    failing to fall.


    genius loci
    For Hans Magnus Enzensberger

    in a dreary café in Copenhagen, capital of Austria
    with a few not so bad views over river Seine
    I watch its interior full of tired and heat-worn people

    the waiter briskly brings my pizza
    and says with a stern smile:
    "please, enjoy
    it is almost like the ones mothers make
    in the towns of my native Italy:
    Vienna or Madrid or Bern"

    the pizza tastes good indeed I haven't eaten all day
    just some dried figs from a distant supermarket
    at the Saint Mark's Square

    an elderly man in a green top hat sits across from me
    and stares into the newspaper with indignation:
    "why did they disperse this demonstration in London
    they weren't asking for much just the ban on unsafe products
    such insolence is unheard of from Belgian police
    but no wonder the police always win"

    I nod in agreement

    and glance involuntarily
    at his shabby mouse-gray jacket

    "I bought this ten years ago in New Delhi, capital of Kazakhstan
    nothing else remains with me from there except sweet memories
    which this jacket always carries with me
    but here in Sierra Leone people are strange
    I wonder if every Hungarian is like this including you"
    "I am not from here
    I am a traveler from a hot land
    you may have heard of Georgia"
    "of course, of course
    once as a tourist I visited
    your beautiful capital Sofia
    I haven't been there in ages though
    it must have changed by now"
    "what can I say it looks like Beijing to a foreign eye"
    "you mean the capital of Sweden?"
    the man stands up sets the folded newspaper on the table like a heavy iron pot
    nods good-bye and leaves the café with a wobble

    I watch his stooped back
    and for a second feel how he smiles
    for I also think like him
    that I will never again see him in this city
    which is probably not as populous as
    for example Ankara, capital of Japan
    or Tartu, capital of Nigeria

    then I return to my pizza but keep wondering
    how much the marks of my memories will weigh in twenty years
    and will my jacket or a t-shirt or some person
    in some dreary café in some city share this mounting weight
    or will I be able to cut anything out of it
    such as every meal I've savored in Salzburg, Poland
    or the memory of Spanish wine from Tirana, capital of Bulgaria
    or aimless journeys in countryside haulage in
    Munich, the provincial town in Czech lands

    forget it—my thought tells me—this is all madness
    continue living the life which is as beautiful as
    for example the Moldova
    so fleetingly lapping
    in the eternal Portuguese town of Zurich
    like a spy tiptoeing
    towards the everyday nerves of its citizens
    or for example the Donau
    protecting like a wise serpent Stockholm, capital of Peru,
    where at the last century's end
    couples often walked the streets with songs like this
    "this river like so many others
    cannot often see the sun for the clouds
    but the clouds can never ever
    hide the sun from our eyes"

    continue with the life you don't know? To whom do I say
    do not give me so many memories hidden away in so many lives
    do not give me so many solitudes I can never return
    do not give me forgotten dervishes and forgotten madmen
    forgotten books forgotten love-stories
    do not give me these passages from reference-books and encyclopedias:
    "belongs to the ranks of forgotten authors"
    do not make me read what is not written by poets

    of course I know well that my guardian spirits
    join battles of life and death
    even here in the dreary café of Belgrade, capital of Finland,
    so as not to overcome each other, so my love will not burn out
    but still do not make me read what is not written by poets

    my Turkish pizza is almost finished
    but in my memory it is just as pure
    as when I first saw it
    when they brought its heart to me
    as a torch for all tomorrows


    Killer's Song
    (traditional-romantic)

    1.
    I killed him.
    I killed him very well.
    I killed him very elegantly and precisely.

    2.
    I prepared for this minute for such a long time!
    All my life I prepared for this minute.
    My whole life prepared me for this minute.
    The whole universe prepared me for this minute.
    And it—the universe—knew that this would happen.
    And it—the universe—took my side as always
    And if I had not committed this act, there would be no second coming.
    And if it came, it would not matter.
    That's why I had to open the knife unerringly.
    My knife had to do the work and I had to become its servant.

    3.
    I had a knife in my chest pocket,
    A good knife.
    And I opened the knife as easily and quickly
    As if I were the knife itself.

    4.
    I was glad, I was very glad
    Happiness was also glad, glad like me.
    Oh, how glad it was! Oh, how it loved me!
    Oh, how sweetly it caressed me with words as true and unerring as a knife!

    5.
    The one I killed, he wasn't my target;
    The one I slashed, he wasn't my target;
    This minute was my target. This happy age was my target—
    The best time in the universe;
    This unexpected order, this unexpected sweltering;
    This, the feast—whose coming you can't force
    The feast—that always comes on its own!

    6.
    It would be desirable—to shove it into the heart
    To enter the heart directly!
    But the heart is teeny-tiny,
    And locked in its cage of bones,
    Peeping sadly and shivering out of the ribs.
    Obviously, a rib can get stubborn and deny admission!
    And, for a second, I considered the case:
    A rib might screech and take the thrust;
    Then blood would be spilled in vain.
    Would be spilled to disappoint my knife.
    Would be spilled in vain and spell failure for my knife.
    It seems it would be more reliable to enter the abdomen,—
    Somewhere near the navel: right or left, above or below.
    What enters will also turn or slide for a couple of seconds,
    Somewhere toward the liver or the navel—Mecca of the abdomen.
    But for a knife, clothing is what armor is for a sword;
    Especially if the abdomen is dense and hard.
    It would therefore be more reliable to split the neck,—
    Arteries would untie and I could see the gullet,
    Now already severed in two—frolicking on both banks
    Oh, how terribly I was afraid the devil wouldn't play his part!
    Oh, how terribly I was afraid I wouldn't kill him!
    Terrified of not killing!

    7.
    But I still settled on entering the heart and that's what I did.
    And the knife so quietly and so calmly found
    Both the heart and its cautious heartbeat that I instantly realized:
    They had known each other a long, long time,
    They had looked for each other for a long, long time,
    And when they saw each other, they were not confused,—
    They both together stretched their arms out to God,
    They both together pointed their fingers at God,
    And these two roads, these two directions
    Convened: they never went any farther.
    There, undoubtedly, God was standing and did not think
    About me, nor about the one I killed;
    Nor did he think of the knife, become long ago part of my hand.
    And I would be very happy to know
    that he thought:
    "It's good that there is death and someone
    Who can kill the ones deserving death".
    And these two roads appreciated and attained each other,
    And the knife and its humble servant were victorious.
    It entered where it should have entered without any doubt.
    And I observed how my knife killed the person,
    Who once insulted freedom, insulted another,
    Equally defenseless, equally miserable,
    Equally produced by our land and our air
    Soaked with the smell of so many tormentors' glances,
    Fetid with so many hidden glances,
    Produced by this land where so many resemble each other,
    But not my reliable knife,
    Which was as faithful to me as I was to memory.
    To memory which is the bridge, which is survival.

    8.
    I did not smell the smell of blood,
    Nor the smell of the person on his deathbed.
    I just shoved my knife in and was glad
    That I did it reliably- And I observed
    That the blood did not go anywhere,
    The blood lingered close to the body.

    9.
    I was glad and thought: if this knife were the only one
    That could protect human dignity
    That could protect its own dignity and memory—
    And protect the one who could not survive because
    Then the knife did not exist which could protect her,
    Nor the one who understands that now, this minute,
    She is protected with his own pain and memory—
    Then this knife is my God
    And I love this knife
    As I love my life standing by the head of the one I killed with the knife in my hand
    As I love it every time every place I hold this knife in my hand,
    As I love everything that isn't like anyone or anything else
    As I love this life that is very lonesome
    And is—simply—everything that happens on this terribly cruel earth.

Translated from the Georgian by Lyn Coffin and Nato Alhazishvili


    Dato Barbakadze's poetry in some ways might be said to further the exploration of language initiated by Gertrude Stein and extended by some of the "Language" poets of the U.S.A. "In the beginning was language, and all that language should have expressed / In the beginning was a tower, and all who should have destroyed it / In the beginning was hope, and all who should have been skilled in hope..." he writes in "Classical Disharmony," eschewing narrative and lyrical modes in favor of achieving a cumulative and philosophic modality.

    These earliest poems were written in the 1980s during an energy crisis in Tbilisi, composed by candle or kerosene light while the poet lived in a state of perpetual hunger. They carry a sense of bitter winters, the poet says, when he was sleeping in his clothes, his apartment frozen. The poet immersed himself in the writings of Pasternak, Celan, Musil, Greek literature, medieval German mystics, Thackeray, Pascal, Blake, American poets, nineteenth century French novelists, Hegel, Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, French structuralists, psychiatric literature. Surprisingly he does not mention Stein here, and Wittgenstein comes only later. The latter's observation, "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world," would fit comfortably within Barbakadze's earlier poems.

    Mention "philosophical poetry" in the U.S.A., and one can almost hear the infinite number of eyelids slamming shut. And yet all of our best poetry at least implies a philosophical stance toward reality. The opening lines of "Thieves" might have been written by Brecht while pondering the nature of capitalism:

        "They stole what was mine.
        From then on I could only give what wasn't mine.
        I never knew how what wasn't mine became mine.
        And I did not know how to bestow it.
        I had no other way but to steal what belonged to another,
        in order to understand how to steal what belongs to another.
        As soon as I stole what wasn't mine, I realized
        that before I could grant what wasn't mine
        it would be stolen. And I also realized that I had stolen
        what really belonged to whomever I stole it from, though it wasn't his..."

    In a long dramatic monologue, he takes on the persona of a killer who finds his knife to be his god, concluding:

        9.
        ...Then this knife is my God
        And I love this knife
        As I love my life standing by the head of the one I killed with the
        knife in my hand
        As I love it every time everywhere I hold this knife in my hand,
        As I love everything that isn't like anyone or anything else
        As I love this life that is very lonesome
        And is—simply—everything that happens on this terribly cruel
        earth.

    Can or should the poem be read with overtly political implications, as well as the more obvious morality tale it unfolds? Where the world is harsh and cruel, the poet struggles to understand from an imaginative point of view. He needn't name names or call out figures of state to make his insights clear.

    Later poems were written during a more tranquil stay in a Georgian monastery that dates from the Middle Ages, and still others during a stay in Germany. It was there that he turned to Wittgenstein, Descartes and others, along with classical German literature. Beginning with "Monastery in the Hills," the poems adopt a calmer, less tortured tone, while still revealing a deeply questioning philosophical engagement with his immediate environment, as in these opening lines from "Monastery":

        Each morning I fetch water from a hidden spring
        and quietly watch the changing clouds.
        I do not know if I will see another winter
        but I am still happy, surrounded by mountains and green places
        where so many mortals—so many weak ones—live.
        I do not think about the pines because they're me.
        Each time they think of me,
        I stop wondering why the white walls of my retreat
        do not look like snow on the bamboo fence.
        The paths of fishermen and woodcutters intertwine
        and even after a hundred years I would not want to untangle them
        Nor am I tired by memories of a past I never had....

    Here his philosophy seems very close to Zen, lines composed almost as if by an ancient Chinese mountain hermit: "I do not think about the pines because they're me." It's a striking poem for its clarity of image and timelessness.

    The more recent poems are less dependent on syntactical structures or philosophical, feeling increasingly "organic," almost if though the poet is seeking within the poem rather than directing, especially when he speaks of trying

        "to escape from the ruinous evenings,
        unendurable poverty and already manageable madness;
        such is this place, which starts almost nowhere,
        on almost roadless slopes and dry earth,
        which like pebbles jingling in a dark purse
        disturbs your peace, opens your invisible heart
        and penetrates it like questions....

    What can or cannot be remembered is a burning issue in these poems. Even the remembrance of "what is lost" is lost. He says, "Our death was torn from the pages of a fading book..." The temporal world is simultaneously known and unknown, and remembrance is an unreliable tool, even in the hands of a poet-historian.

    Dato Barbakadze speaks with a distinct voice and rare vision in poems that invite contemplation more than dramatic reaction. If they sometimes feel a little cold at first reading, that may be because they carry the shivering realities of a life lived under harsh circumstances seen through eyes that did not turn away from tough questions. But always, poem by poem, there is within the poetry the warmth of real humanity and the brightness, the hungry intelligence of his song, fresh as new-fallen snow.