Davit Guramishvili
Encyclopedia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
poet who authored the finest pieces of pre-Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
Georgian literature. His poetic talents thrived far from his motherland, being forced by personal misfortunes and turmoil in Georgia to spend several years in the Russian
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
military service until his retirement to his small Ukrainian
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
estate at Myrhorod
Myrhorod
Myrhorod or Mirgorod is a city in the Poltava Oblast of central Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Myrhorodskyi Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast, and is located on the river Khorol.-History:The town was founded either in the 12th...
where he made eighty-seven years of his tragic and turbulent life into one cycle of autobiographical poetry, the Davitiani, which he sent to Georgia through a Georgian embassy returning from the Russian empire in 1787.
Biography
Born in the village of Gorisubani into the Georgian princely family of GuramishviliGuramishvili
Guramishvili was a Georgian noble family derived from the House of Zevdginidze and known since the 16th century in the eastern provinces of the country....
(a branch of the greater Amilakhvari
Amilakhvari
The Amilkhvari was a noble house of Georgia which rose to prominence in the fifteenth century and held a large fiefdom in central Georgia until the Imperial Russian annexation of the country in 1801. They were hereditary marshals of Georgia from c. 1433, from which the family takes its name...
house), Davit Guramishvili spent his early years in his patrimonial estate near Saguramo. As an eighteen-year-old he took part in the battle of Zedavela, which resulted in the defeat of King Vakhtang VI of Kartli
Vakhtang VI of Kartli
Vakhtang VI , also known as Vakhtang the Scholar and Vakhtang the Lawgiver, was a Wāli of Kartli, eastern Georgia, as a nominal vassal to the Persian shah from 1716 to 1724. Traditionally, he has been still styled as king of Kartli...
at the hands of Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
army, Dagestan
Dagestan
The Republic of Dagestan is a federal subject of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region. Its capital and the largest city is Makhachkala, located at the center of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea...
i clansmen and renegade Georgians that plunged Georgia into complete anarchy. This period is chronicled in several sections of Guramishvili’s Davitiani (დავითიანი) conventionally called Georgia’s Afflictions (ქართლის ჭირი).
In 1727/8 Guramishvili was snatched from his bride by the marauding tribesmen from Dagestan and spent several months in captivity before he managed to escape and make his way on foot to the north. Through the pathless mountains, he continued his way into the Terek Valley where he encountered a Cossack
Cossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
station. From there, headed for Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
and joined King Vakhtang VI’s entourage in their Russian exile. The sincere and vivid account of his imprisonment, his despair and attempts to escape, and his religious solace form the next twenty-five poems of his collection.
In Moscow, he engaged in Vakhtang’s cultural and educational enterprises. Following the king’s death in 1737, his nobles, including Guramishvili, pledged their loyalty to the Russian crown and joined the Imperial army, forming a Georgian Hussar
Hussar
Hussar refers to a number of types of light cavalry which originated in Hungary in the 14th century, tracing its roots from Serbian medieval cavalry tradition, brought to Hungary in the course of the Serb migrations, which began in the late 14th century....
Regiment. On this occasion, Guramishvili was bestowed with estates at Myrhorod and Zubovka in Ukraine. As a Russian Hussar officer, he fought in the wars against Ottoman Empire (1735-1739), Sweden (1741-1743) and in the Seven Years' War
Seven Years' War
The Seven Years' War was a global military war between 1756 and 1763, involving most of the great powers of the time and affecting Europe, North America, Central America, the West African coast, India, and the Philippines...
(1756–1763) during which he was wounded and captured by the Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
n army. It was not until December 1759 that he was released from the Magdeburg
Magdeburg
Magdeburg , is the largest city and the capital city of the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Magdeburg is situated on the Elbe River and was one of the most important medieval cities of Europe....
prison and allowed to return to Russia. Invalidated, Guramishvili retired from the military service and withdrew into his estate where he lived together with his young wife Princess Tatiana Avalishvili.
Here he introduced Georgian water-mills to the Ukrainian peasantry and wrote poetry of lament, repent, and console for the misfortunes of Georgia and his own life. Apart from the Georgian folk sub-text, he also exploited Russian, Ukrainian and Polish motifs and combined, in the words of Professor Doland Rayfield, "two apparently incompatible elements, the Georgian psalmist’s spiritual asceticism and the Russian peasant’s carnal hedonism."
A surprising shift from religious fervor to playful eroticism follows in Zubovka (ზუბოვკა), a song of dalliance with a peasant girl. The most vernal and pastoral of his poems, Katsvia the Shepherd (ქაცვია მწყემსი) is a surreal idyll in which the poet narrates family life of the Georgian mountains and imagines the Eden Georgia without war, corruption, and natural calamity. The whole compilation concludes with a revert to religious contemplation, with the poet’s testament and epitaph.
In 1787, at the age of 82, Guramishvili accidentally met the Georgian prince Mirian, send by his father King Heraclius II of Georgia on a diplomatic mission to Russia. Mirian brought Guramishvili’s manuscript to Georgia where it was published in 1870. In 1792, the poet died and was buried at the Assumption Church in Myrhorod.