Grigol Orbeliani

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Tiflis
Battles/warsCaucasian War
Russo-Persian War (1826–1828)
Russo-Turkish War (1828–1829)
Other workMember of the State Council
Patriotic poetry
Romanticism
Signature

Prince Grigol Orbeliani or Jambakur-Orbeliani (

Romanticist poet and general in Imperial Russian service. One of the most colorful figures in the 19th-century Georgian culture, Orbeliani is noted for his patriotic poetry, lamenting Georgia's lost independence and the deposition of the Royal House of Bagration. At the same time, he spent decades in the Imperial Russian Army, rising to the highest positions in the imperial administration in the Caucasus
.

Family

Grigol Orbeliani was born into a prominent aristocratic family in the Georgian capital of

Erekle II
, the penultimate and popular king of Georgia, whose cult would later be introduced into Georgian literature by Grigol Orbeliani himself.

Orbeliani had close family and friendly ties with the contemporary Georgian aristocratic and literary élite:

Griboyedov’s widow and Alexander Chavchavadze’s daughter, Nino, who inspired the poet with desperate, but courtly passion for nearly thirty years, although he had been betrothed in the cradle to Princess Sopio Orbeliani.[1] He was a cousin of the two poets and generals - Alexander and Vakhtang Orbeliani. To distinguish himself from his namesake cousins, Grigol Orbeliani also used an ancestral name "Qaplanishvili".[2]

Service career

Orbeliani received his early education at local nobility gymnasium and artillery school. In the 1820s, he entered the Russian military service, and took part in a series of

Decembrist ideologues and a bellicose poem, The Weapon (იარაღი).[2]

By virtue both of his aristocratic status and his abilities, Orbeliani was able to resume his military career and would rise to high positions in the

Caucasus Viceroyalty. He, like many other Georgian nobles who years earlier had plotted to overthrow the Russian hegemony, would make peace with the imperial autocracy, a change aided by liberal policies of the Russian viceroy Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov. A typical romanticist and patriot in his poetry, Orbeliani, like his older contemporary, fellow poet and general Alexander Chavchavadze, remained a loyal officer in the imperial service throughout his career.[3][4]

Orbeliani spent most of his military career in the

Abkhaz and Ossetians. He was a member of the Imperial Geographical Society and an honorary president of the Georgian Nobility Bank. In the 1880s he played a leading role in establishing a standard text for Shota Rustaveli's medieval epic The Knight in the Panther's Skin.[2]

Cultural legacy

Although Orbeliani's earliest writings are in prose dating to 1824, his prose pieces have fallen into oblivion. Most of his poetry is noted for patriotic motifs and extravagant praise of wine and women. Like his contemporary Georgian romanticists, Orbeliani's lyrics are pervaded with laments over the lost past and the fall of the Georgian monarchy. What distinguishes him, however, is his love for the street poetry and the

ashug minstrelsy to which he himself added with such lyrics as Mukhambazi (მუხამბაზი).[5][6]

Orbaliani's poetry prior to the collapse of the 1832 conspiracy is remarkably bellicose and optimistic, while post-1832 lyrics are more elegiac, infused with sentimental patriotic feelings about the irretrievable glory of the past. His best and longest works is an ode A Toast, or A Night Feast after War near Yerevan (სადღეგრძელო, ანუ ომის შემდგომ ღამე ლხინი, ერევნის სიახლოვეს) whose original version was composed on the occasion of the battle of Yerevan during the

Russo-Persian War in 1827, not without influence of the Russian poet Vasily Zhukovsky. It was further reworked and expanded until it acquired its final shape as late as 1879. A nostalgic memory of military glory, the poem begins by honoring all those who have fallen in defense of their homeland, then the poet travels through history, celebrating all Georgia's tribes, kings, heroes, and martyrs. Finally, an elegiac mood replaces the exaltation, as the poet returns from his fantasy and memoirs to see just himself and one other link to that past still living.[4][7]

Orbeliani's mutual relations with the new generation of Georgian intellectuals were ambiguous. This new movement, dubbed as "the sons", spearheaded by Ilia Chavchavadze and Akaki Tsereteli, was critical of "fathers", old Georgian nobility who had pledged their allegiance to the Tsar. Orbeliani was praised by Chavchavadze as presiding over "the strength and wealth of our verse," but his 1871 jubilee was met by the younger generation in cold silence. In the 1860s, Orbeliani tried to stand aside from the quarrels between "the sons and the fathers", but he could not refrain from attacking the new generation in a caustic rhymed response published in 1874. This did not prevent him, however, from being alone in acclaiming the melodramatic prose of one of the "sons", Alexander Kazbegi, in 1881.[8]

Grigol Orbeliani died in Tiflis at the age of 79. He is buried at the

St. George
.

Notes

  1. ^ Rayfield, pp. 139, 143-4.
  2. ^ a b c Rayfield, p. 143.
  3. ^ Suny, pp. 75, 124.
  4. ^ a b Kveselava, p. 16.
  5. ^ Rayfield, p. 144.
  6. YouTube, Russian translation by Nikolay Zabolotsky, music and song by Elena Frolova
    (first song in record)
  7. ^ Rayfield, pp. 144-5.
  8. ^ Rayfield, pp. 143-4.

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Grigol Orbeliani.
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