ABSTRACT
Though some of Akaki Tsereteli’s work won popular acclaim, he remained a standard-bearer for the intellectual establishment, an élite who had in the 1860s been merely the rebellious ‘sons’. Around the twin stars of Ilia and Akaki a whole constellation revolved. The oldest was an unusual figure, a ‘father’ who became a ‘son’, an aristocratic Romantic who ended up as a populist lauded by the young Stalin: Rapiel Eristavi (რაფიელ ერისთავი 1824–1901). He belonged to one of the oldest families, the Aragvi dukes (eristavebi): although he was linked by marriage and education to the Georgian intellectual aristocracy, the tergdaleulebi, his outlook was affected by the mountain landscapes of Kistauri (ქისტაური) in Kakhetia, the village where he was born and died. (He had a reputation as the village’s most brilliant verse improviser.) From 1847 to 1870, a high flyer in the reformist viceroy’s civil service, he helped set up the Georgian Museum, contributed articles in Russian to the journal Kavkaz (‘The Caucasus’), and published a story in Russian, ‘A Man in Rags’ (Оборванец1855): these works attracted the Russian public by their fluent Russian and by the anthropological and historical material Eristavi retrieved from his travels all over Georgia. Some of his articles pioneered research into Georgian folk culture: after the cholera epic of 1848 he recorded some of the spells (შელოცვა) used by the peasants to ward it off. Despite his official status, which he resigned for a time in 1870, Rapiel Eristavi in articles on such topics as serfdom in Mingrelia ‘was the first among us to bear witness for the unjustly oppressed’ (Ilia Chavchavadze). Like his sister Barbare Jorjadze (ბარბარე ჯორჯაძე, 1833–95), Rapiel Eristavi tried vaudeville, one example being his play If a Woman Moves, She is Stronger Than Nine Pairs of Oxen (დედაკაცმა თუ გაიწია, ცხრა უღელი ხარის უმძლავრესია, 1870). Unrequited love inspired lyrics, such as ‘Why Do I Love You?’ (რისთვის მიყვარხარ, 1858). In 1863 he married a Gurian princess. The change of scenery made him a spokesman for the whole of Georgian peasantry, and, once he was engaged on agrarian reform, his attitudes became ever more radical. Advocacy, journalism, scholarship, the Georgian theatre, lexicography, even a brief venture into the wine trade, absorbed his energies: in 1895 his literary jubilee was feted by poets, among them the young Jughashvili [Stalin]: When the laments of the toiling peasants Moved you to tears of pity Then, o Bard, a Georgian Would listen to you as to a heavenly testament.
