ABSTRACT
Beria’s departure for Moscow at the end of 1938 brought about a strangely liberal interlude. It is exemplified by Ivane Ioseliani (ივანე იოსელიანი, 1892–1945) who had been silent for sixteen years. Orphaned at the age of 5, he had followed the usual pattern of a Kutaisi intellectual, from gimnazia to revolutionary socialism, prison, tuberculosis, and Saint Petersburg University. His individuality showed when he became an army officer who crossed over to the Bolsheviks in revolutionary Petrograd. His stories published between 1915 and 1923 are based on his life, with the same realistic studies of misfit sons of the gentries that we find in Giorgi Tsereteli. Javakhishvili had praised him mildly in a newspaper article (now untraceable) as an ‘unpretentious talent’, which was enough to persuade Ioseliani to give up literature for anonymous journalism. He was known to a close circle for a virtuoso gift of oral improvization, but only broke his silence in 1939 with a fine, free-thinking short story, ‘Teimuraz III. In the last days of the Menshevik government, Teimuraz, a middle-aged descendant of the Bagrations comes to Tbilisi from Moscow, determined to learn his native language and history. As the British military mission prepares to abandon Georgia, causing a riot by hanging their underwear to dry on the balcony of the Hotel Majestic, Teimuraz begins to dream of a restored monarchy. The departure of the British mission and all his wealth is a fatal shock to Teimuraz’s dreams, and his funeral is Tbilisi’s ‘last parade of long sleeves, head-scarves, ancient swords and daggers, and of ladies in traditional headgear’. Nostalgia, mockery, and immediacy of recall carry only the slightest veneer of political correctness. Ioseliani followed this with an unremarkable war-time story, Kasiani’s Bullet (კასიანის ტყვია, 1941) which contrasts Russian émigré and peasant. His last sketch, however, Akaki Tsereteli’s Last Years (აკაკი წერეთლის უკანასკნელი წლები) is superb documental prose. Unfortunately, Ioseliani’s works fell into obscurity, with not even a reference in the Georgian encylopaedia.
