ABSTRACT
Ioseb Grishashvili, born Mamulaishvili (იოსებ გრიშაშვილი-მამულაიშვილი, 1889–1965) was by international standards more a part of popular, than of literary culture, and was therefore, even under totalitarianism, the most indestructible of twentieth-century Georgian poets. A mason’s son, his roots were among the shopkeepers and tradesmen of old Tbilisi: he worked first as a theatre prompter, then as a compositor. While he translated from Armenian and Azeri Turkish (and even learnt French), he boasted that he knew no Russian. He was thus a purely ‘native’ ashugh, in contrast to the eighteenth-century polyglot Armenian Sayat-Nova, whose biography he wrote and emulated. Grishashvili’s lyrics intentionally followed the tradition of the folk qarachoghlebi (ყარაჩოღლები, ‘black-tunics’, Tbilisi’s young burghers renowned for their cavalier hedonism) and kinto (კინტო, the roguish street pedlars and market traders).
