Cosmopolitanism and Patriotism
Rebecca Ruth Gould, PhD rrgould.medium.com Rebecca Ruth Gould
Vazha Pshavela (literally, “son of the Pshav people,” or Vazha, as he is known in Georgian) is the pen name of Luka Razikashvili (1861–1915), a Georgian poet and writer best known for giving the…
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Vazha Pshavela (literally, “son of the Pshav people,” or Vazha, as he is known in Georgian) is the pen name of Luka Razikashvili (1861–1915), a Georgian poet and writer best known for giving the Georgian folkloric tradition a modern literary form. Arguably the greatest 19th-century Georgian poet, Vazha was a pioneer of the epic poem. His major works include the epic poems Aluda Ketelauri (1888), Host and Guest (1893), and The Snake-Eater (1901), as well as dramas, short stories, and shorter verse forms. During the Soviet era, Vazha’s work was translated into Russian by major poets such as Osip Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Nikolai Zabolotsky.

I translated The Death of Bagrat Zakharych and Other Stories, for Paper + Ink publishers in 2019. The below essay is taken from Vazha’s nonfictional prose, the vast majority of which is unavailable in English. In this essay, Vazha reflects on the tensions between the cosmopolitan outlook that world literature requires and his patriotic loyalty to his own people and country.

The essay reverberates with particular poignancy in the aftermath of the passage of Georgia’s Foreign Agents Law on 28 May 2024, in which the right wing…