Doctor of Philological Sciences
Research Fellow
Shota Rustaveli Institute of Georgian Literature
Tbilisi, Georgia
ORCID: 0009-0001-2607-5620, 0009-0004-0016-9727
maiko1@bk.ru
Doctor of Philological Sciences
Research Fellow
Shota Rustaveli Institute of Georgian Literature
Tbilisi, Georgia
ORCID: 0009-0004-0016-9727
mukhti@inbox.ru
Archival and Press Materials on the First Scholarly Edition of N. Baratashvili’s Works
In the process of preparing editions of classical authors’ works, alongside the study and processing of manuscript and printed sources, significant attention is paid to the author’s documents, certificates (e.g., birth and death records), and other archival materials. These sources shed light on previously unknown details of the author’s biography, reveal interesting episodes of his interactions with contemporaries, and clarify how relatives and scholars approached both his personality and literary output during his lifetime and posthumously.
Research into archival and periodical publications shows that the creation of biographical documentation concerning Niko Baratashvili continued for some time after the author’s death. One particularly noteworthy aspect concerns materials related to the preparation of his works for publication.
In 1895, the fifth edition of N. Baratashvili’s works was published: “Poems and Letters of N. Baratashvili” (edited by Ekvtime Takaishvili and David Karichashvili). Preparation for this edition began as early as 1893, when the poet’s remains were transferred from Azerbaijan to Georgia. Contemporary newspapers – Droeba, Teatri, Iveria – in addition to reports on the transfer, frequently published notices from various prominent figures and writers regarding Baratashvili’s works: Rapiel Eristavi’s “Five Newly Found Poems of N. Baratashvili”, Ilia Chkhonia’s “Bibliographical Note”, Zakaria Chichinadze’s “Letter to the Editorial Office”, “Notebook of Baratashvili’s Poems”, and others, where the authors discuss the poet’s autographs, debate the authenticity of certain poems, examine manuscript provenance, and identify errors in previous editions.
The fact that serious preparation was underway for the 1895 edition is further evidenced by several documents preserved in the Georgian Historical Archive: a public statement by the board of the KShChKG Society regarding the provision of Baratashvili’s works for publication, special permissions from the poet’s heirs, and a letter dated March 21, 1894, signed by D. Karichashvili requesting Iona Meunargia to temporarily provide the society with the poet’s manuscripts, among others.
The 1895 edition differs from previous ones in that it includes, in addition to the works themselves, an extensive explanatory note – “Information on the Autographs of N. Baratashvili”. This note discusses three manuscript collections: the so-called Ekvtime Takaishvili and Barbale Vezirishvili autograph collections, as well as notebooks transcribed by Valerian Guni. The texts were mainly printed according to variants from Takaishvili’s collection. The scientific merit of the edition is enhanced by the editors’ inclusion of differences found in the Vezirishvili manuscripts in scholia, while textual variants from Guni’s notebook, received by the publishers later, were placed at the end of the book. This represented the first textual-critical approach to publishing N. Baratashvili’s works.
Based on archival and press sources, it can be confidently stated that the 1895 edition, edited by Ekvtime Takaishvili and David Karichashvili, constitutes the first scholarly edition of N. Baratashvili’s works.
Keywords: Niko Baratashvili, archival materials, periodicals, textual variants, scholarly edition