Literary Criticism of the 1870s and Giorgi Tsereteli

  The paper discusses personal, public and creative style of the Georgian writer and public figure of the 19th century, Giorgi Tsereteli, as assessed by the critics of the 70s of the 19th century. We have an interesting creator in front of us. Giorgi Tsereteli, together with Ilia Chavchavadze and Akaki Tsereteli, from the 60s, i. e. from his youth until his death, carried the very heavy and responsible mission of an artist and, at the same time, of a teacher of the nation. On the way of critical discussion of Giorgi Tsereteli, among the four periods, we would conditionally single out the 70s of the 19th century. Among the critical letters of these years, according to the materials available to us, we would attribute the first place to the letters of Nikoloz Dimitridze (N. D. Kifiani), which were published in ‘Droeba’ No. 8, No. 14 of 1871 in the column ‘Bibliography’. The article ‘Journey to Svaneti’ by Sergei Meskhi, Anton Furtseladze, the venerable Georgian poet, ‘the king of the Georgian word’, is also discussed. He discussed Giorgi Tsereteli's story from the linguistic point of view with unusual scrupulousness. To sum up, Giorgi Tsereteli's contemporary and generally first critics prepared the basis for a deep scientific study of Giorgi Tsereteli. In their critical thinking, in fact, almost all the issues, that have found deepening and proper scientific broad argumentation in our time, were raised.