David Samsonovich Kldiashvili

Born Sept. 11 (23), 1862, in the village of Simoneti, present-day Terzhola Raion; died there Apr. 24, 1931 (buried in Tbilisi). Georgian writer; representative of Georgian critical realism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. People’s Writer of Georgia (1930). Son of a poor nobleman.

Kldiashvili studied at the Kiev Military Gymnasium (1872–80) and the Moscow Military College (1880–82). He served in the military for 26 years. He was associated with the revolutionary-minded intelligentsia and workers; he was persecuted by the authorities as politically suspect. He welcomed the Great October Socialist Revolution. Kldiashvili was first published in 1885. His novellas of the 1890’s— Solomon Morbeladze (1894; Russian translation, 1930), Samanishvili’s Stepmother (1897; Russian translation, 1947), and The Misfortunes of Kamushadze (1897; Russian translation, 1939)—contain vivid descriptions of life in western Georgia and the decadence of the nobility during the development of capitalism. In the short stories “The Victim” (1893) and “The Curse” (1894; Russian translation, 1950), Kldiashvili depicted the hard life of the Georgian peasants and their lack of rights, their backwardness, and their superstitions. He wrote the plays Irina’s Happiness (1897) and Darispan’s Mis fortunes (1903), which are staged in Georgian theaters.