Kiknadze, Grigol. The Creative Work of Vazha-Pshavela (Vazha-p'shavelas shemokmedeba). Tbilisi, 1957. In Georgian.

კიკნაძე, გრიგოლ. ვაჟა-ფშაველას შემოქმედება / რედაქტორი დ. ლაშქარაძე ; მხატვარი შ. კუპრაშვილი. გამოცემა პირველი.
თბილისი : სახელგამი, 1957. 322 გვერდი, 1 ფურცელი პორტრეტით ; 23 სმ.
ტირაჟი 7 000 ც.
***
Kiknadze, Grigol. The Creative Work of Vazha-Pshavela / editor D. Lashkaradze ; cover design Sh. Kuprashvili. First edition.
[Tbilisi] : Sakhelgami (State Publishing House of the Georgian SSR), 1957. 322 pp., with 1 portrait plate (of Vazha-Pshavela) ; 23 cm.
Hardcover. Print run of 7,000 copies.
Binding good: light staining. Text block very good: firm, clean.

A first edition of the standard mid-century critical monograph on the poet Vazha-Pshavela (Luka Razikashvili, 1861-1915), by Grigol Kiknadze (1898-1990), one of the leading Georgian literary scholars of the Soviet period and a specialist in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Georgian poetry. Vazha-Pshavela, a native of the Pshavi highlands of eastern Georgia, is remembered as the most philosophically ambitious of Georgian Romantic poets, whose epic narrative poems and dramatic works fused mountain folklore, pantheistic nature-philosophy, and an intense engagement with the moral standing of the individual against tribal custom; his reputation, largely local in his own lifetime, was posthumously elevated to that of a national classic. Kiknadze's study, organized in three parts and eleven chapters, addresses in turn the patriotic and folk elements of Vazha-Pshavela's work, his understanding of the individual's relationship to society and to nature, his prose style, his dramatic writings, and his methods of characterization, closing with an assessment of his place as heir and forerunner within the Georgian literary tradition; the volume also engages critically with Russian-language Soviet scholarship on the poet, including the 1948 Moscow biography by Evgenii Lundberg and Elene Lomberidze. Illustrated with a single portrait plate, the monograph remains a standard reference for Georgian literary scholarship on Vazha-Pshavela and will interest collectors and researchers of Georgian Romantic poetry and Soviet-era literary criticism.