Culture
Georgia in Czech Literature: Two Centuries, and One Poet Who Could Not Sign His Name
GCC Editorial ·
In 1831, the journal Časopis českého Museum published an article on the earliest history of the Asian nations. Its author was František Palacký, and on pages 373 and 374 it contains a section headed "U Gruzů" — "Among the Georgians." It is probably the oldest sustained Czech text on Georgian history.
Almost two hundred years have passed since. In that time Georgian literature reached Czech readers largely thanks to two men — and one of the translators was not allowed to sign his own work.
1831: Palacký on Georgian history
Palacký had been the journal's founding editor since 1827, but this was not merely editorial work. The article On the oldest history and historiography of the Asiatic nations, after Jul. Klaproth appeared in volume 5 (1831), issue IV, pages 359 to 377, and is listed as his own writing. It drew on the work of the German orientalist Julius Klaproth (1783–1835), who had himself travelled the Caucasus.
The Georgian section is short but dense. Palacký writes that the Georgian kingdom maintained itself under one and the same dynasty longer than any other on earth — the Bagrationi ruled from 574 to 1800. He mentions the Georgian chronicles, the most significant of which King Vakhtang had compiled from the archives of the monasteries at Mtskheta and Gelati. Reliable Georgian history, in his account, reaches back to the 3rd century BC.
The most striking element is a comparative table ranking nations by the antiquity of their own historiography. Georgians stand third — behind only the Chinese and the Japanese. As early as 1831, in other words, Palacký placed Georgian historiography among the oldest in the world.
Czech travellers in the Caucasus
The Caucasus also appeared in Czech travel writing. The poet Svatopluk Čech published Recollections from the East: pictures from a journey through the Caucasus and the return in 1885.
Sixteen years later came Jan Duchoslav Panýrek (1867–1940), a Prague surgeon, physician to the National Theatre and from 1934 municipal health counsellor. His book From the Neva to the Kura: causerie from journeys through European Russia and the Caucasus appeared in 1901 in Velké Meziříčí, published by Šašek and Frgal. The title itself traces the journey: from the Neva in St Petersburg to the Kura, the river running through Tbilisi.
1912: a Czech poem for a Georgian actress
The most unexpected Georgian trace in Czech literature is hidden in a collection by Růžena Jesenská (1863–1940) titled K stínům ("To the Shades"), published in Prague in 1912 with woodcuts by Zdenka Braunerová.
The collection contains the poem The Poet's Departure, with the dedication: "To the memory of the Georgian actress Natalia Gabunia-Tsagareli — She sang me a fiery toast, and now she is no more…"
The poem is densely woven with Georgian detail: the monastery of Gelati and the river Rioni appear in it, along with the address "my Rustaveli," the pearl crown of the Imeretian kings, Saint Nino and Mtskheta. Jesenská travelled to Russia in 1911, of which Georgia was then a part.
1958: Rustaveli in Czech
The Georgian national epic The Knight in the Panther's Skin by Shota Rustaveli appeared in Czech in 1958, published by SNKLHU. The translator was Jaromír Jedlička (1901–1965), an orientalist who had studied Sanskrit under Vincenc Lesný and Armenian in Vienna, then added Georgian and other Caucasian languages.
Jedlička's own story is remarkable. Between 1939 and 1945 he was barred from the universities; he was allowed to teach Armenian and Georgian at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University only from 1953. He wrote fiction under the pseudonym Piras. Beyond Rustaveli he also translated Georgian Folk Tales (1949) and the anthology The Stony Roads of Georgia (1958).
The man who translated a whole literature
By far the largest body of work, however, was done by Václav A. Černý (1931–2017), a Caucasologist at the Oriental Institute. He translated essentially the entire modern Georgian canon into Czech — over twenty volumes.
They include the novels of Otar Chiladze (The Mark of Cain, Odeon 1984; A Man Was Going Down the Road, Odeon 1978), Nodar Dumbadze's The Law of Eternity, which went through three printings, and prose by Mikheil Javakhishvili, Jemal Karchkhadze, Niko Lortkipanidze and Archil Sulakauri. In 1990 he also published the Czech text of the screenplay of Tengiz Abuladze's Repentance — a film that played its part in the unravelling of the Soviet Union, and which reached Czech readers as literature in the first post-revolution year.
Černý is also the author of Foundations of Georgian (Academia, 1976) — to this day the only Czech textbook of the Georgian language, reissued by Větrné mlýny in 2017. For his work he received the Georgian Machabeli Prize in 1991 and the Georgian Order of Honour in 2015.
His career was not a straight line: he worked at the Oriental Institute from 1960 to 1980, then had to leave, and was rehabilitated only between 1990 and 1992.
When Georgian Poetry Mattered More Than a Byline
In 1982 Odeon published The Snake Eater by Vazha-Pshavela, a classic of Georgian poetry. The verse was rendered by Josef Hiršal — and the imprint records him as uncredited.
Hiršal was among the banned authors of the normalisation era. Georgia's national poet thus reached Czech readers through a writer who was not permitted to put his name to his own work. It is quiet evidence of how highly Czech writers valued Georgian poetry — they translated it even when they could not claim it as their own.
Stopover: a Czech writes about Tbilisi
The traffic between the two literatures runs the other way as well. In 2020 the Brno publisher Host issued Mezipřistání ("Stopover") by an author writing under the pseudonym Matěj Hořava. It is autobiographical prose set in a Tbilisi panel housing estate, with escapes to the Black Sea and the Caucasus mountains.
Hořava's identity is deliberately unknown; all that is public is that he was born in 1980 and lives abroad. His debut Pálenka, set among Czechs in the Romanian Banat, was Czech Book of the Year in 2015. Rights to Mezipřistání have been sold to Germany, Spain, Croatia, Bulgaria, Serbia and North Macedonia.
A chapter waiting to be continued
The Czech Georgian shelf is remarkably rich — and almost all of it dates from 1949 to 1990. Of the contemporary Georgian authors, such as Aka Morchiladze, Zaza Burchuladze and Tamta Melashvili, none has yet appeared in Czech. That reads less as a gap than as an invitation: a whole generation of Georgian prose is still waiting for its Czech translator.
Georgian stories reach Czech readers all the same. Nino Haratischwili writes in German — her The Eighth Life (for Brilka) was published by Host in 2020, translated by Michaela Škultéty. Leo Vardiashvili writes in English and appeared in Czech in 2024.
Two hundred years of this history show one thing: every time, it took a single person who learned Georgian and wanted to share it. Palacký, Panýrek, Jesenská, Jedlička, Černý. Interest in Georgia in Czechia is greater now than it has ever been — and the next chapter of this story is waiting for its author.