Mikheil Eristavi - Country of Liquid Sun
Friday, May 1
Mikheil (Misha) Eristavi was born in the village of Karaleti in 1862 at the Eristavi family palace. His father, Revaz Eristavi, was the grandson of the King Erekle II's daughter, Anastasia Batonishvili. Eristavi wrote poems and translated the works of Pushkin, Lermontov and Zhukovsky into Georgian. In the 1850-1860s, he collaborated with the periodical magazine Tsiskari. After Ilia Chavchavadze had criticised Eristavi's translation of Kozlov's Insane, this gave rise to the literary-ideological resistance between younger and older generations in Georgia called the 'struggle between fathers and sons.'
Mikheil Eristavi obtained his primary education in a private boarding school and then continued his studies in Ukraine, at the Uman School, quite famous by that time, where he graduated in 1884 with and received a certificate of excellence. Upon returning to his homeland, he began to work at his family's estate in Karaleti where he soon introduced a water-operated threshing machine. He experimented with importing new grain varieties most of which are grown throughout the country.
Eristavi was the first to introduce an American vine variety and established a nursery farm in the province of Gori. He planted Georgian and foreign table vine varieties in Karaleti and created a diverse collection of vine varieties.
Eristavi was the first to establish a large pomological garden in Georgia where he planted new species and varieties of fruits upon a 14 desiatina land plot. He exported seedlings and grafting materials from various seedling farms in Europe and, thereby, facilitated the enrichment of the fruit crops growing in Georgia by means of this new collection. Fruit crops were represented by many varieties of apples: Calville White, Autumn Red Calville, Easter Calville, Rennet Grey French, Rennet Champagne, Rennet Pineapple, Winter Golden Parmen, Sari-Sinap, Caldille-Sinap, Belflore, Rosemary White. Pear Duchesse Angulemme, varieties included: Burre-Bosk, Mikado, Winter Dehan, Berre-Hard. Reslet, Muscat-like, Georgian Gulabi. Sweet cherry varieties included: Drogan Yellow, Napoleon, Georgian Black. Plum varieties included: Reine-claude Green, Altan's Reine-Claude, Italian Hungarian, Common Hungarian, Chanchuri, etc. The pomological garden was also known for its flowers, many of which were rare for that time, including roses, lilacs, chrysanthemums, dahlias and many others.
Eristavi was also involved in beekeeping and had hives in two villages, Karaleti and Ghvarebi, with high quality species of bees. His consultant in beekeeping was Tikhomirov who was well-known in the field. Eristavi participated in a number of agricultural exhibitions and received highest awards for his work.
Literary evenings often used to be held at the Erastavi home in Karaleti and Gori initiated and hosted by Mikheil's wife, Elene, who was the daughter of Ivane Saginashvili, Prominent poets, writers, artists and singers arrived from Tbilisi and met at their house. Elene herself was a good musician and played Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and others. The family had a rich library with Elene permanently supplementing it with literature ordered from Europe. Upon her permission, everyone-any villager who was fond of reading and who was interested in literature-could come and use the library.
Misfortune came to the Eristavi family suddenly. On one occasion, Mikheil and Elene Eristavi's children, Revaz, Ekaterine, Nino and Rusudan, were visiting Mikheil's brother, Shalva, in Odzisi. Shalva's wife, Elisabed, was also there with her children and some close relatives celebrating the wedding of Mikheil Eristavi's daughter, Nino, to Ivane MakashviliMakhashvili. Suddenly, Georgian rebels arrived in Odzisi from Karaleti. They took Mikheil and his son, Revaz, a student, out the house and shot them near the village of Chala.
Elene, who had always been full of life, resisted the sudden misfortune with astonishing strength, showing not even a tear in her eyes after the tragic death of her husband and son. After their eviction from Kartli, Elene's sister, Barbare Saginashvili-MakashviliMakhashvili, gave shelter to the Eristavi family who were left without any means.
The new and extremely difficult financial situation made Elene decide to use her musical talent and she found work in the cinema where she provided musical accompaniment for silent films and, in this way, earned a bit of money which she used for her family. Left in misery, she often went to church to seek solace. Elene Saginashvili-Eristavi's difficult life, full of suffering, ended in 1938.
The story of the hill, where the Eristavi palace stands, is a rather interesting one. The origin of this artificially-created hill is in the distant past at the time when Nacharmagevi became the summer residence of the Georgian Kings and, consequently, a strategic location. According to one of the versions, they found a location which offered very good communication possibilities from where even the Gori Castle was in site and which also offered signals of information or warning. The Eristavis constructed a hill upon which they built the palace and which was a unique undertaking for that time. It is not known exactly by whom and when the hill was built.
