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[FIRST GEORGIAN TRANSLATION OF HAMLET FROM ENGLISH] hamlet’ daniis p’rintsi: khut mokmedebiani t’ragedia [i.e. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: A Tragedy in Five Acts]

Shakespeare, W.

Item #2182

Tbilisi: 1887 (tip. E. Kheladze). 147 pp. 21,9x14,8 cm.

In owner’s contemporary quarter cloth binding. Near fine. Extremely rare. Second edition. First edition published in 1886. Text in Georgian. Translated from English.

The second Georgian translation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet by the noted Georgian writer and publicist Prince Ivane Machabeli (1854-1898). The translation was initiated by the Georgian public figure Ilia Chavchadze (1837-1907) as part of his efforts to preserve the Georgian language, literature, and culture during the final decades of Tsarist rule. The book was published in 1887 at Eqvtime Kheladze’s personal printing house in the "Yarmuk" district of Tbilisi. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, Kheladze's printing house was raided by Cossacks, and Kheladze himself was killed at the entrance of the building.
Georgians first became acquainted with Shakespeare's works in 1858, when Lavrenti Ardaziani published his translation of Hamlet (from Russian) in the Tsiskari [i.e. Dawn] magazine. From the 1870s, Machabeli, editor-in-chief of the Iveria and Droeba [i.e. Times] magazines, undertook the ambitious task of translating Shakespeare's tragedies into Georgian. His efforts began with King Lear in 1873 and continued with Hamlet and Othello in 1886 and 1888, respectively. Over the next twelve years, Machabeli translated Macbeth (1892), Richard III (1893), Julius Caesar (1896), Antony and Cleopatra (1898), and Coriolanus (1898). His translation work was abruptly cut short when he vanished from his Tbilisi apartment on June 26, 1898, and was never seen again.
Prince Ivane Machabeli played a key role in shaping the modern Georgian literary language. After graduating high school in 1870, he studied Natural Sciences at Petersburg State University, where he met Ilia Chavchavadze. Together, they translated King Lear into Georgian, marking the first Georgian translation of Shakespeare from the original English. Machabeli later attended the Sorbonne and Heppenheim Universities (1874-1877) before returning to Georgia, where he produced some of the finest Georgian versions of Shakespeare’s works despite never visiting England.
Overall, the first translation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet from original English into Georgian.

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