Conquering the world with fairy tales

They call him Georgian Hans Christian Andersen; he has acted in 180 films and has shot many films himself; he has written hundreds of fairy tales and poems that are published in different languages of the world, including Ukrainian. Guram PETRIASHVILI is a friend and comrade-in-arms of Georgia’s former president Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Since 1996 the Georgian writer has remained Gamsakhurdia’s Plenipotentiary Envoy to Ukraine. The Day met with the writer at a children’s book fair where his new book Fairy Tales of a Small Town was launched, and asked him about his life in Kyiv and his current projects.

Guram, how long ago did you start writing fairy tales for children?

“Oh, I have been writing fairy tales for 40 years. When my first daughter Oliko was born, she cried a lot, and I played with her, calling her different pet names, and suddenly I called her ‘my little dinosaur.’ That same night I wrote a fairy tale for her about a little dinosaur who did not want to eat grass, but was looking all the time at the sun instead. The sun started to talk with the Dinosaur and then kiss him. One day the Dinosaur’s body was covered with red spots like the sun, and he turned into a giraffe. This was a fairy tale. Since then I have been writing fairy tales for children. I write mainly about a small city, its heroes and its problems, and about all the events there.”

Why is a small city attractive to you? Do you have a dislike for megalopolises?

“I write about a small city not because I dislike big cities, but because I grew up in a village, Svanetia. My parents were teachers and were known to all of Georgia. My father, Melentii Petriashvili, worked as the principal of a school; I loved him very much and I still do. He taught me to live this way that even despite I am 64 I always know that my father is beside me. Sometimes, when walking along a street, I feel that somebody is looking at me; I stop and understand that this was my father’s look.

“In a small city everything is open for people to see, so it is interesting to write about it. Everything is vivid there, nothing can be hidden, and you cannot lie about anything. I grew up a very free person, and when I started to write, as a young man, my parents were always very delicate and tactful concerning everything I was doing, whether these were my first poems or fairy tales.”

Why did you come to Ukraine?

“My wife comes from Chernihiv; in the late 1960s she came to enter a pedagogical institute in Tbilisi. She enrolled at the institute and then we went to Ukraine, where she studied in a university in Chernivtsi. Afterwards we lived together in Georgia until 1992. When Zviad Gamsakhurdia came to power, I became one of his friends and comrade-in-arms. But after Shevarnadze came to power in Georgia, I became persona non grata and was told in plain language, ‘Leave and save your life. Does your wife come from Ukraine? Then go to Ukraine.’

“We didn’t take any of our things and went at first to Grozny and then, to Ukraine, At first we lived in Chernihiv, where I shot 50 films about Ukrainian culture and wrote several books. By the way, the launch of my books has recently taken place there. And since 1996 I have been living in Kyiv; I worked at the Ukrtelefilm, where I also shot several films. Among the latest ones are films about my friends Anatolii Khostikoiev and Mykola Vinhranovsky.”

How did you manage to shoot films and write fairy tales and verses at the same time?

“Fairy tales and verses are my life. I come up with ideas most frequently when I am on the road. And when I feel that something can come out of these ideas, I come home and put down these thoughts in notebooks, I have dozens of them. I task my mind with processing these findings. My soul is working, too, at this time. Unlike other writers, I don’t work at a desk — my back hurts and I have to lie down and put pillows under my back. I have a room in my Kyiv apartment, which my wife and my daughter call a den: there is only my mess there, and nobody can disturb me there.”

What are you writing now?

“I have just written several new poems for a Georgian magazine. I was sick recently—I had caught cold, so I put down all new things during these few days of illness. I like Japanese masters very much, but for me emotions and feelings are the base of a poem. Also, I have invented my own form of poems — a fairy tale poem.”

You write in Georgian — is there something that Kyiv prompts you to write? Here everything is different, isn’t it?

“I cannot communicate in Georgian the way I want, and this has a very strong impact on my consciousness as a Georgian. And when I want to plunge into my native atmosphere, I open a volume of Shota Rustaveli’s works and get fully engrossed in text to let my soul return to Georgia, so to speak. It is impossible to describe the Georgian language in words: it has strong verbs, and for me it is the most beautiful language in the world.

“One day I was told by a Ukrainian patriot, ‘Our language has taken the second place in the world competition of languages.’ I replied, ‘How can your language be in the second place for you? What kind of a patriot are you then? Your native language should always be the first one for you in everything. Would Pushkin agree to have the Russian language in the second place?’

“Georgian is the whole world, a planet for me. Georgian verbs have direction, target, and power—this is our distinguishing feature. I don’t understand people who have been living somewhere for a long time and don’t love the place where they live. I like Ukrainians: they are tolerant, calm, and very patient.

“There are places in Kyiv where I always feel good. I feel very good in Khreshchatyk, near Prorizna Street or the Bessarabian Market. I feel joy and sadness at the same time in Podil. I cannot walk much over Kyiv — it is very difficult for me. I can for sure mention the Dovzhenko Film Studios among my favorite sites. There is a special garden that was planted by the Master himself, and I went there and continue to do so in spring in order to sit on the grass under an apple tree and write. Dovzhenko was a man of genius. It seems to me that hardly anyone in Ukraine understands this. Nothing disturbs me here, I have many friends. Among them are Ivan Andrusiak, Stanislav Bondarenko, and Mykola Shudria. My newest fairy tales were translated into Ukrainian by Stanislav Ripiakh, a brilliant, refined, and intelligent translator. I feel good in Kyiv.”

What do you dream about?

“I will translate my poem into Russian for you, it is called ‘Main Dream,’ and it goes like this: ‘May our enemies kneel down, so that they will never be at war. May Mother-Georgia stroke us, and we will stand together on a mountain. May all of us want to sing.’ This is my poem and this is my dream. Twenty years ago the Bulgarian writer Maria Stankova translated my fairy tales. She was asked, ‘What will you read to your children?’ She replied, ‘I will be Pippi Longstocking for my children, and I will read Guram Petriashvili’s fairy tales for them.’ So I can say that my dream has almost come true. But as a writer I cannot be happy when there is so much unhappiness around me.”