Kekelidze, Kornelii

Kekelidze, Kornelii Samsonovich 

Born Apr. 18 (30), 1879, in the village of Tobanieri, in present-day Vani Raion; died June 7, 1962, in Tbilisi. Soviet scholar and literary critic. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR (1941).

Kekelidze was one of the founders of the University of Tbilisi (1918), where he subsequently became a professor. From 1942 to 1949 he was director of the Sh. Rustaveli Institute of Georgian Literature. An authority on Old Georgian church literature, he studied, published, and annotated rare Old Georgian manuscripts. Kekelidze published masterpieces of Byzantine literature that had been lost in the original language but were preserved in Georgian translations. He wrote A History of Old Georgian Literature (vols. 1–2, 1923–24; 4th ed., 1958–60) and A Short Course in the History of Old Georgian Literature (in Russian, 1939). Kekelidze was awarded the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.

WORKS

[Kekelize, K.] Zveli k’art’uli mcerlobis istoria, vols. 1–2. Tbilisi, 1951–52.
Etiudebi zveli k’art’uli literaturis istoriidan [vols]. 1–10. Tbilisi, 1945–68.
K’art’uli literaturis istoria, vol. 1. Tbilisi, 1960.

REFERENCES

“Kornelii Kekelidze.” Literaturnaia gazeta. June 14, 1962. (Obituary.) Baramize, A. Korneli Kekelize. Tbilisi, 1961.