Describing Dialect and Defining Civilization in an Early Georgian Nationalist Manifesto: Ilia Ch‘avch’avadze's “Letters of a Traveler”

The Darial Pass through the Caucasus today, as in the nineteenth century, provides the main viable route between Russia and Georgia, along what is now called the Georgian Military Highway. The journey from Vladikavkaz in modern North Ossetia into Georgia follows the Terek River, which flows north from Mount Kazbek (Georgian: Qaz(i)begi, Mqinvari; lit. "Glacier") into Russia, while the southern flanks of the route follow the Aragvi River, flowing south toward Tbilisi (Fig. 1). This journey from Vladikavkaz to Tbilisi and vice versa runs across some very well traveled literary terrain for European, Russian and Georgian Romantics, whose overlapping narratives in genres from fairy tale to travel account, lyric verse to adventure tale gave the landscape a peculiar ambivalence where fact and fancy were intertwined.' Indeed, the Darial Gorge itself has sometimes