Aleksidze Aleksandre

Aleksandre Aleksidze (b. January 7, 1937, Tbilisi — d. January 11, 1991, Tbilisi) was a literary critic, public figure, doctor of Philological Sciences (1977), professor (1978).

After graduating from Tbilisi State University (TSU), he continued his post-graduate studies in Greco-Roman philology under the guidance of academician S. Kaukhchishvili and worked at the Department of Classical Philology at TSU until the end of his life. In 1974–1976, he was the Rector of the Ilia Chavchavadze State Institute of Foreign Languages. Aleksidze is the author of approximately 80 works in Georgian and foreign languages in the fields of classical philology and Byzantine studies. He received international recognition through the monographs The World of the Greek Chivalric Romance of the 13^th–14^th Centuries and Byzantine Literature of the 11^th–12^th Centuries (1989, in Russian), in which many actual problems of Byzantine secular literature are solved. Aleksidze was the first among the scientists of the new generation to travel to Mount Athos. He visited the Iviron Monastery and dedicated the monograph Thousand-year-old Mount Athos (1982) to it. His extensive review on the history of Georgian literature was published in Gallimard's French encyclopedia. He is the author of the chapters dedicated to Byzantine secular literature in the three-volume Byzantine Culture prepared for publication by the Russian Academy.

For years, Aleksidze worked as a visiting professor at the universities of Strasbourg (France), Crete, Ioannina (Greece), was a participant and organizer of international forums in the fields of Byzantine studies and classical philology, a member of the editorial boards of foreign series of publications in these fields and the Winkelman International Society.

He worked as the head of the department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia. In 1981–1991, he led the Georgian Committee for Peace, was a deputy of the Supreme Council of Georgia.

R. Gordeziani