Dumas Alexander

Dumas Alexander (1802–1870), French writer. Born in VillersCotterêts, France (departmnet of Aisne). Besides being the author of famous books, he became popular in Georgia thanks to his travels there. In 1858, prior to his travels in the Caucasus, in his newspaper Monte-Cristo he wrote that he wished to see the mountain in the Caucasus, where Prometheus had been chained, and meet Imam Shamil personally. On November 23, 1858 A. Dumas arrived in Georgia and stayed there till January 11, 1859. He wrote about his impressions of said travels in the book The Caucasus. Travel Impressions. A. Dumas journeyed throughout almost all Georgia; he visited Kartli, Kakheti, Imereti, Samegrelo. He stayed for a good while in Tbilisi and met public figures and writers of that time. He gathered information about customs and traditions of ordinary people. A. Dumas wrote that he found himself in a real ‘Georgian paradise’. Apparently, he had good historic, geographic and ethnographic knowledge of the place he was visiting; Obviously, he had delved into the books about Georgia by Antic, as well as European travelers and writers.

In his book The Caucasus. Travel Impressions he assigned a special place to the descriptions of Tbilisi and its sights of interest. A. Dumas visited the sulphur baths of the city, he was delighted with the Tbilisi theater of those days – ‘one of the best world over’. The book contains a noteworthy passage regarding Geor gian songs. He was fascinated by the beauty of Georgian women: ‘Greece is a marble Galatea, while Georgia embodies a revived beautiful Galatea.’

During A. Dumas travel in the Caucasus, he was accompanied by French artist Muanet, who made a number of interesting sketches.

A. Dumas died in Puy. In 2002 his ashes were reinterred at the Panthéon of Paris.