Count Davit Guramishvili (1705 – 1792) was a Georgian poet who wrote the finest piece of pre-Romantic Georgian literature. He made eighty-seven years of his tragic and turbulent life into one cycle of autobiographical poetry, the ‘Davitiani’, which he sent to Georgia through a Georgian embassy.

In 1727 Guramishvili was kidnapped by the tribesmen from Dagestan and spent several months in captivity before he managed to escape and make his way to the north. The sincere and vivid account of his imprisonment, his despair and attempts to escape, and his religious solace form the next twenty-five poems of his collection. Apart from the Georgian folk sub-text, he also exploited Russian, Ukrainian and Polish motifs and combined, in the words in his book. A surprising shift from religious fervour to playful eroticism follows in Zubovka, a song of dalliance with a peasant girl.

In 1787, at the age of 82, Guramishvili accidentally met the Georgian prince Mirian, who brought Guramishvili’s manuscript to Georgia where it was published in 1870. In 1792, the poet died and was buried at the Assumption Church in Myrhorod.