1897-1979 / poet
Elene Dariani is one of the most mysterious figures in Georgian literary history. A collection of 14 poems under the title "Dariani Cycle" is listed among the works of famous poet Paolo Iashvili. Until recently it was thought that Iashvili himself had written the poems, which describe female erotic and romantic thoughts with a transformative precision. However, archive materials discovered later made it clear that the mysterious Elene Dariani was in fact a real person named Elene Bakradze, a contemporary and close friend of the Blue Horns group of avant garde poets.
Iashvili committed suicide at the Georgian Writers' Union in Tbilisi n 1937 amid the purges of artists and intellectuals. After Iashvili's name was formally rehabilitated by the USSR in 1959, a collection of his poems that included the Dariani Cycle was published. Only once, shortly after the publication of this collection, did Elene Bakradze attempt to get her authorship acknowledged.
Unlike her husband and many of her friends, Elene survived the Stalinist repressions. For a long time she worked as a teacher at the Literary Institute.