Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU) hosted a meeting “Dimitri Dimitriadis - Intercultural Dialogue” with a famous Greek writer, playwright and translator, Dimitri Dimitriadis. TSU students, professors and invited guests attended the meeting.
 

“This year marks 30 years of diplomatic relations between Georgia and the Republic of Greece. We are glad that a great playwright, writer and philosopher, Dimitri Dimitriadis visited Tbilisi State University to mark this date. His lecture covering the history of theater, its past and future was very interesting for the audience, and it once again confirmed that theater is a special phenomenon in Greek art,” Vice Rector of TSU, Professor Nino Okribelashvili noted.
 

Greek Ambassador to Georgia, Maria Theodorou said that Dimitri Dimitriadis is not a simple author, he is a thinker who still contributes his ideas to the existence of the modern world. She stressed that with the support of the Greek Embassy, representatives of academic community and students, as well as the public had an opportunity to familiarize themselves with his teaching, deep knowledge about Europe and the whole world. She thanked the TSU Institute of Classical, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies for organizing the event.
 

Dimitris Dimitriadis is one of the most famous writers, playwrights and translators of modern Greece, winner of numerous literary and state awards, translator of Shakespeare, Moliere, Balzac, Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Maurice Maeterlinck and others into Greek. “Dimitri Dimitriadis’ works have been translated into English, French, Italian, Arabic and many other languages. The French television “Culture France” dedicated five months to the reading of his works. It is important that we can communicate with a person of such a caliber,” Professor Levan Gigineishvili, head of the TSU Institute of Classical, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, said.
 

Dimitri Dimitriadis thanked TSU for providing the best environment to talk about the topics that are not easy to understand. He hailed the meeting as successful. He noted that “Dying as a Country” was written in 1978 and is still considered a relevant text. Dimitri Dimitriadis also stressed that the current reality determines the relevance of the text, while the text precedes the reality, first there is the text and then comes the reality.
 

The plays by Dimitris Dimitriadis are successfully staged on many prestigious stages of the world. His cultish work “Dying as a Country” was translated into Georgian by Tatia Mtvarelidze and published with the support of the House of Writers. “This text is about an eternal topic that worries all societies in all ages. What is important for the country, for humanity to live, and what does the death of the country mean in general; besides the fact that the topic is very important, the language as well as the style of the text itself is so diachronic - it covers almost all stages of the development of the Greek language and very contradictory phrases; this text gives us a complete picture of the history of the Greek language and the development of mankind,” Tatia Mtvarelidze said.
 

The meeting was organized by the Institute of Classical, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, the Embassy of Greece to Georgia and the international festival GIFT.