Prima Cera - Georgian Fairy Tales

About E.A. Villi

I grew up in Kutaisi, a lovely town in Soviet Georgia, bisected by a swift-flowing river called the Rioni. When I was little, I imagined that during a rainy season, a river could roar louder than a lion.

My dad was a master builder, who could fix just about anything. Together, we raised sand castles in the play ground yard. When I turned six, dad taught me how to ride a bicycle. The first time I pedaled away alone, I smashed the bike into a tree, warping the front wheel into a figure eight. Before letting me ride again, my dad replaced the damaged wheel, then reinforced the lesson of using the brakes prior to colliding with solid objects. Read more

My mom taught me a great deal about many things, and we did many sewing and knitting projects together. I never quite got the hang of crocheting. For some unknown reason, that seemingly simple technique eluded me. Once, when I helped mom arrange the family photos into a thick album, I saw pictures of her in an army uniform. She was a sergeant serving in the communications division during World War II, and only sixteen when she was conscripted. How young and thin she looked! Since that day, I have always felt that my mom was the bravest woman I have ever known.

I have an older sister. By the time I learned how to tie my shoes, she had graduated from a music academy. She practiced every day, filling the house with the sounds of classical music and jazz. I liked listening to her play Mozart because his music sounded like happy bells. But I would run out of the piano room, shouting in mock horror whenever she practiced the interminable scales.

When I was still very small, my mother thought I would become a journalist, and my father believed I should be an architect. Their opinions of my future occupation were divided according to their own interests. My dad was fond of building and tinkering, and my mom was passionately curious about politics, always in pursuit of the “truth”.

I was too young then, of course, to worry about earning a living. I remember tingling with anticipation on September first as mom and dad took me to school. I wore my new, crisply ironed school dress, my hair was pulled back into a neat pony tail. In the school yard, I met twenty kids, who chattered excitedly about our class and our teacher. She turned out to be patient and kind. Everyone got brand new books.

Growing up I learned to read in English. English Lit classes were by far my favorite. Novels like The Tale of Two Cities made me cry; and authors like Mark Twain, whose characters I cherished, made me wish I never had to part with them.

From Georgia, I ended up halfway across the world in sunny Florida, where I now live with my amazing life partner and a very wise cat, Inkspot, who keeps an eye on me while I work.

Occupation:	Data Base Administrator, Story Writer
Location:	Florida
Interests:	Software, writing, reading, psychology, comparative religion, house renovations
Favorite Movies:	Dancing with Wolves, Gattica, The Fisher King, Star Wars, Avatar
Favorite Books:	Atlas Shrugged, Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep, The Handmaiden’s Tale, Star Rover

About my work

People often ask me, when did my fascination with the fairy tales begin?

It started with my first book, a gift from my parents. Although I was less than five years old, I remember that evening as if it happened yesterday. We were living in Georgia then, it was New Year's Eve, and we were expecting guests. My mom cooked all day, my sister helped. My dad moved the heavy furniture out of the way. A large dining table was set for the grown-ups, and my smaller tea-time table was placed at one end. I set the plates for the kids myself. When all was ready, and after I dressed in my best clothes, my father suddenly disappeared. Read more

The front doorbell rang, and my mother told me to let in the caller. Imagine my astonishment when Santa Clause stepped into our corridor, took me by the hand and led me to the living room. His beard was white and fluffy, as if it were made of cotton. He was wearing his gray sheepskin coat inside out, so the furry side was on the outside. In place of real snow, his hat and shoulders were covered by wisps of silver sequence.

I did not know this was my dad, I thought the stranger was truly Santa. I shyly thanked him for his gifts-a book of Georgian fairy tales and a toy train with rails in a big box. Then, in a thick voice, so I would not recognize him, Santa said he had other children to visit, placed the book and the train kit under our decorated fern tree, and left.

Some minutes later, my father came into the living room, his blue eyes shining mischievously, and what looked like bits of cotton clinging to his neck and ears. While he began setting up the toy train beneath the tree, (he loved to help me with mechanical toys), I opened my first book. Mom said I should put it away since our guests just started to arrive.

The next evening, my mother began reading the book to me. I became fascinated with the stories and what the heroes had done, what the animals said, for in my mind's eye, I could imagine all that transpired, down to what everyone was wearing. No doubt, it was then that I fell in love with fairy tales.

Magical stories motivated me to begin reading on my own. I could not wait for my mother to read them to me, and one tale before bedtime just wasn't enough. There were a hundred stories in the book, so before we reached the twentieth, I mastered the alphabet with mom's help. Now, nothing could stop me from reading as much as I wanted. There was plenty of time between play. Back then, we only had three TV channels. Cartoons were rarely shown, there was no such thing as Nickelodeon, and video games would not be invented for another decade.

It was during those chilly January evenings when my love of the fairy tale genre took hold of my heart. I wanted to read them, and I wanted to remember them, so I could tell them to my friends. I became a storyteller without being aware of it. After I finished all hundred tales, the best gift my parents could give me was a new book of fairy tales. The more remote the culture, the more fascinating I found it. My mom almost never refused me. Visiting a bookstore was a pleasurable occasion, and an excellent incentive for me to be on my best behavior. I am quite proud of the fact that I still have every single volume my parents gave me.

What is Georgia like?

It is a country that has always been special to me because it is the place of my earliest memories and warmest recollections. While it is tempting to begin citing the many interesting historical facts about Georgia, one would need to write a library of very thick books to justly depict it in all its beauty, complexity, and turbulent history. I am not a historian, I can only speak about Georgia in a way that is deeply personal. Read more

Why did I publish Georgian fairy tales?

Someone, I do not recall who, once said, "In life whatever you do for yourself dies with you, but whatever you do for others lives on."

The three books of Georgian tales I published have a personal significance for me because they were the first volume of fairy tales my parents gave me. Read more

How is retelling stories different from translating them?

Stories from another land often have an unfamiliar rhythm. They may place emphasis differently, or use figures of speech that may sound natural in one language but completely lose meaning or color in another. In those situations, word-for-word translations rarely work well. Hence, to achieve a better flow or clarity, or to tighten the plot, I embarked on the retelling of my favorite stories. I describe the scenes as I see them, I write the dialog as I hear it. Sometimes I feel that certain parts of the story need a stronger emphasis, while another part does not. At all times, however, my goal was to keep the central theme of the tale intact.

Are Georgian fairy tales violent?

Georgia is located at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. Since ancient times, Georgian people have been subject to many hostile raids, wars, abductions into slavery, and a slew of other misfortunes. I would guess that it was from those frightening encounters that the wild creatures known as Devs were conceived as bogeymen from whom people were forced to flee into the mountains, or stay and fight, or befriend and trick. Therefore, it is not surprising that Devs and Imps are featured in many of the Georgian fairy tales as the bad guys at their worst or silly characters when encountered in non-threatening situations. Read more

Are Georgian tales different from other nation's fairy tales?

Georgian fairy tales come to us from a rich and imaginative culture, and as such, they confirm to what we have come to recognize as familiar fairy tale morality in which goodness, humility, and bravery are applauded; greed, envy, and cruelty are frowned upon. Honesty is more desirable than deceit unless the tricks are meant as good-natured amusement. A high value is placed on compassion: empathy for both people and animals is always rewarded, without exception. Kindness and patience go a long way to ensure a favorable outcome for heroes and heroines. Read more

What other fairy tales do you like?

I love magical stories of all nations because they have the power to transform the reader into a world of imagination. The fairy genre is especially fascinating to me because the images and meaning that readers construct from them differ from person to person, the age when the stories are read, and the times when they are told. Read more

What relevance can old fairy tales have for kids today?

Fairy tales connect us to our roots-to our humanity. Tales teach kids about themselves and about our history. In today’s digital world, what we gain from the old stories is the knowledge of what it was like when people lived closer to the Earth. Tales help ground us morally and physically. Morally because they teach goodness and justice, physically because they describe tasks that had to be done by hand, something which I am afraid has been significantly reduced in modern times. With so many digital toys that surround kids today, most of what needs doing can be done sitting behind a keyboard. It is a concern that resonates with me as it must have resonated with the makers of a futuristic cartoon Wall-E, where humans abandoned the Earth in space ships, and it was left to a lonely robot to bring people back to their roots. Read more

Let Your Imagination Embark on a Magical Journey

Georgian Fairy Tales retold by E.A. Villi

Let Your Imagination Embark on a Magical Journey

Georgian Fairy Tales retold by E.A. Villi

The Magic of Georgian Fairy Tales

My Books

There Was and There Was Not

Era y no Era

Gifts of the Black Raven

Yes No Never