He then entered the faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University (Russia) in 1883, as a non-credit student, but returned to Georgia in 1884 due to financial constraints.

Vazha-Pshavela is the author of many world-class literary works – 36 epics, about 400 poems ("Aluda Ketelauri", "Bakhtrioni", "Gogotur and Apshina", "Host and Guest", "Snake eater", "Eteri", "Mindia", etc.

The principal characters in both works come to question and ultimately to disregard outdated laws upheld by their respective communities, in their personal journey toward a greater humanity that transcends the merely parochial.

The catalytic plot device of Mindia's consumption of serpent's flesh in an attempt at suicide – which results instead in his obtaining of occult knowledge, constitutes a literary employment of the central, folk tale motif present in The White Snake (Brothers Grimm) which epitomizes tale type 673 in the Aarne-Thompson classification system.

The epic Bakhtrioni (1892, Russian translation 1943) tells of the part played by the tribes of the Georgian highlands in the uprising of Kakheti (East Georgia) against the Iranian oppressors in 1659.

Thanks to excellent translations into Russian (by Nikolay Zabolotsky, V. Derzhavin, Osip Mandelshtam, Boris Pasternak, S. Spassky, Marina Tsvetaeva, and others), into English (by Donald Rayfield, Venera Urushadze, Lela Jgerenaia, Nino Ramishvili, and others), into French (by Gaston Bouatchidzé), and into German (by Yolanda Marchev, Steffi Chotiwari-Jünger [de]), the poet's work has found the wider audience that it undoubtedly deserves.

To date, his poems and narrative compositions have been published in more than 20 languages Vazha-Pshavela died in Tiflis on 10 July 1915 and was buried there, in the ancient capital city of his native land, being accorded the signal honour of a tomb in the prestigious Pantheon of the Mtatsminda Mountain, in recognition both of his literary achievements and his role as a representative of the National Liberation movement of Georgia.