Tekeyan NY/NJ Commemorates Taniel Varuzhan

Varuzhan has four major published volumes of poetry: Sarsurner (Tremors, 1905/6), Tseghin sirde (The Heart of the Race, 1909), Hetanos yerker (Pagan Songs, 1912), and the posthumous Hatsin yerke (The Song of the Bread, 1921). Arkun related how Varuzhan portrayed the difficulties of Armenians’ lives in his works, depicting Ottoman massacres and oppression, and the economic and social difficulties of living in cities. Yet he found strength and hope in the pagan past of the Armenians, and tried to offer a positive vision through literature to his compatriots. He was considered controversial at the time because of his odes to Armenian pagan gods, and the sensuality of his poetry. His encounters with capitalism made him into a socialist to a degree.

His last work, Hatsin yerke, was about the cycle of production of bread, from the sowing of the wheat to its transformation to flour and food. It was a lyrical presentation of village life that he never got to finish because of the Armenian Genocide. He was arrested on April 24, 1915 and brutally killed that summer, at the age of 31. Fortunately, his wife and friends managed to bribe officials and obtain the confiscated manuscript.

Varuzhan was one of the most important writers of the Ottoman Armenian renaissance. He built on the romanticism and realism of his predecessors to create a new aesthetic approach to poetry, while remaining an Armenian nationalist. As an heir of the Mkhitarian fathers, he enriched the Armenian language through the reanimation of words from Classical Armenian, but did it through modern ideologies. He served as an intellectual leader in various groupings of Armenian writers after his return from Europe.

After Aram, the beloved poet Vehanoush Tekian was invited to the stage to recite her poem which she had dedicated to Varuzhan. This was a surprise, which brought a new level of richness and quality to the already vibrant program.

The next speaker was Dr. Vartan Matiossian. While he grew up in Argentina, his love of Armenian culture and values connected him to Armenian schools, education and life. He is a respected member of New York Armenian intellectual circles, and encourages TCA in its activities.

His talk was in Armenian, and here I will present in summary translation a few of his thoughts. “The first three volumes were sufficient to bring Varuzhan to the peak of Western Armenian poetry. And he will remain there forever, for Western Armenian and Western Armenian literature ended with his generation and its survivors. The diaspora and Diasporan Armenian literature succeeded them—the product of a completely different environment and conditions.”

“I wish that this event becomes an opportunity for those who have up until now only been listeners, to turn into readers, and for readers to read again.”

“It is possible to read the following lines from the article “Hay lezui khntir” [Question of the Armenian Language] published in 1911 in a metaphorical fashion on the nation-building role of poetry: ‘the language began to become foreign and servile with some writers who had no talent, at least in order to keep it in the same condition in which it was presented to them by magnificent writers like Bedros Turian, Krikor Odian and Hagop Baronian… But where was the Province, where the whole of the soul of the people resides? Where were its multitudes of powerful, picturesque, and realistic minstrels? That language which arises distant from its breast of course cannot express those great ideals, the epic poetry of those sublime images, which belong to its man and to its soil. That language truly did not have the universal pulsing of a people’s heart, though, we must confess, it very successfully, in great detail, outlined the irritation of the subject’s emotions.”

Dr. Matiossian in a very succinct fashion presented the affectionate relations between Varuzhan and Vahan Tekeyan, despite the differences in principles of the two great poets.

It was impossible to obtain copies of Varuzhan’s books from New York Armenian bookstores in order to make them available to audience members. During this centennial of the Genocide, amazingly it was not possible to find any books of the martyrs of the Genocide in the bookstores of the Diocese, Prelacy and Armenian General Benevolent Union. Under those circumstances, the author of this article gave a copy of his book Hantibumner 1 [Encounters 1] to each guest, as it contained an interview with the daughter of Varuzhan, Veronica, in New York. At least the guests would have a lasting memento of this literary evening.

After the formal program, a reception took place organized by Marie Zokian, Helen Misk and Diana Mkhitarian.