Panel on Vahé and Hagop Oshagan Held in Lisbon

Taline Voskeritchian

 

Lisbon was recently the site of two important events related to the literature of the Armenian diaspora.

The first was a panel that convened at the International Symposium of the Modern Language Association, the major professional association for scholars and teachers of language and literature, including comparative literature. This year’s theme was Remembering Voices Lost. According to the organizers, the conference, which took place between July 23 and 25 in the Portuguese capital, aimed to “recuperate the ‘lost voices’ of humanity: those that have been buried or forgotten and those that have been marginalized or othered on the grounds of their perceived foreignness.”

ExԱյլ: Krikor Beledian on Diasporic Multilingualism

Karen Jallatyan

Two translations in two years. Two translations of Krikor Beledian’s monumental Fifty Years of Armenian Literature in France, 1922-1972, From the Same to the Other (Cinquante ans de littérature arménienne en France, 1922-1972, Du Même à L’Autre, 2001, CNRS) were published in the past two years: the English version translated by Christopher Atamian in 2016; the Armenian version a year later, translated by Arpi Totoyan. Growing out of Beledian’s second dissertation, defended in 1995, this meticulously researched volume analyzes the Armenian Catastrophe and diasporic exile by presenting the literary milieu and the literature of the “Menk” (We) generation whose authors – among them Shahnour, Sarafian, and Vorpouni – started publishing in the 1920s and were active well into the 1970s. Here, I will focus on the essay “The Bilingual Net” («Երկլեզու ցանցը», 5-39) with which Beledian introduces his work’s Armenian translation. True to its title, this text attempts to think diasporic multilingualism from the prism of reading (hence writing) literature. Before delving into the essay, I invite you to take a brief excursion through Beledian’s literary criticism to see what this author might mean by “thinking” (theorizing) and “reading” (writing).

On Western Armenian and Translating: A Conversation with Christopher Atamian

Rupen Janbazian

 

Author and literary critic Krikor Beledian’s Fifty Years of Armenian Literature in France, translated from the original French into English by Christopher Atamian, is a groundbreaking study of the Armenian literary scene in the important Armenian Diaspora community of France.

The book examines Armenian literature as it emerged in France between 1922 and the early 1970s, and retraces the literary history of the period, starting with Armenian immigration until the passing away of the movement’s main representatives. It also examines the most significant works published in that period, studying the issues raised by a literature of exile, born after an event that was experienced and interpreted as a “national catastrophe.”

Beledian has lived in Paris since 1967 and has become intimately aware of the Armenian literary scene in France. He is an accomplished writer in his own right, as well as prolific critic. Through this book, he has produced comprehensive and fascinating view of the Armenian literary landscape in France, one that will be of lasting significance to the study of Armenian literature.

Atamian’s translation of Fifty Years of Armenian Literature in France comes out at a time when a small but important number of works in translation are shedding light on literature previously unavailable in English.

The Armenian Weekly recently sat down with Atamian to discuss this latest publication.

Nigoghos Sarafian's "The Princess"

Jennifer Manoukian

The following is a translation of the first chapter of a novel by Nigoghos Sarafian entitled "The Princess." Originally written in Western Armenian, the novel was published in 1934 in Paris. 

Between the wars, Paris replaced Constantinople as the center of Western Armenian intellectual life. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, France served as one of the largest havens for Armenians and its capital provided exiled Armenian writers and intellectuals, in particular, with a space to revive Armenian literary culture. This literary culture had been all but decimated in 1915 by the Armenian genocide, during which the intellectual leadership of the Ottoman Armenian community was almost entirely eliminated. Those writers who went on to initiate the literary revival in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s were of a younger generation that had experienced the genocide and its aftermath as young men. They had been educated in the Armenian schools of Constantinople during the Allied occupation between 1918 and 1922 by the few surviving writers of the old guard, before both teachers and students were forced to flee the advancing nationalist forces that would eventually claim Constantinople and establish the Republic of Turkey in 1923. 

Remembering Simon Simonian

Vahe H. Apelian

 

Simon Simonian was one of the towering intellects and literary figures of the Armenian Diaspora's post-Genocide century. He was an educator, publisher, editor, author, and an activist.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of his birth. Simonian was born on March 24, 1914 in Aintab. His Sassoun-born father's name was Ove (Օվէ). His mother's name was Menoush (Մենուշ). She hailed from Aintab. Sassoun was once an exclusively Armenian-inhabited highland while Aintab (now Gaziantep) had a large Armenian population. Simonian was their eldest child.

Ethereal Aleppo

Antranig Dzarougian

Translated by Jennifer Manoukian

 



Translator's Note: The following passages are taken from Antranig Dzarougian’s 1980 memoir, Ethereal Aleppo ՚(«Երազային Հալէպը»). One of the foremost writers and editors in the Armenian Diaspora, Dzarougian lived and worked in the Armenian communities of Syria and Lebanon. Born in 1913 in the Ottoman town of Gurin (modern Gürün), Dzarougian was rescued during the massacres and brought to Aleppo, where he was raised in an Armenian orphanage. He is best known for a memoir about that period in his life, People without a Childhood («Մանկութիւն չունեցող մարդիկ»),(*) as well as for his long poem, Letter to Yerevan («Թուղթ առ Երեւան»), and for the various pieces of prose and poetry published in Nayiri, the Aleppo-based, and later Beirut-based, literary journal that he founded and edited.