Sayat-Nova: An 18th-century troubadour

[TomServo]

I have read parts of Charles Dowsett's monograph on Sayat-Nova using the preview option on Google Books and have been impressed with it. It appears to include translations and analyses of many of his khaghs (songs), which are difficult to understand -- even if you're a native Armenian speaker -- as they are often a mix of 18th-century Tiflis Armenian, Georgian, Persian, and Azerbaijani Turkish. I would love to purchase this book, but the only available copy on Amazon is a whoppingly expensive and used.

Reading passages from the book, you can tell Dowsett deeply loved the subject but never to the point of fetishizing it. It is beautifully written, though, and Dowsett must have had working knowlege of most of the languages Sayat-Nova wrote in, which is impressive.

I keep hoping a PDF version will somehow make its way onto the Internet...

P.S. I noticed Netflix recently removed Parajanov's The Color of Pomegranates from its streaming library. Fortunately, it is available for free on Vimeo...

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Sayat-Nova: An 18th-century troubadour

I read it shortly after it was published, which was quite a while ago, but I still remember how impressed I was with it. I don't own a copy of it, alas.

[TomServo]

Re: Sayat-Nova: An 18th-century troubadour

I've noticed some Armenian singers using modern Armenian words when singing Sayat-Nova's songs.

For example, when Gohar Gasparian sings,

Թամամ աշխարհ պըտուտ էկայ, չըթուղի Հաբաշ, նազա՛նի
T'amam ašxarh pətut êka, č'ət'ułi habaš, nazani
I have travelled the whole world over, not omitting Abyssinia, gracious one (tr. Dowsett)

she pronounces č'ət'ułi as č'ət'ołi, which makes sense in modern Armenian but is not faithful to the original pronunciation. She also uses hamar instead of hama.

I'm such a geek.

[TomServo]

Re: Sayat-Nova: An 18th-century troubadour

Does anyone happen to know what the Tatars of the Caucasus called their language prior to the intelligentsia's decision to call it Azeri/Azerbaijani? For example, what would a Tatar Sayat-Nova happened to come across call his/her language? In his work, Dowsett vacillates between using "Turkish of the Caucasus" or "Azeri Turkish." I also remember reading in a study that before the appellation "Azerbaijan" was decided on, there were proposals to name the country Turkey (!). So would they have referred to their language as "Turkcheh," then? I remember when the Azerbaijani Wikipedia interwiki link (which lists the name for each language in its native form rather than English) was "Azǝrbaycan," and then some time later it was changed to "Azǝrbaycanca."