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A thought-provoking article by Christopher Atamian that recently ran in Ararat magazine.
It was while translating Krikor Beledian’s 50 Years of Armenian Literature in France from French into English that I discovered that Missak Manouchian and I were cousins. Who was Missak Manouchian and why is my relation to him important? I will delve into both these matters a bit later on in this short essay, which I have purposefully structured like a chassé-croisé, a weaving of ideas and observations.
For over fifty years there existed in France several generations of Armenian writers, most of them refugees in one way or another from Ottoman lands, who wrote almost entirely in Armenian for an Armenian audience. Some of them, such as Zareh Vorpuni, Hratch Zartarian, Nigoghos Sarafian and Shahan Shahnur, were part of the so-called Menk or We group. Others, I am thinking in particular of the stunning feminist writer Zabel Yessayan, were only peripherally part of what has become known as the “Paris School,” “Ecole de Paris” or “Parisi Tbrotsuh.” These writers produced numerous novels, plays, magazines, newspapers, feuilletons, essays, medical treatises — you name it — all in Western Armenian.
What is most remarkable to me about these now-departed writers? Simply that they wrote in Western Armenian for an Armenian audience. All this, we must realize, has been lost, perhaps one of the last phases of the Aghet or Catastrophe. We have lost our language however, not simply because of the Turkish will to annihilation but also because of our own cultural priorities and our own will to forget. I attended a French Lycée in New York, for example, which is part of a global network of schools that has produced literally hundreds of thousands of francophone citizens across the globe. In fact, in my year and the year below me at the New York school, not less than four students have become recognized and even prize-winning authors — in French.
Full article available here.
It was while translating Krikor Beledian’s 50 Years of Armenian Literature in France from French into English that I discovered that Missak Manouchian and I were cousins. Who was Missak Manouchian and why is my relation to him important? I will delve into both these matters a bit later on in this short essay, which I have purposefully structured like a chassé-croisé, a weaving of ideas and observations.
For over fifty years there existed in France several generations of Armenian writers, most of them refugees in one way or another from Ottoman lands, who wrote almost entirely in Armenian for an Armenian audience. Some of them, such as Zareh Vorpuni, Hratch Zartarian, Nigoghos Sarafian and Shahan Shahnur, were part of the so-called Menk or We group. Others, I am thinking in particular of the stunning feminist writer Zabel Yessayan, were only peripherally part of what has become known as the “Paris School,” “Ecole de Paris” or “Parisi Tbrotsuh.” These writers produced numerous novels, plays, magazines, newspapers, feuilletons, essays, medical treatises — you name it — all in Western Armenian.
What is most remarkable to me about these now-departed writers? Simply that they wrote in Western Armenian for an Armenian audience. All this, we must realize, has been lost, perhaps one of the last phases of the Aghet or Catastrophe. We have lost our language however, not simply because of the Turkish will to annihilation but also because of our own cultural priorities and our own will to forget. I attended a French Lycée in New York, for example, which is part of a global network of schools that has produced literally hundreds of thousands of francophone citizens across the globe. In fact, in my year and the year below me at the New York school, not less than four students have become recognized and even prize-winning authors — in French.
Full article available here.
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