Avetik Isahakyan: biography and creativity

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The famous Armenian poet Avetik Isahakyan left behind a huge literary heritage, which became available to Russian-speaking readers at the beginning of the 20th century in the translations of A. Blok, V. Bryusov, I. Bunin and B. Pasternak. Of no less interest is the history of his life, which during the years of the existence of the USSR was presented to the public in a carefully edited form. In particular, even 20-30 years ago, even in Armenia itself, few people knew that the winner of the Stalin Prize of the first degree in 1921 took an active part in organizing Operation Nemesis.

Avetik Isahakyan: biography (childhood)

The poet was born in 1875 in Alexandropol, Erivan province (Russian Empire, now Gyumri, Republic of Armenia). His father - Sahak Isahakyan - was the son of settlers from Old Bayazet, who in 1828 were forced to leave their home and go with the retreating Russian troops to the Shirak Valley.

As a child, little Avo was brought up by his grandmother and mother Almast. As he often noted later, they personified for him the ideal of an Armenian patriarchal woman, infinitely devoted to her family and ready to endure anydeprivation for her welfare. It was from them that he heard many tales of legend, which became the basis of the best of his works.

Seminary studies

Avetik Isahakyan started writing his first poems at the age of 11. Soon his family went on a pilgrimage to St. Etchmiadzin, where he met the students of the Gevorkian Seminary known throughout the Christian East. Although the knowledge of the teenager allowed him to pass the entrance exams, the leadership of the educational institution demanded to submit documents on primary education, which Isahakyan did not have. Then his parents were advised to send their son to a school at the Archa Monastery for a year. There, Avetik showed great diligence, and, returning to Etchmiadzin in 1889, he was accepted immediately into the 3rd grade of the seminary.

Like the other 150 pupils who arrived from different parts of Eastern and Western Armenia, in 1891 Avetik Isahakyan took part in student riots. One of the demands of the youth who refused to attend the lectures was to release them from the vow of renunciation of the world, which forbade communication with outsiders, with the exception of rare visits with relatives. Having failed to achieve their goal, many middle school students, including the future famous poet, left the seminary.

Study Abroad

The knowledge gained in the seminary, where, in addition to theological subjects, great attention was paid to the teaching of foreign languages, helped Avetik Isahakyan in his journey through Europe, during which from 1892 to 1895 he studied philosophy and anthropology in Leipziguniversity. Then the young man visited Geneva, where he attended lectures by G. V. Plekhanov, who made a huge impression on him.

Joining the ranks of the Dashnaktsutyun

Back in Eastern Armenia, Avetik Isahakyan decided to devote himself to the political struggle. With this, he joined the ranks of one of the oldest Armenian political parties, Dashnaktsutyun, illegally operating on the territory of the Russian Empire. His active work did not go unnoticed, and in 1896 the poet was arrested and spent a year in the Erivan prison, after which he was sent to Odessa.

After obtaining permission to travel abroad, he went to Zurich, where he attended a course of lectures on literature and the history of philosophy at the local university. However, Isahakyan could not stay far from his homeland for a long time, and, returning to Alexandropol in 1902, he again became involved in the revolutionary struggle against tsarism. She demanded his presence in Tiflis, where the poet was again arrested in 1908 and sent to the Metekhi prison for 6 months along with representatives of the Armenian intelligentsia.

Life in exile

Convinced that Isahakyan is not amenable to "re-education", the authorities decided to expel him from the territory of the Russian Empire. In 1911, the poet was forced to leave the country and settled in Germany. At the beginning of the First World War, he was extremely concerned about the plight of the Armenians in Turkey, whom the Turkish government suspected of supporting Russia. At the same time, even residents of the regions that were on the border were subjected to persecution and pogroms.distance of thousands of kilometers from the front line.

In order to prevent the massacre, Isahakyan, together with Johannes Lepsius and Paul Rohrbach, organized the German-Armenian Society, which was supposed to draw the attention of the Western public to the plight of Eastern Christians. However, all attempts to prevent the massacre failed, and in 1915 Germany's allies - the Young Turks - successfully implemented one of their main tasks - the liberation of Western Armenia from the indigenous population through its genocide.

Avetik Isahakyan: Role in Operation Nemesis

Although after the end of World War I, Turkey itself condemned the organizers of the massacre of Armenians and sentenced some in absentia, including one of the members of the government "triumvirate" Talaat Pasha, to death, most of them lived well in Europe. In 1919, a group of Dashnaktsutyun members began to implement a plan of retribution. They developed Operation Nemesis, which involves the physical destruction of the organizers of the genocide. Isahakyan Avetik Sahakovich took an active part in it.

According to the surviving written evidence, he not only hunted down high-ranking Turkish criminals hiding in Germany, but also volunteered for the role of the second shooter, who was supposed to shoot Talaat Pasha if Soghomon Tehlirian missed. The murder of the former Minister of the Interior of Turkey took place on March 15, 1921 in Berlin. At the same time, Isahakyan's intervention was not required, and the German court, which turned into a kind of Nuremberg trial of the Young Turk criminals,justified the Armenian avenger.

Return from exile

In the second half of the thirties of the last century, the Soviet state began to show great activity in the return of prominent representatives of the intelligentsia to the USSR. Among those who were promised all-round support at home was Avetik Isahakyan, who repeatedly spoke in the European press in support of many undertakings of the young state. He returned to Yerevan in 1936 and was elected Chairman of the Union of Writers of the Armenian USSR, Academician of the Republican Academy of Sciences and Deputy of the Supreme Council. The poet died in 1957 and was buried in the city Pantheon of Yerevan.

Creativity

The main thing that Avetik Isahakyan is known for is poems about the Motherland, about the hard lot of an ordinary worker and his desire for freedom. There are many lyrical works in the poet's work, where love for a woman and mother is glorified.

Attention deserves the poetic retellings of legends written by him, for example, "Mother's Heart" ("The Sirt Sea"). Avetik Isahakyan in this work tells about a young man from whom a cruel beauty demands the heart of his mother as a token of love. After long hesitation, the distraught young man fulfills the request of his beloved and kills the woman who gave birth to him. When he hurries to his chosen one, he stumbles, and the mother's heart in his hands exclaims: "My poor boy, are you hurt?"

Now you know what a difficult life Avetik Isahakyan lived. Poems in Armenian created bythem, sound in all schools in his homeland, and help boys and girls to know the age-old wisdom of their people, clothed in a poetic form.