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[Eddie]

Hovannes Hovannisian – a poet of forgotten values

Poet Hovannes Hovannisian (1864-1929) is today almost forgotten. If the 80th anniversary of his death was commemorated last year it was so in the mutest of manners. Yet the legacy of this poet should have been a focus of our attention, and not just on account of an anniversary. Hovannisian’s poetry speaks to our day with an urgent wisdom. Contrary to received opinion he was a profoundly committed poet searching out for the proper moral equilibrium between individual ambition and desire and the interests of community and nation that constitute the individual’s social foundation.

In its richest significance Hovannes Hovannisian’s poetry is an urging for human solidarity, a beautiful affirmation that to be truly human one must aspire simultaneously after ones personal ambitions and the needs of our fellow men and women, our community and nation. Life ‘opens up two roads before’ every man and woman. It urges youth ‘to give life’s golden laughing days its fullest dues’ but it also demands that one ‘extends a fearless hand to the suffering mass.’ In his rounded assault on greedy individualism and selfish egoism Hovannisian addresses directly one of the central corruptions of our day – soulless individualism cemented by damaging disdain for community, society and nation.

But both separately and also knitted into his poetry of social engagement Hovannisian embraces other shores of life. He was no ascetic and it is not surprising that Komitas was enchanted by his love poetry with its beautifully perfected appropriation and utilisation of folklore, popular language and song. Delightful images, wonderful metaphors and vibrant colours evoke living passion, love and desire and doing so recall both an authentic and beautiful Armenian folk tradition and the Armenian medieval poetic tradition too. Hovannisian’s alertness to the passing of time and the waning of youthful energy and passion reveals a tragic dimension that in English poetry is sensed by Byron and by Shelley. His later poetry was marked by deeper, broader and darker shadows of loneliness and a sense of irretrievable defeat - ‘oh my heart, once paradise now ruin’.

Hovannisian also wrote some fine poetry that outlines his views on the role of art and the nature of poetic inspiration. Echoing the Armenian classical historians’ conception of literature he writes of his hope that the trumpet of his poetry ‘fires and inspires’, ‘awakens the sleeping and gives courage to the meek’ to resist injustice. But he also believed that poetry served to unearth emotion and sensibility buried deep in all living beings.

I will do more on the fellow for Groong and perhaps even render a few of his pieces into English.

Eddie Arnavoudian
3 May 2010

[Moushegh]

I will do more on the fellow for Groong and perhaps even render a few of his pieces into English.

Yes, please do.

Thank you.

Edited by Moushegh, 10 May 2010 - 06:09 PM.