Eddie

The role of Armenians in the 1760-1763 Indian rebellion against British rule in Bengal. The rebellion was led Mir Kassim whose central military commander was an Armenian of the name of Krikor Haroutyounian more widely known as Kevork Khan. Among the tens of thousands of Indian soldiers he led were a prominent group of Armenians. Their bravery and the respect they won for it was such that after one victorious battle both Indian and Armenian flags were raised. As to the Armenian flag however there was no detail offered so I cannot be sure what flag it was. The rebellion was ultimately suppressed after Kevork Khan was treacherously murdered by the British. British retaliation included the East India company purchasing all the available grain in the region and offering it for sale at prices the locals could never afford. As a result of this English made famine 10 million Indians died. Armenian participation in an Indian anti-British was is not surprising. Armenian traders and merchants in India were part of the Indian economy as were Armenian artisans. Indian goods and goods made in India by Armenian artisans were traded by Armenian merchants. As the British systematically destroyed Indian manufacture and crafts Armenians too suffered. And so they had reason to oppose the British occupation. For their role in the uprising the British House of Commons withdrew Armenian trading privileges in regions worked by the East India Company. This whole story is of course significant in another way. How much of Armenian military prowess has been spent beyond Armenian borders...Of course some of this as in the above case was to excellent effect. But had all the Armenian military talent gone to defend Armenia...one can only imagine the present as entirely different. Eddie Arnavoudian

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

Here two poems, one by Vahan Derian, the other by an English fellow Leigh Hunt. Both in their own, very different, way express a moment of human solidarity so central to our existence. Eddie 76. I shall be there, when alone Beneath the melancholic evening shadows You bury your broken dream And walk away forlorn When sorrow settles in your spent heart I shall come like a forgotten song Woven with prayers, with love and with flowers I shall call you to other shores I shall come when you are sad When your dreams are forever dashed I shall hold your hand and bear your pain I shall light other fires for your soul (Vahan Derian) Abou Ben Adhem Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw, within the moonlight in his room, Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, An angel writing in a book of gold:— Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, And to the Presence in the room he said "What writest thou?"—The vision raised its head, And with a look made of all sweet accord, Answered "The names of those who love the Lord." "And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so," Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low, But cheerly still, and said "I pray thee, then, Write me as one that loves his fellow men." The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night It came again with a great wakening light, And showed the names whom love of God had blessed, And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. (Leigh Hunt)

I do have Sevak's prose writings. If anyone wants some of them scanned into the site please let me know. Best regards eddie

I have just finished reading Berj Broshian's novel'Pghte'. It is not his most famous but it is both from an literary and historical angle of significant value. Before writing a review of this book I thought it proper to perpare this overview based on a brief but charming biography by one S Manoukian. Here is a draft of my notes. Berj Broshian (1837-1907) – an artist and activist for today Nineteenth century novelist and educationalist Berj Broshian is today undeservedly neglected. Slighted and even derided, his novels dismissed as third-rate art, albeit admitted to owning valuable ethnographic data, his educational work is also almost forgotten. Manoukian’s wonderful little biography (198pp, 1964, Yerevan) is an apt challenge to such inept evaluations. In this endearing account Broshian appears as a type desperately needed in contemporary Armenia whose people are being abused and wasted by corrupt elites totally indifferent to the lives of the common people. Immensely talented Broshian possessed a phenomenal memory – at 15 he could recite the whole of Narek as well as the works of Khorenatzi, Barpetzi and other 5th century and classical historians. He also had the ability to take courageous and risky initiatives and support these with the stubborn determination of the most stubborn mule. Gifted and talented Broshian could have secured for himself a privileged existence. But he dedicated himself instead to providing education and culture for his people. Amidst reactionary clerical forces that suffocated Armenian education Broshian was a star and the work that he did here is as valuable if not more so than his literary legacy for which he is better known and that he perhaps loved better too. In 1861 Broshian set up the very first public girl’s school in Tbilisi. Thereafter in a life of teaching he established yet another school in Yerevan in 1866 and two years later still another in Akoulis. Regarding theatre as part of popular education in 1863 he helped in the formation of the first permanent Armenian theatre company in Tbilisi. Inspired by Khatchadour Abovian’s example, Broshian fought to introduce modern educational methods to and to end flogging that took the place of discipline. He opposed the violence and brutality of a clergy that drummed useless dogma and superstition into their often cold and hungry students. For this he was reviled and relentlessly persecuted by the dominant reactionary wing of the Church that after much secured his official state disqualification from teaching in national schools. This great historic accomplishment of 19th century educational work is easily overlooked. Though there may be little direct trace of Broshian’s pedagogical work it can be argued without exaggeration that it contributed its part to the survival of the Armenian nation in the eastern portions of their historic lands. The network of schools of which Broshian’s were a part served to generate among a powerful sense of national identity and pride that served future generations well in battles Tsarist oppression and Turkish invasion. Committed to popular education Broshian again in the footsteps of Abovian favoured literature in the spoken of the people. In 1859 when only just 22 and writing in local dialect he completed his first novel ‘Sos and Vartiter' that was judged by Mikael Nalpantian to have established, along with Abovian's `The Wounds of Armenia', the foundations of the modern Armenian novel'. Broshian was not however able to devote himself to writing full-time. Relentless Church persecution and the Russian closure of Armenian schools also denied him the opportunity to earn a consistent living by teaching. So he also turned to proof-reading, to photography and even did a stint as a coal merchant. Yet despite hard Broshian managed to write a string more of novels. ‘The Battle Front’, ‘Shahen’, ‘The Problem of Bread’, ‘Parasites’, ‘Pghte’, ‘Huno’ and ‘Revenge’ (still unpublished) al in different ways give expression to his disgust for Armenian commercial and Church elites, for their ignorance and superstition as well as his hatred of the thievery of parasitic priests and merchants. Some also reflect a vision of the inter-ethnic with the protagonist in ‘Khetcho’ making it his business to force any ‘greedy Armenian or Turk’ ‘who seized a slice of bread from the mouth of a poor man’ to ‘correct their ways…or…become components of hell’ whilst the protagonist in ‘Huno’ defends the downtrodden of any nationality. The refutation of the dismissive artistic judgement upon Broshian’s novels must await another opportunity. For the moment an evaluation of Broshian’s ‘The Parasites’ by great novelist Shirvanzade must suffice. Shirvanzade never held back from the harshest evaluation when this was necessary and whilst noting some of the structural weaknesses of Broshian’s novels, as well as their psychological and linguistic failings adds: ‘Broshian differs from our other writers in that he knows well that which he writes about. He grasps the authentic life of the people, its language, traditions, sayings and turns of phrase better than any of our other authors…The characters that he depicts, whatever the flaws, are living people. They are not the author’s artificially produced whimsical constructs.’ Beyond his educational and literary work Broshian stood by the common people in journalistic work as well. In his memoirs he judges the 1865 destruction of the Tbilisi city mayor’s offices by protesting workers as ‘a very natural phenomenon’, an ‘expression of the sacred principle of self-defence’. A few years later in his ‘Letters from Yerevan’ he criticised the peasantry exploitation in rural Armenia where ‘despite the rich yield of the land the native population lives in the harshest poverty whilst others benefit.’ How then to explain Broshian’s absurd consignment to the dustbin of conservatism? Perhaps his refusal to join the influential Krikor Ardzrouni in an uncritical welcome of capitalist development offered ideological opponents ammunition to portray Broshian as a feudalist of sorts. Perhaps the stringent secularist Ardzrouni and his cohorts who then dominated Armenian public life demanded of a Broshian a commitment to the complete separation of Church and education that he could not accept for conscious of an enlightened trend within the Church he sought to collaborate with it. Whatever the reasons behind them none of charges stick. Berj Broshian was no revolutionary but neither was he a reactionary. He was part of the democratic and popular artistic and intellectual tradition alongside Toumanian, Shirvanzade, Aghayan and others. As figures dedicated to the national and people’s good they all, including the derided Broshian can serve as role models for public life in Armenia today. Eddie Arnavoudian 9 April 2010

Here in my second posting on this forum a few thoughts on the 1909 Adana Massacres, now one hundred years ago.... The 1909 Adana Massacres in Armenian Cilicia and the 1915 Genocide Any examination of the 19th and 20th century history of Armenian Cilicia throws important light upon a critical and revealing though often overlooked aspect of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Genocide that was its most barbarous expression. I. Though not part of historic Armenia, Cilicia was home to a substantial body of Armenians dating back to the Armenian kingdoms and feudal estates established there in 12th to 14th centuries following the collapse of the Bagratouni dynasty. During the 19th and early 20th century, as a result of Cilicia’s proximity to Europe, its intersecting point for trade between Asia Minor, Europe, the Middle East and beyond and its own agricultural potential and Mediterranean coastline, Cilician Armenian merchants and traders emerged as a significant force in the region. Their economic power was enhanced further for resting upon a large Armenian community that had a potentially formidable military-political tradition of independence, as exemplified by the history of semi-autonomous Zeitun. Inevitably therefore Cilicia became also a point of critical competition and conflict between the emerging Turkish commercial class and the already established Armenian that had close associations with French capital also eyeing Cilicia imperial ambitions. II. A study of Armeno-Turkish relations demonstrates that in the Turkish nationalist settling of scores with its Armenian competitors it inevitably had to go beyond the ethnic cleansing of historic Armenia itself. The destruction of historic Armenia and the breaking of the back of Armenian national development in historic Armenian lands alone would by no means have sufficed for the Turkish nationalists to become masters of what remained of the Empire. The Turkish nationalist elite confronted an Armenian economic opponent that was based primarily outside historical Armenia with its most significant foundations being across the whole of Asia Minor and possessing a reach that stretched from Istanbul and Smyrna right through Anatolia, western Armenia, Cilicia and beyond. There could be no Turkish elite triumph without the destruction of Armenian wealth throughout the Empire and throughout Asia Minor in particular. Turkish nationalism therefore determined to use its control of the Ottoman state to demolish its Armenian (and other) opposition by whatever barbaric means necessary To this task the Abdul Hamid, Young Turks and the Kemalist forces dedicated themselves, the first two before and the last after 1915. III. The 1909 Adana massacres were Turkish nationalism’s Cilician stop in what was a systematic process of destruction aimed at dismantling Armenian economic and social positions throughout Asia Minor. If the slaughter of 1895-96 had delivered a devastating blow to the Armenian national forces in its historic homeland, 1909 was the Cilician Armenian 1895-96. Both were body blows to Armenian economic and social power that paved the way for their Turkish competitors. 1895-6 and 1909 blasted at the foundations of Armenian economic and national development and prepared the grounds for the final solution in 1915. 1915 as the critical date for the Young Turk final solution may have been contingent, an opportunity seized in war with plenty of pretexts fabricated. Yet the process of destroying Armenian nation formation, demolishing Armenian commercial and economic power and dispossessing Armenian communities of their historic land right through the empire began well before 1915 and continued long after. The attacks on relatively autonomous Armenian Zeitoun and Sassoun, the arson in Van, and then the 1985-96 Massacres, followed by 1909 in Adana were stages in preparation of the final solution of 1915. IV. But even the Genocide of 1915 that emptied historic Armenia of its Armenian population was not enough to ensure the undisputed reactionary Turkish dominance. Historic Armenia may have been buried. But throughout Asia Minor Armenian commercial and economic power survived and continued to represent a challenge. To deal with this problem in the post Ottoman period was one of the main projects of the Kemalist nationalists who replaced the Young Turks. The Kemalist assault on Smyrna (though it had other aims also and indeed more pressing), the emptying of Istanbul of its Armenian elite and the systematic offensive against surviving Armenian economic strongholds that lasted right into the 1950s completed the process begun by Abdul Hamid and continued by the Young Turks. IV. What the Cilician experience, and the post 1915 Armenian experience in what is illegitimately called the Turkish Republic shows is the existence of a two pronged strategy pursed by the Young Turk/Kemalist forces as they sought to emerge dominant in land they had seized from other peoples. As an expression the imperialist chauvinism the Young Turks fought to secure territorial control of what remained of the Ottoman Empire – thus their assault on Armenians in western Armenia and Cilicia. If the Young Turks accomplished the first stage of the Genocide – clearing historic Armenia and began the second stage, the Kemalists set about completing this second one – systematically crippling Armenian economic power throughout the so-call Turkish Republic and as a secondary task ensuring the removal of last remnants of Armenians from historic Armenia and Cilicia. Eddie Arnavoudian 31 March 2010

Though I have at odd times seen my name on this forum, I am new to it and not therefore sure how it works. But noting the importance attached to Armenian literature, below is a draft portion of a review I am doing of a fine translation of Aksel Bakunts by Nairi Hakhverdi. Any comments as I prepare this review for Groong will be appreciated. Eddie ‘The Dark Valley: Short Stories by Aksel Bakunts (Translated by Nairi Hakhverdi, 149pp, 2008, Taderon Press, London) Part One: Peasant life in the era of war, genocide and revolution I Aksel Bakunts’s ‘Dark Valley’ is locked into the rugged heights of some of eastern Armenia’s most remote mountainous regions. ‘Almost untouched and wild’ it resembles ‘one of those forgotten places from an era when mankind did not exist and the fossilised dinosaur felt as free as the bear does in our days (p13, 140). It was from within the villages of this valley that Bakunts fashioned this, his first, volume of short stories unearthing dramas of maimed lives, deep sorrows, lost loves, wounded spirits and sad remembrances, the artistic excellence of which is conveyed amply in this new English translation by Nairi Hakhverdi. The best of Bakunts’s stories have a quality of poetry - brief but powerful moments of experience grasped with revealing intensity. They are in addition profoundly revolutionary and this in a broader sense than is suggested by Bakunts’ support for Soviet power. Lives in the Dark Valley are distorted, bent, torn and snapped not by preordained individual destiny but by socially created and therefore potentially alterable collective and individual relations as well as by backwardness, prejudice and superstition that are here exposed on almost every page. Though scarred the lives of the inhabitants of the Dark Valley contain an additional but equally potent significance. Their story will inject into even the most hardened city dweller a vivid feeling for existence not marred by the unnatural dislocations of urban life. The fullness of peasant life lived at one with nature, despite its impoverishment invites attention to inherent possibilities of existence free of the ugly consumerism that is peddled as an escape from 21st century alienation. Remote as the Dark Valley is, it is nevertheless bound by a dozen strings to the wider world of 19th and early 20th century Tsarist occupied eastern Armenia and so also battered by the tide of World War, the Armenian Genocide, the Russian Revolution and the coming of Soviet power. Reflecting their impact Bakunts’s work also offers perhaps one of the most authentic histories of the eastern Armenian peasantry, of its relations to Tsarist state and of the deadly effect of war and Genocide on their communities. In the wonderful book of the Armenian peasantry written by novelists and poets such as Khachadour Abovian, Berj Broshian, Ghazaros Aghayan, Muratzan, Tlgadintzi, Hamasdegh, Hovaness Toumanian and others, Bakunts added his own chapter covering the period from the turn of the 20th century to the upheavals of Soviet collectivisation. Written prior to the fatal triumph of Stalinism ‘The Dark Valley’ additionally, and with subtle accuracy, illuminates the reticent, even ambivalent albeit not hostile, attitude of a section of the Armenian peasantry to the 1917 Russian revolution. Anahit Sahinyan an outstanding novelist demanded the highest standards of translated literature. She found even wanting Hovanness Toumanian’s Armenian renditions of Pushkin poetry that have been generally judged as near to perfection as possible. ‘Whatever Toumanian has translated’ she remarks ‘certainly offers the Armenian reader a taste of poetry, but it is not the taste Puskhin’s poetry, it is that of Toumanian’s.’ (p148) If this be the standard, and so it should be, Nairi Hakhverdi’s translation of Bakunts into English, albeit not flawless, is a significant accomplishment. Though not all, many of the lapses are technical in character, a product of the complexities of Armenian dialect or even editorial errors, rather than of questionable artistic appreciation. Nairi Hakhverdi takes us almost seamlessly into Bakunts’s fictional world and gives us a sense of his creative energy, his craft and his technique. Her English rendition offers something of the precision of the prose, the astonishingly apt choice and use of words, the graphic images and metaphors, the defining detail and the poetic evocation of the original. Conveying something of Bakunts’s bold, almost scientific and steady fluency of expression this translation enables us to grasp lives and sensibilities not just of men and women, but of all living things, of animals, of horses, dogs, lizards, worms and of plant life too, of flowers and trees and shrubs. Bakunts does sometimes falter with forced metaphors, invented as if to signal authorial skill, rather than communicate content. But beyond exceptions there dominates a particular quality of naturalism minus any trace of redundant reproduction assumed to be the flaw of this genre. If there is a photographic quality, it is as art, of substance recreated not appearance copied. Putting us, as it were into the skin and fold of soil, plant, animal and beast as well of course of man and women and that in the remotest of nature’s edge, Bakunts enables the modern reader to appreciate something also what we share with and of our own fundamental unity the natural world.