Yeghishe Charents

[SAS]

------------Xosq havastiqi-------------

 

Ka Metsarenc, ka Teryan,- yev bazum urish poetner kan,

Bayc - Tumanyann e anhas Ararat@ mer nor qertutyan:

 

***

 

Na mets er aveli, qan yeghav:Yerknqi nman @ndardzak,

Ovkiani nman` ir vogin @ndgrkel er kyanq@ anyezr:

Yev vogu aperin nstats` na nayum er hayacqov paytsar

Yev vorsum er yerger u xoher, yev tesnum er chqnagh yerazner...

 

***

 

Na mets er hoghov , aryunov: Armatner uner na hoghum:

Ir yerger@- geghjuk nayircu qrtinqov er na voghoghum:

Han&aregh yergerum nra - ir yerkri arevn er shoghum:

Na mets er hoghov , aryunov: Armatner uner na hoghum:

 

***

 

Yes kardum em nran u asum.- Ays hmut, han&aregh Lorecin

Homeri, Gyotei het mi or` havasar nstel e qefi,

Yev tas e brnel nranc het, metsaranq tvel u arel,

Inchpes ir papern en arel` irar het xnjuyqi nstelis:

____________

SAS

[Kazza]

Huh! Talk about job staisfaction! Dragon, do you give yellow and blue and green umwhahs as well? (I'm being very silly!)

[Kazza]

Steve I remember you mentioning this in another thread. I will try to find the periodical and have a look at it, thanks. (Thought you had a link to it or an article)

[Kazza]

Actually, I tried about Chreants (not online) and did not have any luck.

 

However, I picked up the Bio of Pushkin, for now. It has tales of Armenian concubines. It turns out he has black ancestry (that's why he was a true playa! ) It was a gentleman named Abraham Hannibal. Apparentley, that's where he got his brains and ability of poetry from. Seeing his talent Peter the Great took him from the Seraglio and hade him his PA (personal secretary)

 

It's a long and complicated story, with being a general in the army, his wives and bigamy, even his sadistic streak. And eleven kids from 3 different mums! One of his kids turned out to be a complete tart, and he had lots of children with russian country girls. I will write more of a story on it later. And I will find more of Cherants, if anyone else has more information?

[bellthecat]

Kazza, maybe I'll scan some of the translated poems, and post them here - although most are not the entire poems, just excerpts. The whole article is a bit big to post, and it is under copyright obviously.

Steve

[Anahid Takouhi]

Please read/post Charents' ''YOTU KHORHOURT KALIKI SERMNATSANNERIN'' to understand his political ideology about Armenia and Armenian people as well.

[Kazza]

OK then thank you. I will have a look for any english translations online, but that is very very hard to do!

[Kazza]

MABYE??!!What do you mean mabye?? I'm looking forward to it! C'mon, I know you can do better than that.. Obviously I don't mind exerpts and you can also post the copyright, obviously.

[bellthecat]

OK Kazza - I'll do it soon. I like it when you are bossy!

I have just bought a big, beautiful engraving of Kars, from 1855, in an amazon.com auction.

Steve

[Kazza]

That's great! When was this? Did you buy anything else from there?

 

Stop jumping around for a minuite and show us!

[bellthecat]

Can't show you until I receive it! (when I said "just" I really meant just as in "just a few minutes ago") - But even then I can't show all of it as it will be too big to fit on my A4 scanner.

I saw it for sale just before I left for Turkey, but did not want to bid for it then because I needed the money, and nobody else bidded for it at that time. (Well, I still need the money - but I decided to get it now anyway).

Steve

[Kazza]

That 's great. What you can do mabye is take a snapshot of it and scan it? Obviously you needed the engraving more than you need the money I iguess.

 

So when it gets delivered to you, how do they ensure it doesnt break?

[Kazza]

I don't want to get down on my knees and beg, but if you could scan those translated poems?? I am really trying to search for Armenian poetry that is translated into English with no luck, and I'm really into it.

[bellthecat]

Kazza, the article is not going to scan very easily, the text is a bit small and has footnotes, and so on. If you want I can send you a photocopy of the entire article, if you want to give me a contact address via a private message. The Kars "engraving" is actually a picture, an engraving on paper - so it won't break!

Steve

[Harut]

"inch arets charets, Charents@ arets"

---Harut The Great

 

from now on i'm going to post similar 'smart' thoughts from my own collection.

if you see this signature, that is it, prepare to learn something.

[Kazza]

This is one of Yegrantsi Charents "Wicked one" (Charents is just a fixed name, not one at birth) Soghomonian's most famous poems. This is basically the after-affect, in the morning after one of his many morphine fixes. He then looks at Leardoardo di Vinci's Jesus, then comes up with this. Isn't it strange?

 

To have become the past by now,

Anyhow, just thus, on a night like this,

Leo Di Vinci sudddenly awoke from the dreamless sleep.

 

(Charents, more like. He was talking about himself)

 

Exactly thus, as I am doing here

For a moment, amazed by that miracle,

Again before his very eyes

Life and existense ignite, life's

Miracle, woindorous, he stared in silence

At the opposite wall, or the easel.

Standing in the room, familiar his own

And fixed his godly gaze.

Upon this half woman

With a girl's face, but a youth's

Boundless, shoreless sorrow

At the face of jesus, anointed by dream

He looked quietly and long, and passed a moment of wonder

At the marvel, silebnt mystery

Of the existence of being,

defined but uncompassed. Then

slowly he rose, kindling a torch

And roused the young disciple whom he loved

Beltraffio who slept in a dark nook

On the other side of the easel.

 

Then leading him over to it, He looked into his face a long, a very long time.

Young and smooth, half rounded nearly like a woman's.

The face of a boy and a virgin, with it's godlike beauty crowned:

He looked in silence, long-now at his picture,

this jesus with a woman's face.

Now at the eliptical, delicate, real,

Face of the boy, softly breathing with the infinity of life.

And then, his and trambling,his hand held

HIis dear disciple's girlish, slender

Marble arm. Long now with ferocious love and yearning,

Boundless tenderness, with insatiable desire forever to contain

In him the measureless pulse of the universe,

he looked into his eyes, pebnnetrating the limits of his soul

Till a pale, pure, bashful

Rosy mist veil his face and the boy

Dropped his gaze, in his own endless longing, within a girl or boy's timid love.

 

What do you think?

[Kazza]

And then:

 

Just so he looked then, like the one on my wall,

Opposite here, Jesus, with his half feminine visage

With the sorrow that comes of endless beauty

Of a young man's body

The Jesus that ingenious love and brush immortalised

Within his body of sorrow

That faminine Jesus left a memory for us

Sought and demmed for years for the great fresco

LeoDi Vinci's "Last Supper"

Remains, on his little square of canvas,

LeoDi Vinci's pupil

Giovanni Beltraffo,

 

Wait for this..

 

Sixteen years old.

[bellthecat]

So you got the things I sent, Kazza! Did you type all that in? I think I will need to upgrade my OCR software, its not good with photocopies with small text, or fancy formatting.

 

Have you seen the late professor Charles Dowsett's book on Sayat-Nova. It is a superb book written by someone who obviously loved the subject - at one point he even composes his own poetry in the style of Sayat-Nova.

 

Steve

[Kazza]

*An exausted* yes! I wish there was some other way..



You think so? But ask yourself the question, is the cost worth it next to what you want to do with it? If it's just for small text, I'm sure there are tricks and ways with a photocopier you can ask the assistant about..but get value for money first, and go for it ! One of my projects is buying a completley new system. Probably end up being Apple Mac. IMO!



Really? I always love it when one artist does that for another artist!..strange and funny!

Admittedly no, I have not read this particular book. But I thought Sayat's death was so ironic (as deaths of good influential people often are, an untimley death having nothing to do with his life or work-I think the Americans call it "going out on a hummer?" I'm not sure) unless the persians had somethiing politically to do with the Georgians in those days. (Because of Queen Anna - mabye she still returned his feelings- and they saw it as a threat and set up an assissination? But mabye that's my imagination..

[ August 17, 2001: Message edited by: Kazza ]

[Kazza]

Anyway. About Yegishe Charents, (back onto the subject) I can't really write it all from beginning to end now, I can only give bits and peices until I compose a thread or soomething like that. About the last poem I posted: I can't pretend that I understood it fully, because I didn't. With a lot of his stuff I think you have to have been armenian and living in Soviet Armenia just post-genocide. That's the nature of a lot of his stuff: speaking the thoughts of the armenian people at that time. Not only did armenians see armenia's population, cities, houses, literature, and lives cut in half in a very short space of time instantly, but the Soviet rule had to happen, and in return imposed russian culture and ways in it. Can you imagine how damaging that must be to the whole armenian identity? And confusing. I'm not really talking about diasporans but armenians in armenia at that time because they knew one way of life, then just as quickly it vanished with their identity. In relation to the last poem anyway, it's just Yegishe awakes from another of his many fixes, his head already half-bent from that and half-in greif about these problems, he goes into this (as what I perceive) fantasy land, and invents his own character of "Jesus", alternating between the image of his dead wife and between "Di Vinci's" Giovanni. He modelled for the Jesus picture and Yegishe probably got lost in imagining How Di Vinci felt for him(Giovanni).

 

The way I see it? I see his expression of longing from Giovanni as longing for the youth and the innocence lost in his own life, though longing for the character: by desiring him it makes him feel he's getting some back for himself. Sixteen is very very young, almost childlike.

 

sure, he was only in his mid-twenties if not less when writing that. But you can already see he has already aged quickly.

 

Here is another one that I like. It's about His study, and writing. I feel something when reading this!

 

I , every morning when sudenly

Arising, as if from some unnacustomed

Cavern, fleeting,

Feel myself for an instant

Fallen miraculously out of heaven:

In that moment intangible

When identity becomes real

When the dream descisively departs

And again the world is coming

Into self hood, into one's proper being

In name, place, and blood,

Ten thousand times swifter than a second,

At that moment repeated ressurection,

When my brain gropes seeking me,

Always the my gaze alights

On the opposite wall in my room

And instantly, nothing intervening,

Like the lid that rolled and found it's pot

I relocate my self and place,

By miracle.

 

I could identify with the way his writing and his study makes him feel "whole" I think that anyone who writes will know what I mean as well, but I didnt identify with the part,

 

"into self-hood, into one's proper being ,

in name, self, place and blood"

 

and I think that's that stands out as difference between an amateur note-book writer and a writer living in, the situation of Thirties armenia I had mentioned before. It just confirms it - look at it again and the words "when identity become s real " and " relocate my self and place" will begin to strike you as coming from a person who has suddenly lost the identity he was born with.

[dragon]

To all members of this forum Be nice with each other

 

Eight Gifts

============

 

Below are eight gifts that don't cost a cent to give.

 

1) THE GIFT OF LISTENING...

But you must REALLY listen.

No interrupting, no daydreaming, no planning your response. Just listening.

 

2) THE GIFT OF AFFECTION...

Be generous with appropriate hugs, kisses, pats on the back and handholds.

Let these small actions demonstrate the love you have for family and friends.

 

3) THE GIFT OF LAUGHTER...

Funny pictures. Share articles, funny stories and funny greetings. Your gift will say, "I love to laugh with you."

 

4) THE GIFT OF A WRITTEN NOTE...

It can be a simple "Thanks for the help" note or a full sonnet.

A brief, handwritten note may be remembered for a lifetime, and may even change a life.

 

5) THE GIFT OF A COMPLIMENT...

A simple and sincere, "You look great in red," "You did a super job" or "That was a wonderful meal" can make someone's day.

 

6) THE GIFT OF A FAVOR...

Every day, go out of your way to do something kind.

Helping elderly cross the road can be nice.

 

7) THE GIFT OF SOLITUDE...

There are times when we want nothing better than to be left alone. Be sensitive to those times and give the gift of

solitude to others.

 

8) THE GIFT OF A CHEERFUL DISPOSITION...

The easiest way to feel good is to extend a kind word to someone, really it's not that hard to say, Hello or Thank You.

[dragon]

How nice to rise in love again,

Remember all the tenderness we got,

A night in light, a day in dark,

Time had stopped at the edge of the sun...

Can we have chance to reach the top???

Hope have courage to cry: WHY NOT!!!

[Kazza]

Who have you "risen" with, this time???

[Kazza]

About these "eight gifts" Dragon, you are SO right. It's so true. There are so many people about that mabye feel these posititive little things inside, but don't bother to express them, and only wish to express the moany, negative things instead. And then nobody is any the wiser.

 

But the other way of looking at it is if some was really important to someone they would have made the effort to express it by now.

[Kazza]

I gottan idea Dragon. Why don't we enter one poem, and make it a joint one? (To Skevi's forum) Perhaps we could work on a poem together. Think about it.