YEGHISHE CHARENTS: Poet of the Revolution

Edited by Marc Nichanian, Vartan Matiossian, Vardan Matteosean

This book offers a collection of articles and studies on Yeghishe Charents (1897-1937), who has always been considered as the poet of Revolution in Armenia and is certainly one of the greatest poetical voices of the twentieth century in the Armenian language.

The volume partly gathers the essays presented at the Charents conference organized at Columbia University in November 1997 by Marc Nichanian for the centennial of the poet’s birth and the sixtieth anniversary of his untimely and tragic death.It was the first time an international conference on a modern Armenian writer was held at a Western University. Other important essays have been added in order to echo the recent history of the Charents reception in English (Peter Balakian, G.M. Goshgarian, James Russell, Sonia Ketchian).

A general introduction proposes a reflection on the poet’s encounter with history, his infatuation with Mayakovsky and the work of mourning that he was obliged to carry out after his renunciation of Futurism in 1924. He was forced into this renunciation in order to save his life and his career as a national poet in a Communist setting. After 1926, Charents’s poetical works are but a long meditation on the resources of poetry in the aftermath of the repudiation of Futurism.