The mystery in the saying: “O Armenian people, your one and only salvation is concealed in your collective strenght”.
Seyran Z. Grigoryan
In 1933 Yeghishe Charents wrote and placed the poem “Precept” (“Patgam”) in his collection of poems “Book of the Way”, by each line’s second letter of which was formed the secret saying “O Armenian people, your one and only salvation is concealed in your collective strength”. For many decades it was considered to be an acristic. It is shown in the article that it is a mesostic, because it is formed not with the first letters but whith the middle of the line (second letter). This hypothesis has its grounds in thes sowld literature, especially in the analysis of mesostics in the works of the 20th century’s Russian writers. There can be found even some cnvergences between the poem of Charents “Precept” and Edcar Allan Poe’s “An Anigma”. Charents renewed the tradition of acrostic, which was quite extended in the middle age Armenian poetry, but forgotten in modern times. He devoted some acrostics to her daughter Arpenik Charents, which are also placed in the collection of works “Book of the Way” and have tight connections with the poem “Precept”. Beside the artistic values of Charents’ mesostic. his national ideology and creative destiny also have important significance and their several undiscovered aspects are discussed in the following article.