Seyran Grigoryan, Vahagn Davtyan’s Poems, Yerevan, Armav Publishing House, 2021, 458 pages
Summary
Zhenya A. Kalantaryan
The review analyzes and evaluates the peculiarities, principles and criteria of
the method used by S. Grigoryan–the author of the mentioned book. It is observed
that Grigoryan necessarily takes into account both the time of writing the poem and
the time the poem covers, trying to uncover the linkаgе between the past and the
present. One of the important merits of the monograph is the search for the bases of
the structural and lexical layers of the poems in historical and folklore sources.
According to the literary critic, Davtyan builds his poems mostly on a folklore
basis, as a result of which poems reflect the folk worldview.
The article comments on the comparisons made by the author of the book with
the historical and folklore sources of the poems, as well as similar works by
previous poets. It is noticed that some cases of stylization, imitation, repetition
revealed by the literary critic, according to his own observation, Davtyan used for
his own interpretation of the material, thus bringing his personality onto the
material.
The critique assesses S. Grigoryan’s comprehensive approach in revealing
both inter- and intra-genre features of the poems. The author of the monograph
examines the poems and comes to convincing conclusion comprehensively
drawing from all the branches of philology, including the history of literary history,
literary theory, literary criticism, textualism, etc. The monograph is deemed to be a
noticeable contribution to modern Armenian literature.