Category Archives: LITERARY CRITICISM

THE BIOGRAPHY OF THE POET’S SOUL – 2023-4

The unpublished pages of Avetik Isahakyan’s notebooks

Shoghik B. Khachatryan

In 1977 A. Inchikyan prepared Avetik Isahakyan’s “Memoir” for publication, collected and organized notes from the poet’s various notebooks – in fact creating a complete manuscript. Within the framework of the scientific publication of Isahakyan’s works, Avik Isahakyan filled in the blank sections of the “Memoir” with other diaries and selected diary notes. However, even after the publication of the complete diaries, a large number of the poet’s notebooks remained unpublished.

Notebooks contain a variety of notes in various booklets, or individual sheets. Mainly, they present the poet’s thoughts, ideas, judgments about various realities and different aspects of life. A considerable part of them have the value of aphorisms and popular expressions.

But the more interesting notes are those which, in one way or another, relate to Isahakyan’s original work, opening up various layers of his literary workshop. How the writer’s style and the peculiarities of his literary method are formed, how raw material, a fact, an event are developed and transformed into artistic reality! Here is a non-exhaustive list of issues that may be covered by notebook notes.

Thus, the poet’s notebooks, in terms of both their content and significance in the creative work process, and the nature of their notes, deeply reflect the author’s personality, and the biography of his soul.

THE CONSERVATIVE RESPONSE OF THE DISSOLUTION OF THE FEUDAL LIFESTYLE – 2023-4

In the novels “Sos and Varditer” and “Bread problem” by Perch Proshyan

Aram G. Aleksanyan

The article examines the historical, economic and cultural prerequisites for the collapse of the patriarchal caste system.

The historical process, masking the defensive confrontation between the moral worldview and the psychology of a corrupt society, is artistically expressed in the novels of Perch Proshyan. Literature partly manifests itself as a kind of cultural and defensive confrontation. This reality, in turn, gives rise to conservative
and libertarian thinking in public life with corresponding epistemological attitudes.

If, thanks to the enlightenment movement, traditional thinking, the values that organize patriarchal life, the nature of human relations and the emotional manifestations of psychology have radically changed, then conservative culture had a completely traditional epistemological context. Enlightenment attitude formed in
the minds of a new structure of perception of time, revived the order of the future, making it the main focus of activity. In the context of this worldview, history has already been perceived in the past, present and future dimensions of time. Meanwhile, conservatives envisioned the future as a sprawling present. And traditionalists perceived defamation as damage to morality and the traditional way of life. All the ideological content and emotional depth of Proshyan’s works is an artistic expression of this historical process. It is characterized as a unique defensive cultural confrontation with artistic potential, character building, and a historically unique storytelling typology.

RAFFI’S LITERARY CRITICISM – 2023-3

Ashot N. Hayruni

Raffi considered the writer a “man of the times” who should also guide public thoughts and ideas. Without diminishing the necessary condition of artistic perfection, he is guided in the evaluation of artistic works by the criterion of the primacy of ideological content, essential in terms of the functional significance of literature. In this regard, as well as the capacity and wide expressive possibilities, he particularly emphasizes the need for the development of aesthetic prose, especially the novel genre, in the Armenian reality.

HAKOB PARONYAN’S WORKS WRITTEN IN TURKISH LANGUAGE BY ARMENIAN LETTERS – 2023-2

Maro V. Ghukasyan

The following paper discusses Armenian genius humorist Hakob Paronyan’s works written in the Turkish language by the Armenian letters. In this publication the author gives answers to the question “Why Paronyan decided to write in the Turkish language by Armenian letters?” and introduces the motives for writing in the Turkish language by the Armenian letters. It is affirmed that writing in the Turkish language by the Armenian letters was not his purpose, but means to attain the purpose of saving the Armenian nation living under the control of the Ottoman Empire from the loss of their national language and nationality in general.

YEGHISHE CHAREHTS DURING THE YEARS OF THE FIRST REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA – 2023-1

David V. Gasparyan

The Russian Revolution of 1917 completely changed the military-political reality of the region. On May 28, 1918, the Republic of Armenia was proclaimed, and the leaders of the newly established state did the utmost to build a new statehood. The patriotic spirit pervaded Charents. He was the soldier of his motherland; he volunteered to fight in Erzrum and at the same time he was a devoted poet. With that enthusiasm, he wrote “Soma” and Frenzied Masses “, radiopoems, separate poetic series and poems. 

RAFFI AND NATIONAL FOLKLORE – 2022-4

Ashot N. Hayruni

The oral folk tradition, according to Raffi, not only preserved the mentality
and the mindset of the Armenian people, but also its folkways and epic legends,
which were transmitted only orally and were not written down. Thus, according
to him, a comparative analysis and study of oral folklore could provide a limitless
source of material to a given archaeologist, historian, culturologist and
ethnographer.

THE TRACE OF THE DRAMA “ON THE WAY TO THE HEAVEN” BY HAKOB OSHAKAN – 2022-3

Summary

Suren D. Danielyan

The article examines the drama “On the Way to the Heaven” (1936) by Hakob Oshakan, which shows national-political theme and together with dramas “When we know to die” and “Stephannos Syunetsi” completes the author’s perceptions regarding the historical and moral questions. In particular, the relationship between Oshakan’s drama and other genres, such as short stories and novels, the experience of a new genre matter is emphasized.

This five-act drama, which with its genre features appeals to mystery of tragedy, was first published in 1936 in Boston’s “Hairenik” weekly, and half a century later in Beirut, edited by Archbishop Varoujan Hergelian, with the preface of Elo Sarajian’s “On the Occasion of Publication”.

The material of the drama “On the Way to the Heaven” suggests the immediate beginning of the1915 genocide and the elimination. The article presents the peculiarities of Oshakan’s character formation through Armenian (Knar, Ter Nersess, protestant priests), German (von Elena Adler, Rita) and Turkish characters (Khalil, Ibrahim) and their various conflicts, where each of them is positioned according to its national inclinations and interests. Regardless of the efforts made by the author to show the development of the character in case of Khalil, a Turk with a European education, he remains convinced that the same education will not help him to get rid of his instincts. Along with the national questions, the scenes of the women collision are alos presented with the aim at keeping the intrigue of the drama awake.

The Armenian Knar stands out among the characters, which is the focus of the intrigue mentioned above. She was a developed, struggling, powerful, often lonely woman who used the pasha’s position to rescue caravans sentenced to death. She comes out at the same time against the German, Turkish atrocities and self-defense Armenian clergy, sometimes with open flags of struggle.

The wording of the article is considering the system of approaches and judgment of Elo Sarajian, Krikor Beledian and himself Hakob Oshakan.

The conclusion is, that Hakob Oshakan’s drama “On the way to the Heaven”, the title of which suggests the way of Armenians’ elimination and death of people, preserves emotion, psychological completeness of the characters. And the multiplicity of these characters is a sign of special styling in itself.

TEXT AND ONTOLOGY – 2022-2

Metaphysics of Mutual Penetration in Hovhannes Tumanyan’s and Avetik Isahakyan’s poetry

Naira V. Hambardzumyan
The infinity of the text is formed in the domain of the author’s balanced energy although it is possible to break that balance and emerge into the domain of everlasting changes and movement of a language, creating the dynamic utterance of the text, which ensures the passability of its form [as modus], implementing and realizing the process of structural formation of the text in the domains of the assumed boundaries and intersecting forms. The form is itself a visual-spatial image or symbol and is related to the text-author conversation in the context of subconscious + utterance + form = content; therefore, spatial image + form domain is considered as a boundary because in the ontological domain the same text is created as [Word + Word + Word + Word + ∞ = thought] reality, undergoing changes (or not). In this context, the structural possibilities of the text and the changes conditioned by it, as an unstable whole, are opposed to the part-whole unity, creating incoming and outgoing abstractions where the part relates to the whole, interpreting the text as a heteropolar structure. These actions and relations enable viewing the text as a cosmic microsystem in the domain of its integrity.