A VALUABLE CONTRIBUTION IN SHANT STUDIES – 2020-1

Summary

Ashkhen Ed. Jrbashyan-Candidate of Philological Sciences
The review addresses the main issues related to the new edition of the National Armenian Educational and Cultural Fund “Levon Shant. The Man and the Work”, dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the outstanding writer. The article gives a clear idea of the content, topics and structure of this publication. The members of the editorial board (Vachagan Grigoryan, Serzh Srapionyan and Vartan Petrosyan) placed in this book the memories of the people of different generations about Levon Shant; the authors give original, noteworthy assessments of his political and pedagogical activity. In addition, the publication contains valuable excerpts from outstanding literary works dedicated to Shant, which characterize and generalize the literary heritage of the great writer and playwright.

Particularly important are those articles and materials that are published in Armenia for the first time. The reader gets a fairly complete picture of Levon Shant as a writer, politician and educator.

The most valuable material, published in this book, is the autobiographical exposition of Levon Shant, recorded by Vardges Aharonyan in the USA from the lips of an already elderly writer. The reader gets informed about Shant’s childhood and youth, about the years of his studies in Etchmiadzin, about the periods of his stay in the Caucasus and Europe, about well-known political events and about some significant episodes of his life related to his formation as a writer. Many of these facts are well known, but the assessments of L. Shant himself, his worldview and experiences give great value to the autobiographical narrative. The reader makes sense about the environment of Constantinople, Tiflis and its cultural atmosphere, the life of large and small European cities and, finally, the years of the First Republic, which became crucial for the formation of Shant as a person and politician.

We can insist that this publication is a valuable contribution to the Shant studies.

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