Armenia | Letters | Western Armenian
February, 2019Glimpses into the intimate lives of both men and women are few and far between in the Armenian literary tradition. Long dominated by cultural attitudes that viewed discussions of sexuality and desire as shameful and indecent, the late-nineteenth-century Ottoman Armenian society in which the letters featured here were written essentially silenced such expression in the public sphere.
Conversations of this sort, however, certainly did take place in the private sphere, as we see in these love letters exchanged between two prominent Armenian writers in 1895 Constantinople: Hrand Asadour and Zabel Donelian (more widely known by her pen name Sibyl). At the time, Hrand was the co-editor of Masis, one of the most widely circulated Armenian newspapers in the Ottoman Empire, while Zabel had already earned a reputation for her poetry, fiction, and articles in the Armenian press. Hrand had long been an admirer of Zabel’s work from afar and, in 1892, they began working together on the literary supplement of Masis, giving way to a friendship that slowly blossomed into love.
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Armenia | Armenian | Short Fiction
August, 2018Susanna Harutyunyan began her literary career when the Soviet Union was collapsing. She belongs to the generation of writers who were tasked with the critical and inevitable role of recording the fall of the Soviet Union, the transition period, and post-Soviet afterlife. She is best known for her short stories, some humorous, others verging on the macabre and a special kind of ruthlessness, reminiscent of the notable Soviet writer Vsevolod Ivanov. The story featured here (Original title: "Aysteghov antsel e astvatse") was first published in a collection titled Zharangabar pokhantsvogh garun ("Hereditary Spring") in 2007.
- Shushan Avagyan
Armenia | Armenian | Personal Essay
September, 2013"The Man" is a short autobiographical sketch set in Paris, in 1896, during Zabel Yesayan's second year of study at the Sorbonne. It was published in 1905 in the Armenian literary magazine Masis as a response to a text examining the phenomenon of terror from an aesthetic point of view. The sketch explores the psychological effects of alienation and isolation of women as foreigners in a Parisian dormitory.
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