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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In late 1960, a little-known writer by the name of Mercè Rodoreda entered an unpublished novel, Colometa, for competition in that year’s distinguished Premi Sant Jordi. She did not win. The book did, however, make quite an impression on Joan Fuster, who sat on the prize committee. Convinced the committee had made an awful mistake, Fuster wrote to his good friend Joan Sales. Just five years prior, Sales had co-founded the press Club dels Novel·listes—recently re-baptized Club Editor—and was ever on the hunt for exciting new novelists to add to his roster. “See what you can do,” Fuster said. So Sales sent a letter to this writer whose novel had so dazzled his friend. It was a decision he was not to regret. Two years later, Club Editor published In Diamond Square to instant popular acclaim. More than fifty years later, the novel continues to sell. It has been translated into more than thirty languages, and has seen adaptation to the stage as well as the silver screen. Nobel Prize laureate Gabriel García Márquez even called it the most beautiful novel to be published in Spain since the end of the Civil War.
The letters featured here are culled from the correspondence that brought this novel into being. They represent the early and often tempestuous days of one of the most important friendships in modern Catalan literary history, a relationship that would last for more than twenty years, until Rodoreda’s death. Now, they stand as a testament to the fastidiousness and insight, even the ego, of two of the most beloved figures in this little nation’s exceptionally vast literary tradition.
- Scott Shanahan
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