Yeghishe Charents

Yeghishe Charents (Եղիշե Չարենց; March 13, 1897 – November 27, 1937) was an Armenian poet, writer and public activist.

Charents' literary subject matter ranged from his experiences in the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and frequently Armenia and Armenians.

He is recognized as "the main poet of the 20th century" in Armenia.

An early proponent of communism and the USSR, the futurist Charents joined the Bolshevik Party and became an active supporter of Soviet Armenia, especially during the period of Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP).

However, he became disillusioned with direction of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.

Yeghishe Charents was born Yeghishe Abgari Soghomonyan in Kars (Eastern Armenia, then a part of the Russian Empire) in 1897 to a family involved in the rug trade.

His family hailed from the Armenian community of Maku, Persian Armenia.

He first attended an Armenian elementary school, but later transferred to a Russian technical secondary school in Kars from 1908 to 1912.

He spent much of his time in reading.

In 1912, he had his first poem published in the Armenian periodical Patani (Tiflis).

In 1915, amid the upheavals of the First World War and the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire, he volunteered to fight in a detachment on the Caucasian Front.

Sent to Van in 1915, Charents was witness to the destruction that the Turkish garrison had laid upon the Armenian population, leaving indelible memories that would later be read in his poems.

He left the front one year later, attending school at the Shanyavski People's University in Moscow.

The horrors of the war and genocide had scarred Charents and he became a fervent supporter of the Bolsheviks, seeing them as the one true hope for the salvation of Armenia.

Charents joined the Red Army and fought during the Russian Civil War as a rank and file soldier in Russia (Tsaritsin) and the Caucasus.

In 1919, he returned to Armenia and took part in revolutionary activities there.

A year later, he began work at the Ministry of Education as the director of the Art Department.

One of his most famous poems, I love the sun-sweet taste of the fruits of Armenia, a lyric ode to his homeland, was composed in 1920-1921.

Charents would also once again take up arms, this time against his fellow Armenians, as a rebellion took place against Soviet rule in February 1921.

Charents returned to Moscow in 1921 to study at the Institute of literature and Arts founded by Valeri Bryusov.

In 1921-22 he wrote "Amenapoem" (Everyone's poem), and "Charents-name'", an autobiographical poem.

Then, Charents published his satirical novel, Land of Nairi (Yerkir Nairi), which became a great success and repeatedly published in Russian in Moscow during the life of poet.

In a manifesto issued in June 1922, known as the "Declaration of the Three," signed by Charents, Gevorg Abov, and Azad Veshtuni, the young authors expressed their favour of "proletarian internationalism."

In 1924-1925 Charents went on a seven-month trip abroad, visiting Turkey, Italy (where he met Avetik Isahakyan), France, and Germany.

In September 1926, on a street in Yerevan, Charents shot and slightly wounded a woman, Marianna Ayvazyan, the sister of composer Artemi Ayvazyan, after she had resisted his advances on several occasions.

He was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison for the shooting, but served just over a year of his sentence.

When Charents returned, he founded a union of writers, November, and worked for the state publishing house from 1928 to 1935.

He was arrested by the NKVD during the 1930s Great Purge, and was killed or died in 1937.

In 1930 Charents's book, "Epic Dawn," which consisted of poems he wrote in 1927-30, was published in Yerevan.

It was dedicated to his first wife Arpenik.

His last collection of poems, "The Book of The Way", was printed in 1933, but its distribution was delayed by the Soviet government until 1934, when it was reissued with some revisions.

In this book the author lays out the panorama of Armenian history and reviews it part-by-part.

In August 1934 Maxim Gorky presented him to the Soviet writers' first congress delegates with Here is our Land of Nairi.

The first part of Yerkir Nairi is dedicated to the description of public figures and places of Kars, and to the presentation of Armenian public sphere.

According to Charents, his Yerkir Nairi is not visible, "it is an incomprehensible miracle: a horrifying secret, an amazing amazement".

In the second part of novel, Kars and its leaders are seen during World War I, and the third part tells about the fall of Kars and the destruction of the dream.

William Saroyan met him in 1934 in Moscow and thereafter described him as a courtly, brilliant man who was desperately sad.

Charents also translated many works into Armenian, including "The Internationale."

Excepting few poems in journals, Charents could publish nothing after 1934 (at the same time, in December 1935 Stalin asked an Armenian delegation how Charents is).

However, after Stalin's death, he was exonerated in a 1954 speech by Anastas Mikoyan and was officially rehabilitated by the Soviet state in 1955 during the Khrushchev Thaw.