Yeghishe Charents

“And if, lets say, you do not find it, my dear, do not blame me — maybe it is true that Nairi is a mirage (…) yet instead — there exists today a country called Hayastan (ref. to Soviet Armenia), and in this old country has been living from the past to the present very common people with the common properities of common men. And there is nothing else [to it]. No «Land of the Nairi»” (translation from Armenian)

A chapter in Marc Nichanian's Writers of Disaster: Armenian Literature in the Twentieth Century focuses on the question of mourning in the poetry of Charents. The edited book Charents: Poet of the Revolution, by Marc Nichanian and Vartan Matiossian, includes a collection of scholarly articles about different aspects of Charents' poetry. Krikor Beledian's Haykakan futurizm (Armenian Futurism, 2009) includes Charents in the study of the development of Futurism in three major centers of Armenian communities: Constantinople from 1910 to 1914; Tbilisi from 1914 to 1923; and Yerevan from 1922 to 1924.

His home at 17 Mashtots Avenue in Yerevan was turned into a museum in 1975. The Armenian city Charentsavan was named after him.

William Saroyan wrote a short story about Charents in his 1971 book, Letters from 74 rue Taitbout or Don't Go But If You Must Say Hello To Everybody.

A commemorative stamp of 40 kopecks was issued by the Soviet Union in 1958 honoring Charents after his rehabilitation. Another commemorative stamp of 150 Armenian drams as well as a commemorative coin of 100 Armenian drams were issued by the Republic of Armenia in 1997. The new Republic of Armenia currency denomination for 1000 drams carried on one of its two sides the photo of Charents and a famous quotation in Armenian of one of his poems: (Armenian) "Ես իմ անուշ Հայաստանի արեւահամ բարն եմ սիրում" (I love the sun sweet taste of Armenia). Pope Francis during his visit to Armenia in 2016 recited a passage from that poem of Charents.

A victim of Yezhov's purges, he was charged for "counterrevolutionary and nationalist activity" and imprisoned during the 1937 Great Purge. He died in prison hospital. It is unknown where his body was buried. All his books were also banned. Charents' younger friend Regina Ghazaryan buried and saved many of his manuscripts. Charents was rehabilitated in 1954 after Stalin's death.

In July 1936, when Soviet Armenian leader Aghasi Khanjian was killed, Charents wrote a series of seven sonnets. After Komitas's death he wrote one of his last great works, "Requiem Æternam in Memory of Komitas" (1936).

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).

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

An early supporter of communism, Charents joined the Bolshevik party, but as the Stalinist terror began in the 1930s, he gradually grew disillusioned with Stalinism and died during the 1930s purges.

His first wife was Arpenik Ter-Astvadzatryan, who died in 1927. In 1931 Charents married Izabella Kodabashyan. They had two daughters, Arpenik and Anahit (b. 1935).

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.

In 1924-1925 Charents went on a seven-month trip abroad, visiting Turkey, Italy (where he met Avetik Isahakyan), France, and Germany. When Charents returned, he founded a union of writers, November, and worked for the state publishing house from 1928 to 1935.

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. 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. 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 returned to Moscow in 1921 to study at the Institute of literature and Arts founded by Valeri Bryusov. 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 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 August 1934 Maxim Gorky presented him to the Soviet writers' first congress delegates with Here is our Land of Nairi.

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 to saving Armenia.

Yeghishe Charents (Armenian: 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, socialist revolution, and frequently Armenia and Armenians. He is recognized as "the main poet of the 20th century" in Armenia.

The first monograph on Charents was published by Simon Hakobyan (1888–1937) in 1924 in Vienna. Among the other researchers of Charents' poetry during that period were Paolo Makintsyan, Harutyun Surkhatyan, Tigran Hakhumyan. After his death, both Charents' works and scholarly works on him were banned for 17 years. In 1954 N. Dabaghyan (who previously attacked Charents in the 1930s) published the monograph "Yeghishe Charents." In the following decades, research on Charents was published by Hakob Salakhyan, Suren Aghababyan, Garnik Ananyan, Almast Zakaryan, Anahit Charents, David Gasparyan and others.