The Publication of in the Twentieth Century (1920–2000)

Harout Kurkjian

1 The Situation of at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

The first decade of the twentieth century found the Armenian population in the paradoxical situation of insecurity and emerging at the same time: con- centrated in historical in both its western and eastern sectors, as the “Armenian provinces” of two Empires separated by the international Russo- Turkish border; subject in the west to quasi-medieval Ottoman oppression and in the east, to tsarist colonization which meant a soft, slow Russification. Yet, they were also established, and sometimes had been for a long time, in metropolitan centers such as and Smyrna on the one hand and, on the other hand, in , Baku and to a lesser extent in provincial centers such as Shusha and Alexandrapol-Gyumri (now respectively in the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh and northwestern Armenia). In addition, there were what we might call “proper” diasporic centers such as in Nor Nakhitchevan-on-the- Don, Moscow, and St. Petersburg in Russia, and and Vienna in Europe. There were also colonies and groups of intellectuals established in Egypt, the Balkans, and elsewhere. It was in these urban centers both near and far that the awakening of Armenian national identity had been triggered a century earlier, echoing the “Enlightenment” and the reawakening of European nationalities. Accompanied by an activation of historical memory and cultural values, it was immediately followed by the renewal of the language (creation of modern Armenian in two branches, “Western” and “Eastern”), the foundation of schools, publishers, a periodical press (admittedly fairly basic at the beginning, but lively and var- ied), and modern literature. Founded and led by pioneers, publishing activity, though somewhat dispersed due to the geopolitical and cultural situation of the Armenians, expressed a strong tendency for communication and bring- ing people together, crossing over the imposed boundaries that extended towards the population of the “Country” itself and the provinces. This under- taking met with very little success, especially on the Ottoman side, oppressed under the double burden of socio-economic under-development and of ethnic

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.��63/978904270961_�2� the publication of literature 467 persecution, while the Russian sector enjoyed sufficient conditions of security and development. In Europe, before the beginning of the century, pre-diasporic footholds already existed, from the time of the first great massacres (1895–1896). This was the case of France in Western Europe, of in the Balkans, and of Egypt in the Middle East, not to mention Venice and later Vienna, with their com- munities of Mekhitarist Fathers whose influenced lasted for two centuries. Moreover, we cannot forget the Armenian presence in Switzerland, in Geneva and Lausanne, all stopping-off places for students and revolutionary activists. In Paris, the writer Arshag Chʿōbanian (Aršak Čʿōpanean) had already had, for a quarter of a century, a frenetic literary activity: publication of the literary magazine Anahid (Anahit) and works of commentary or literary analysis, as well as translations and writings presenting popular Armenian literature.1 The eve of the First World War was a period of relative renaissance in Western Armenia, thanks to the proclamation of the Ottoman Constitution of 1908. These years were characterized by an unprecedented cultural flourishing, marked among other things by the celebration of the 1500th anniversary of the invention of the and the 400th anniversary of printing in the in 1912–13, especially in Constantinople. Moreover, for the first time, provincial cities such as Van, Sivas, Karin (Erzurum), and Kharput (Harput, Elâzığ) found themselves with publishers, a periodical press, and their first publications, unfortunately also destined to be their last. Such was the context in which Armenian publishing experienced its first boom in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, before the outbreak of the First World War. Yet, the geopolitical and cultural map of the Armenian world just described would suffer irreparable upheavals during and after the First World War: the annihilation of the majority of the population of historical Armenia as a result of the genocidal project of the Ittihadist government; the temporary

1 As, for example, the Tiwan [Diwan, Collection] of the medieval poet Nahapet Kʿučʿak, in 1902 (later, from 1918, Chʿōbanian would publish it in French, under the title La Roseraie d’Arménie); the work of the poet Mgrdichʿ Beshigtʿashlian with a preface and commentary (1904); a bio- graphical and literary study of the work of the same M. Beshigtʿashlian (1907); a collection of his own poems, Kʿertʿvadzneru havakʿadzo [Kʿertʿuacneru hawakʿacoy, Collection of poems], in 1908; Naghash Hovnatʿan ashoughĕ ew Naghash Hovnatʿan ngarichʿĕ [Nałaš Hovnatʿan ašułǝ ew Nałaš Hovnatʿan nkaričʿǝ, The Troubador and painter Naghash Hovnatʿan] in 1910; Hay ēcher [Hay ēǰer, Armenian pages], an anthology of medieval poets (1912), etc. Moreover, he translated into Armenian and then published works by A. de Vigny, G. Flaubert, Th. de Banville, and A. France.