“The Land of Nayiri” and “the Ordinary Nation”

Abstract

Violette Krikorian analyses the literary bridge between two icons of Armenian literature, Vahan Terian and Yeghishe Ch'arents', whose tragic destiny merges with that of the nation. Witnesses to the turmoil of war, genocide and revolution, both died in the prime of their lives. The elder Terian succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of thirty-five, far from his hometown, in Orenburg, where he was spreading the Bolshevik word. His younger brother, his admirer and critic at the same time, embodies another romantic figure, that of the murdered poet, victim of Stalinist repression at the age of forty. In a way, they are the emblem of the revolution that devours its children.