Chronicle
Պանդուխտի կեանքէն
Not translated into English
Melkon Gurjian · 1888
Synopsis
A series of letters on the pandukhts, those Armenian peasants from the provinces who came to look for work in Constantinople: every week the Trebizond steamer lands some of them, from Van, Mush, Palu, Bitlis or Sivas. The author follows them from departure to the suffering of exile, fifteen-year-old boys who came on foot, indebted orphans, old men, porters, masons and stonecutters crowded into the khans, until death far from their own or their return.
Context
It was Arpiar Arpiarian who urged the author, until then almost unknown, to write about migrants: the first letter, addressed to him, appeared in the Masis on 28 November 1888, and the series continued until 1892. It immediately brought its author fame under the name Hrand and made him a figure of the realist movement of the 1880s. The author declared there that he followed only the voice of life. The letters were not collected in a volume until 1931, in Paris, at the head of his complete works.
Who it is for
Short letters, in Western Armenian, to be read separately. It is better to know that in the nineteenth century thousands of Armenians from the eastern provinces went every year to work in Constantinople.
Prizes and reception
The work that made its author's reputation, regarded as the only writer of his generation to have devoted himself entirely to the life of Armenian migrants from the provinces.