Poetry
Pagan Songs
Հեթանոս երգեր
Daniel Varoujan · 1912
Opening lines
Կ՚ուզեմ ըլլայ քու մարմարիո՛նդ պեղուած
Ոլիմպոսի ամենէն խոր արգանդէն.
Եւ իմ մուրճիս տակ ըզգենու հրեղէն
Միս մը կնոջ, լոյսով, տենդով սրարբած։
I want your marble to be quarried
From the deepest womb of Olympus.
And beneath my hammer to put on a fiery
Flesh of woman, drunk with light and fever.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from hy.wikisource.org
Synopsis
A claimed “poetic paganism”, in a lively, vivid style. The book leads from the baths, taverns and brothels of the Ottoman city, where we see the humble people whom the city crushes, to a bacchanal of ancient Rome and the shimmering waters of Venice, up to a summit near the sun where the poet sings, in ecstasy, of the freedom of man and the servitude of God. A long separate poem closes the whole.
Context
It is the third collection by its author, after those of 1906 and 1909, and it appeared in Constantinople in 1912, the year in which he, now married, took over the direction of a school in the capital after three years of teaching in his village. Two years later, with Gostan Zarian and Hagop Ochagan, he founded the group and the review Mehian. A fourth collection, confiscated when the author was arrested in 1915, appeared only in 1921, after his widow had been able to buy it back.
Who it is for
Short, in Western Armenian, in a highly ornate language. The two sequences are better read one after the other than intermixed.
Prizes and reception
The collection that opened the pagan movement in Armenian poetry, accused of pornography and denounced by the Church on its publication, now a classic.