Frik

Frik was an Armenian poet of the 13th and 14th centuries. He wrote on both secular and religious topics, and many of his poems are characterized by social criticism. He was the first Armenian poet to compose almost all of his works in the vernacular language (Middle Armenian).

Biography Frik lived approximately from 1230 to 1310, during the time of Mongol rule over Armenia. Very little is known about his life. It is not known whether his name was really Frik or not. It may be a pseudonym or an abbreviated form of his original name, possibly a shortening of the name Frederik. His father's name was Tagvorshah. Scholars disagree on whether Frik was a layman or a member of the clergy. He spent the last years of his life in a monastery, although it is not known for certain if he became a monk. Frik wrote his secular poems in colloquial language, while his religious and other works are written in literary Middle Armenian sprinkled with vernacular and foreign words. Frik was a devoted Christian, but his poems contemplate fate and question how a just God could allow so much injustice and misery to exist in the world. As Peter Cowe notes, Soviet scholars regarded the poems "Complaint to Christ" and "Against Fate" as expressing a "novel iconoclastic attitude towards organized religion," but, in reality, this type of poem has a long history in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Frik remained popular until the 16th century, and interest in him was revived in the second half of the 19th century. The first (incomplete) collection of Frik's poems was published in 1930.