Misak Metsarents

Biography

Misak Metsarents was born Misak Metsaturian in January 1886 in the village of /Benka, near Agn in the Harput Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire, to parents Iskuhi and Garabed. He was the youngest of four children (he had two brothers and a sister). His family belonged the most prominent clan of their village. According to one tradition, the Metsaturians were descended from one of the Armenian meliks (local rulers) of Karabakh; another tradition traces their origins to the medieval city of Ani. Pingyan was an almost entirely Armenian-populated village of about 1000 people; there, Armenians retained a degree of autonomy, and the men bore arms. As a child, Misak often explored the fields and woods around the village and liked folk songs and tales. Scholar James R. Russell connects the lively descriptions of nature and village life, as well as the "deep, indestructible cheerfulness", in Metsarents's poetry with the poet's early childhood experiences in Pingyan.

In 1895, after Pingyan was attacked by Muslims for the first time during the Hamidian massacres, Misak moved with his mother to live with his brother in Sivas, The attack also prompted Metsarents to write his first poem, "Marmni verk, srti verk" (Wounds of the body, wounds of the heart). In September 1902, he moved in with his father in Constantinople, where he attended the Getronagan Armenian High School and soon began to publish his works in Armenian journals. However, tuberculosis forced him to drop his studies in 1905. Metsarents died from the illness July 1908, at the age of 22. His poems quickly drew attention, including some criticism, to which Metsarents enthusiastically responded. He only managed to publish two volumes of poetry in his lifetime: Tsiatsan (Rainbow, 1907) and Nor tagher (New poems, 1907).

Metsarents's poems have been praised for their language and use of imagery. Literary scholar Kevork Bardakjian writes that Metsarents "paid meticulous attention to form and wrote effortlessly, in a crystal clear, elegantly compact Western Armenian with fresh, vibrant imagery all his own." Armenian literary critic Edward Jrbashian connects Metsarents's poetry with the styles of classical Romanticism and Symbolism.

In 2012, a commemorative postal stamp bearing Metsarents's portrait was issued in Armenia. A school in Yerevan is named after him.