Vrtanes Papazian

Vrtanes Papazian ( ; 12 April 1866 – 26 April 1920) was an Armenian writer, public figure, literary critic, literary historian, editor, teacher and translator.

Biography Vrtanes Papazian was born in the city of Van in the Ottoman Empire on 12 April 1866. His father, Mesrop Papazian, was a priest, public figure, writer, and educator who founded the first Iranian Armenian theater group in Tabriz in 1879. His family is said to have had Armenian Roma ancestry. Among Vrtanes's siblings were Vahan Papazian, who became a member in the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and Nerses Papazian, a priest who was one of those arrested on 24 April 1915 and killed during the Armenian genocide. He received his earliest education from his father. where he attended the local Armenian school. He published his first written works in the newspaper Ardzagank in 1883, mainly moralistic stories with Romantic features. He also wrote a novel (not published at the time) titled Knashrjike (The sleepwalker) where he showed interest in exploring the issues of contemporary life. He suffered from financial difficulties in his last years and died in Yerevan on 26 April 1920.

Literary works

The writing of Vrtanes Papazian addressed national and social conditions and the survival of the Armenian people. The writer compared Armenian life and culture against the historical and contemporary standards of other nations. His work included prose, dramaturgy, poetry, literary criticism, history of literature, production, music, pedagogy, linguistics, translation, logic, and psychology.

Early writings of Papazian are about the life of Western Armenians. During the 1890s these stories appeared in the press. Later they were published in two books: Scenes from the Life of Turkish Armenians (1889) and Stories from the Life of Turkish Armenians (1904). Speaking about the horrors by Turks and Kurds, he did not ignore the national oppressors showing that their conduct was equally horrible.

Papazian condemned servility and fawn, setting forward tragic scenes from Western Armenian struggle against the organizers of genocide and creating characters of valiant individuals ("Kheran", "Lightning", "Light Pleasures", "The Dying are Greeting You"). He holds a relentless debate against any vicious opinion. The novel Emma strongly criticizes some national parties as being separated from the nation. While based in European countries far from the homeland these parties proclaim themselves as leaders of struggle against tyranny.

Papazian knew fourteen languages and translated the works of a number of authors into Armenian, including Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Leo Tolstoy, Alphonse Daudet, Nariman Narimanov, Erckmann-Chatrian, Friedrich Nietzsche and Chekri Ganem.