Helen's Blog /

On a quiet pedestrian street in Kars, is the run-down delapitaded house where Yeghishe Charents, (1897 - 1937) one of the greatest Armenian poets was born and lived.Both his primary and secondary schooling took place in Kars.

His patriotic pleas to unite Armenians against Stalinism ended him in prison, where he died at the age of 40.

His poetry reflects his love and revolt for Armenia, in the throes of a trubulent period under Russian occupation.

Yeghishe Charents was jailed in 1936 in a Stalinist purge, after writing his now famous paen to nationalism "The Message," due to the explicit plea in the second line : "O Armenian people, your only salvation is in your collective power."

Disappointed with communism in the 1930's, he was a totally disillusioned and bitter man.

Charents wrote intensively until his death and published 6 books of poems and a novel:
Lyrical poems, Dantean legend (1916),
The frenzied mobs (1918),
Poems (1923),
Land of nayiri (1923)- a novel,
Epic daybreak (1930),
Book for the road (1933).

One of his most impassioned poems mirroring his love for Armenia is the following :

"I love the sun-baked taste of Armenian words,
the lilt of ancient lutes in sweet laments
our blood-red fragrant roses bending
as in Nayiran dances, danced still by our girls.

I love the deep night sky, our lakes of light,
the winter winds that howl like dragons fire.
The meanest huts with blackened walls are dear to
me- each of the thousand year old city stones.

Wherever I go, I take our mournful music,
our steel forged letters turned to prayers.
However sharp my wounds or drained of blood,
or orphaned- my yearning heart turns there with love.
There is no brow, no mind, like Narek's Koutch.

No mountain peak like Ararat's,
Search the world, there is no crest as white, so holy.
So like an unreached road to glory - Massis mountain that I love".