Categories: People

Gurgen Mahari – It Was Them Who Had To Live With Us

Armenian writer and poet Gurgen Mahari was born on August 1, 1903, in the city of Van in Western Armenia. In 1915, fleeing from the Genocide, he along with his mother and brother moved to Eastern Armenia. He lived in Armenian and American shelters.

In 1936, Mahari was arrested by the Soviet government. He would spend a total of 17 years in prisons, exile, and free settlement.

Mahari was one among the amazing writers of ours. He was a friend of Yeghishe Charents and Axel Bakunts. It was them who had to live with us, forming our spiritual life, our literature, but they were destroyed – they were killed, exiled, and only some of them, after going through all the circles of hell, returned to us and managed to form the part of literature which they were predestined to create since birth.

17 years of martyrdom did not kill joy, slyness, and unshakable faith in life in Gurgen Mahari. And Mahari, returning from Siberia, gave us the joy of communicating with the Great Romantic.

Source: Collection of stories “What are you, Armenia?”, Moscow, “Izvestiya”, 1989.

Գուրգեն Մահարի

Vigen Avetisyan

Recent Posts

The Turkish Pipeline: How Syrian Fighters Were Recruited, Moved and Deployed Against Armenian Forces in the 2020 Artsakh War

Image Source: 301.am For years, Ankara and Baku publicly denied that Syrian fighters had any…

4 hours ago

Tork Angegh: Storm, Stone, and the Oldest Face of the Armenian Pantheon

Long before Armenia's kings raised churches over pagan sanctuaries, before Hellenism folded Vahagn into Herakles…

5 days ago

The Goat on the Armenian Highland: A Symbol Older Than Writing

Introduction Long before Urartian kings inscribed their names in cuneiform on the cliffs of Van,…

1 week ago

“Summon Against Her the Kingdoms of Ararat”: Urartu-Armenia in the Prophecy Against Babylon

A Coalition Beneath the Mountain Among the oracles of judgment collected in the Book of…

1 week ago

The Tower That Never Left Us: From the Susi Shrine of Ancient Van to the Obelisk Above the Yerevan Cascade

If you have ever climbed the Cascade in Yerevan and looked up at the tall,…

2 weeks ago

Hayravank Monastery: The “Father Monastery” of Lake Sevan and the Legend of the Doves

On a rocky promontory above the southwestern shore of Lake Sevan, at an elevation of…

2 weeks ago