Shushanik Kurghinian

Shushanik Kurghinian ( _hy. Շուշանիկ Կուրղինյան ) (August 18, 1876 – November 24, 1927) was an Armenian writer who became a catalyst in the development of socialist and feminist poetry. She gave voice to the voiceless and saw her role as a poet as profoundly political. Her first poem was published in 1899 in Taraz, and in 1900 her first short story appeared in the journal Aghbyur. After founding the first Hnchakian women’s political group in Alexandrapol, Kurghinian fled to Rostov on Don in order to escape arrests of the tsarist regime. Her first volume of poetry, Ringing of the Dawn, was published in 1907, and one of her poems was translated and included in Alice Stone Blackwell’s anthology Armenian Poems: Rendered into English Verse (1917). After the Russian Revolution, in 1921 she returned to Soviet Armenia where she lived until her death. Throughout her lifetime, Kurghinian cultivated significant relationships with famous members of the Armenian artistic and literary worlds of her time, including Vrtanes Papazian, Avetik Isahakian, Hovhannes Toumanian, and others.

Background

Shushanik Kurghinian (née Popoljian) was born in Alexandrapol, (present-day Gyumri), Armenia, into a family of artisans. The young Shushanik benefited from the expansion of Armenian education to the working-class and attended an all-girls' primary school at a local monastery, before attending the Alexandrapol Arghutian Girls' School. In 1895 she studied at a Russian gymnasium, which was one of the many schools instituted by Tsar Alexander III to russify the Caucasus and expand the borders of Imperial Russia. At her school Kurghinian's literary ambition was known and encouraged by her teachers.

At twenty-one she married Arshak Kurghinian, a business man and a member of the socialist underground in the Caucasus. In 1903 she moved to Rostov on Don with her two children, while Arshak stayed in Alexandrapol. Experiencing utmost hardship and poverty, Kurghinian immersed herself in the Russian revolutionary milieu and some of her most powerfully charged poetry was written between 1907-1909, during the years of her affiliation with Rostov's proletarian underground.

Ringing of the Dawn, her first book of poetry was published in Nor Nakhijevan in 1907. It was a direct response to the failed revolution of 1905 and was published with the assistance of Alexander Myasnikian. Kurghinian's second volume was heavily criticized and rejected by tsarist censorship. From the late 1910s to the October Revolution, she continued to write and participate in social projects, but her activities were curtailed by fragile health. In 1921, the year after the sovietization of Armenia, she moved back to Alexandrapol, her native city. In 1925 she traveled to Kharkov and Moscow for medical treatment and returned home disappointed. In 1926, after the Alexandrapol earthquake, she settled in Yerevan, where she was welcomed with great enthusiasm by literary circles. Due to health complications, Kurghinian died at the age of fifty-one in Yerevan on November 24, 1927.

She is considered one of the founders of feminist and proletarian literature in Armenian. [Victoria Rowe, "A History of Armenian Women's Writing, 1880–1922" (London: Cambridge Scholars, 2003), page 170. ISBN 1-904303-23-4.]

Quotations

AND MY HEART WEPT

And my heart wept, seeing compassion trampled in this world,
where desire for possession is the never-ending goal.

And my lofty virgin dreams paled quietly, tears were shed
for the innocent lost in this ugly rule.

And I fell, like a wingless eagle lost,
fallen like mindless heroes from their delusions.

Then someone sang, heralding a crusader's life;
the ringing call to battle stirred my soul.

And someone chanted a free song of heartfelt longing;
a gentle noble whisper spun around me in the air.

Deep inside my soul songs were forming,
songs of great struggle, songs of free new life.

And my faded dreams glowed in the colors of fresh flowers,
of laurel and ambrosia, of hope and desire.

26 March, 1908

(from "I Want To Live", AIWA Press, 2005)

References

Bibliography

Works by Shushanik Kurghinian:

* "Arshaluysi ghoghanjner". Nor Nakhijevan, 1907.
* "Yerkeri zhoghovatsu". Yerevan, 1947.
* "Banasteghtsutyunner". Yerevan: "Hayastan" hratarakchutyun, 1971.
* "I Want to Live: Poems of Shushanik Kurghinian". Shushan Avagyan (trans.), Susan Barba and Victoria Rowe (eds.). Watertown, Mass.: AIWA Press, 2005. ISBN 0-9648787-5-5.

External links

* [http://www.groong.org/tcc/tcc-20060227.html "I Want to Live: Poems of Shushanik Kurghinian"] at Armenian News Network/Groong
* [http://www.groong.org/tcc/tcc-20030715.html "A Forgotten Heritage"] at The Critical Corner - 07/15/2003
* [http://armenian-poetry.blogspot.com/2007/04/shushanik-kurghinian-thats-her-they-say.html "That's Her, They Say"] read by Shushan Avagyan

Persondata
NAME = Kurghinian, Shushanik
ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
SHORT DESCRIPTION = Armenian poetess
DATE OF BIRTH = August 18 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH = Gyumri, Armenia
DATE OF DEATH = 1927
PLACE OF DEATH = Yerevan, Armenia