Armenian Literature

COMPRISING

POETRY, DRAMA, FOLK-LORE, AND CLASSIC TRADITIONS

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH FOR THE FIRST TIME

WITH A SPECIAL INTRODUCTION BY

ROBERT ARNOT, M.A.

REVISED EDITION

1904

SPECIAL INTRODUCTION

The literature of ancient Armenia that is still extant is meagre in quantity and to a large extent ecclesiastical in tone. To realize its oriental color one must resort entirely to that portion which deals with the home life of the people, with their fasts and festivals, their emotions, manners, and traditions. The ecclesiastical character of much of the early Armenian literature is accounted for by the fact that Christianity was preached there in the first century after Christ, by the apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew, and that the Armenian Church is the oldest national Christian Church in the world.

It is no doubt owing to the conversion of the entire Armenian nation under the passionate preaching of Gregory the Illuminator that most of the literary products, of primitive Armenia—the mythological legends and chants of heroic deeds sung by bards—are lost. The Church would have none of them. Gregory not only destroyed the pagan temples, but he sought to stamp out the pagan literature—the poetry and recorded traditions that celebrated the deeds of gods and goddesses and of national heroes. He would have succeeded, too, had not the romantic spirit of the race clung fondly to their ballads and folk-lore. Ecclesiastical historiographers in referring to those times say quaintly enough, meaning to censure the people, that in spite of their great religious advantages the Armenians persisted in singing some of their heathen ballads as late as the twelfth century. Curiously enough, we owe the fragments we possess of early Armenian poetry to these same ecclesiastical critics. These fragments suggest a popular poesy, stirring and full of powerful imagery, employed mostly in celebrating royal marriages, religious feasts, and containing dirges for the dead, and ballads of customs—not a wide field, but one invaluable to the philologist and to ethnological students.

The Christian chroniclers and critics, however, while preserving but little of the verse of early Armenia, have handed down to us many legends and traditions, though they relate them, unfortunately, with much carelessness and with a contempt for detail that is often exasperating to one seeking for instructive parallelisms between the heroic legends of different nations. Evidently the only object of the ecclesiastical chroniclers in preserving these legends was to invest their descriptions of the times with a local color. Even Moses of Chorene, who by royal command collected many of these legends, and in his sympathetic treatment of them evinces poetic genius and keen literary appreciation, fails to realize the importance of his task. After speaking of the old Armenian kings with enthusiasm, and even condoning their paganism for the sake of their virility, he leaves his collection in the utmost disorder and positively without a note or comment. In the face of such difficulties, therefore, it has been hard to present specimens of early Armenian folk-lore and legends that shall give the reader a rightful idea of the race and the time.

As Armenia was the highroad between Asia and Europe, these old stories and folk-plays show the influence of migrating and invading people. The mythology of the Chaldeans and Persians mingles oddly with traditions purely Armenian. This is well shown in the story of David of Sassun, given in this volume. David was the local hero of the place where Moses of Chorene was born and probably spent his declining years, after years of literary labor and study in Athens and Alexandria. The name of the district was Mush, and close by the monastery in which Moses was buried lies the village of Sassun.

David's history is rich in personal incident, and recalls to the reader the tales related of the Persian Izdubar, the Chaldeo-Babylonian Nimrod, and the Greek Heracles. He is as much the hero of the tale as is Joseph Andrews in Fielding's classic of that name. His marvellous strength is used as handily for a jest as for some prodigious victory over man or monster. He is drawn for us as a bold, reckless fellow, with a rollicking sense of humor, which, in truth, sits but awkwardly upon the intense devotion to the Cross and its demands with which Moses or some later redactor has seen fit to burden this purely pagan hero. David is very human in spite of his blood-stained club and combative instincts, and his kindliness and bonhomie awake in us a passing disappointment at his untimely demise.

If we except some ecclesiastical writings, these fragments preserved by Moses of Chorene and others comprehend all that is left to us of the literature of Armenia antedating the Persian invasion. After the Persian flood of fire and sword had rolled over this Asiatic Poland, the stricken Christian Church revived. A monk named Mesrob set to work to revive the spirit of literature. His difficulties were great. It was not alone the resuscitating of a dead literary desire, but it entailed also the providing of a vehicle of expression, namely an alphabet, so deeply had the Persian domination imprinted itself upon the land. As might be expected, the primary results of the revival were didactic, speculative, or religious in character. Mysticism at that time flourished in the monasteries, and the national spirit—the customs, habits, joys, and emotions of the people—had not yet found re-expression in script. The Church became the dominant power in literature, and if it is true on the one hand that the Armenian people lost intellectual independence, it is also true on the other that they gained that religious zeal and strength which enabled them as an entity—a united race—to survive the fatal day of Avarair, where, under the shadow of hoary Ararat, the Armenian Marathon was fought and lost, and Vartan, their national hero, died. All sorts of traditions cluster still around the battlefield of Avarair. A species of red flower grows there that is nowhere else to be found, and it is commonly believed that this red blossom sprang originally from the blood of the slain Armenian warriors. On the plain of Avarair is also found a small antelope with a pouch upon its breast secreting musk—a peculiarity gained, they say, from feeding on grass soaked with the blood of Armenia's sons. And at Avarair, too, it is said that the lament of the nightingales is ever, "Vartan, Vartan." The story of these times is preserved in fragments in the religious chronicles of Lazarus of Pharb and of Eliseus. When, during the Persian domination, Armenia became entirely shut off from the avenues of Greek culture, and was left unaided in her struggle for national existence, the light of literature again sank to a feeble gleam. There was, indeed, a faint revival in the tenth century, and again a second and a stronger renaissance in the twelfth under the impulse given by Nerses, and by his namesake, the Patriarch. But this revival, like the former, was not general in character. It was mostly a revival of religious mysticism in literature, not of the national spirit, though to this epoch belong the choicest hymnological productions of the Armenian Church.

There are no chronicles extant that can be called purely Armenian. The oldest chronicles that we have of Armenia—and there are many—wander off into the histories of other people—of the Byzantines, for instance, and even of the Crusaders. The passages that deal with Armenia are devoted almost entirely to narrating the sufferings of the Armenians under the successive invasions of