Zabel Yessayan Project
An informal group of Boston-area AIWA members are developing a plan to have the writings of author Zabel Yesayan translated into English and published. They were inspired by a recent 40-minute documentary, “Finding Zabel Yesayan,” which traces the author’s life, based on family archives, novels, documents, photographs, and reflections by descendants, acquaintances, and scholars.
Writer, activist, and feminist, Yesayan was one of the most prominent Armenian intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her prolific writing in a variety of genres (short stories, essays, novels, travelogs) reflected the cataclysmic events of her times and enjoyed great popularity when they were published. Yet today they are almost forgotten.
A Turbulent Life Reflected in Literature
A native of Istanbul, Zabel Yesayan (1878-1943) became one of the first Ottoman Armenian women to study abroad when she went to Paris and enrolled in the Sorbonne. There she married the painter Dickran Yesayan, and had two children. Her first novel, The Waiting Room, published in 1903, takes place in Paris and explores themes that were to become central to her work—exile and alienation.
Back in Istanbul, she was appointed in 1909 as a member of an Armenian fact-finding delegation to Adana, where she witnessed the aftermath of the bloody massacres that had just taken place. Her classic account of this experience, published as Among the Ruins, is widely regarded as one of her best works.
The only woman on the “black list” of the Armenian intellectuals arrested on the night of April 24, 1915, Yesayan managed to elude the police and escape to Bulgaria. In the 1920s Yesayan visited Soviet Armenia and decided to move there in 1933, becoming a teacher of literature at Yerevan State University and continuing her writing. A victim of Stalin’s purges, she was exiled in 1937 and died, in unknown circumstances, probably in 1943.
The two of her works that have appeared in English—a condensed version of the autobiographical novel The Gardens of Silihdar and excerpts from In the Ruins—provide only a limited sample of her work.
Translations Needed
The first step is to determine which of her works should be translated, and then to find support for the publication. Another issue immediately arises: how about the other early Armenian writers who have been similarly neglected, such as Srpuhi Dusap? Surely they are equally deserving of translation and publication.
The AIWA group warmly welcomes others who would like to participate in this project to encourage knowledge about these pioneering Armenian women writers.
Please feel free to contact AIWA.
