Paruir Sevak Armenian poet and literary critic, Doctor of Philology, laureate of the State Prize of the Armenian SSR (1967) Date of Birth: 26.01.1927 Country: Armenia

Biography of Paruyr Sevak

Paruyr Sevak was an Armenian poet and literary scholar, a Doctor of Philological Sciences, and a laureate of the State Prize of the Armenian SSR in 1967. He was highly respected by the youth for his originality, standing out among numerous mediocre poets. Sevak loved to drink, and he believed that he thought, spoke, and wrote strongly and honestly. Such qualities were enough to fall out of favor with the authorities then, as well as now. For a true poet, physical death marks the beginning of a new poetic life.

Born on January 26, 1924, in the village of Chanahchi (now Sovetashen) in the Ararat region, Paruyr Sevak's family had sought refuge in Armenia, escaping the Armenian Genocide of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire. Before his birth, his parents had already lost a son, making him effectively an only child. At the age of five, he could read fluently and write, and he would often run to the village school, which became his favorite place. Recognizing his eagerness, the local teacher suggested that his parents officially enroll him in school, and in 1930, six-year-old Paruyr became a student. It goes without saying that he excelled in school, and his favorite subject was literature. He took his first steps in poetry at the age of eleven, although he later admitted that those early poems had no meaning to him.

His illiterate mother worried about her son's excessive reading, fearing that he may suffer the same fate as his grandfather, who had also read extensively and eventually went mad, wandering through the village and telling people about a future where "machines" resembling "white doves" would fly in the sky, electricity would run through "threads," and every house would have "buttons" that would turn on the lights. She believed that the same "madness" would befall her only son. After graduating from school in 1940, Paruyr Sevak enrolled in the Armenian language and literature department of the Philological Faculty at Yerevan State University. In the first years of his studies, his deeper and more professional acquaintance with literature, especially poetry, led him to lose interest in writing poetry after Charents. He believed that he had nothing to do in poetry and should focus solely on science. "Charents probably killed me, but killed me with the secret intention of resurrecting me later," Sevak said.

Perhaps his first serious step in poetry was the poem "To be or not to be," written in 1942. At that time, when the Great Patriotic War had just begun and the whole country was pondering this question, it was a poem that sharply differed in meaning and style from everything else he wrote during those years. "All my poems were similar to each other, and I decided that I should not be a poet, but my subconscious screamed, 'Be!'" Sevak said. His first poems were published quite accidentally and against Paruyr Kazaryan's will. They ended up in the hands of Ruben Zaryan, who was the editor of the journal "Soviet Literature" at that time and published three of his poems. Subsequently, Sevak published poetry collections such as "The Immortals Command" (1948), "The Road of Love" (1954), "Again with You" (1957), "A Man in the Palm of His Hand" (1963), "Let There Be Light" (1969), and the lyrical poem "The Unsilenced Bell," which earned Sevak the State Prize.

After graduating from Yerevan State University in 1945, Paruyr Sevak entered the graduate school of the Armenian Academy of Sciences. During the same period, he married his classmate Maya Avagyan, and they had a son named Grachya. This marriage later ended in divorce, and Sevak went to study in Moscow, where he enrolled in the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute. In Moscow, he married again, and his second wife was Nina Menagarishvili. He had two sons with Nelly - Armen and Koryun. In 1955, he graduated from the Gorky Institute and worked as a lecturer there until 1959.

The years spent in Moscow were fruitful for Sevak's poetry and creative pursuits and were perhaps the happiest years of his life, as his close friend Levon Akhverdyan recalled. In 1960, the established and beloved poet Paruyr Sevak returned to Yerevan. From 1963 to 1971, he worked as a senior research fellow at the Abegyan Institute of Literature. He was the secretary of the Armenian Writers' Union from 1966 to 1971, and in 1967, he defended his dissertation and obtained a doctoral degree. In 1968, he was elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR.

On June 17, 1971, while returning home from his native village with his wife Nina Menagarishvili, Paruyr Sevak was involved in a car accident. Nina died on the spot, and the severely injured poet was taken to the Ararat District Hospital. Well-known doctors rushed there. Unfortunately, the blow was to his temple, and Paruyr Sevak practically died instantly. His body was transported to the morgue in Yerevan. Rumors spread throughout the capital that the secret services had eliminated the inconvenient master and that the accident had been staged. The youth revered this original poet, recognizing him among a multitude of talentless versifiers. Sevak loved to drink and claimed that he thought, spoke, and wrote strongly and honestly. Wasn't that enough to fall out of favor with the authorities then, as well as now? Death summarizes the life of an ordinary person, but for a true poet, physical death marks the starting point of a new poetic life.

The news of the poet's death was immediately reported to the higher authorities. After brief debates, the Central Committee of the Communist Party decided to bury the body in Sevak's native village, claiming that it was the deceased's wish. Many of his contemporaries believed that Paruyr Sevak had been intentionally humiliated, deprived of a dignified place in the Pantheon, where the remains of national luminaries rested. His close friend, the lawyer Ashot Tadevosyan, who was known for his quick actions driven by emotions, took it upon himself to restore justice in his own way. Learning about the Central Committee's decision, he rushed to the morgue and pleaded on his knees with the pathologist to give him the poet's heart. The doctor was astonished by such recklessness and refused to listen to this madman who had burst into his office. Why should he give Sevak's heart to him? Was there no order from above? What a crazy friend! But Ashot Tadevosyan continued to talk incessantly about the poet's love for Komitas, about Chopin's heart buried by the Poles in Poland, about Byron's fate: part of his ashes in Greece, part in London, in Westminster Abbey... The doctor hesitated. He carefully placed the heart in a jar of formalin and handed it to this madman. Ashot Tadevosyan, disguising the precious cargo, hurried home. From then on, they were inseparable: two hearts of two comrades. Ashot Tadevosyan kept the heart at home for ten years, and then for another fifteen years in a locked safe. He fought and fought for a worthy burial in the Pantheon. He appealed to the then president Levon Ter-Petrosyan, to the Catholicos of All Armenians, to the Union of Writers, to the municipality, to the Ministry of Culture... The Ministry of Culture spared the "prisoner of the heart" and ordered the Museum of Literature and Art to take the "exhibit" into custody.

Yes, there is a lot of mysticism in this story, but it is pure truth from beginning to end.

"No one can predict the day of their own death. Sevak left this life suddenly, by the will of what some claim to be a fatal accident. Should a poet in the prime of his life write a will specifying the place of his final resting place? But the authorities at the time decided to bury the poet in his native village, as if permanently separating him from us, the admirers of Sevak's poetry, and separating him from his great fellow countryman, his spiritual brother immortalized in immortal lines - Komitas. Where can we kneel in moments of desperate grief for the poet, in moments of high respect for his memory? Sevak and Komitas, separated by time and space, could have met - on the small and folk-loved cemetery plots, under the shade of trees... That's when the unceasing bell of memory will ring above the Pantheon... There, where the ashes of Saroyan and Sarjan, Khachaturian and Paradjanov, the great individuals who became the pride of the Armenian people, rest - there, in the national Pantheon, is the place for Sevak's heart" (from the article "The Heart is an Order Worn in the Chest" by I. Verdiyan).