ANCIENT EPIC ARMENIAN POETRY COMES TO LIFE IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
By Arthur Hagopian
AZG Armenian Daily
05/05/2007
Jerusalem – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has spearheaded the
publication of an English translation of a virtually unknown Armenian
medieval epic that graphically expresses the yearning of the first
people to convert to Christianity for salvation and paradise.
The translation into English, the first ever, was the work of the noted
Armenologist, Michael Stone, director of the university’s Armenian
studies program, balancing literary felicity with faithfulness to
the original, uncovering medieval Armenian poetic tradition through
its more than 6,000 gracefully translated lines.
Stone’s work has brought alive the brilliance of paradise, the
wickedness of Satan, and the inner struggle of the first man and woman,
Adam and Eve, in his rendition of the early 15th CE epic "Adamgirk:
The Adam Book of Arakel of Siwnik."
Stone notes that the theme of Adam and Eve has fascinated Armenians
for centuries.
"By the time Arakel composed his treasure in 1401, the Armenians had
nurtured an extensive apocryphal literature about the first couple,"
he says.
"Yet, although there were Adam and Eve poems before Arakel, none is
as long, complex and intriguing as his work. Faced with the pressures
of external events, with the erosion of the church and its faith,
Arakel’s interweaving of theological tradition and text with lyrical
language and vivid imagery produced a remarkable work," he adds.
Arakel, who was an abbot of the famous University Monastery of Tatew,
depicts Adam as a "newborn flower" whose "body shone like a spark,
for the light of the spirit inflamed him," in a resplendent vision
of Paradise.
At the time he wrote his epic, Armenia was suffering under the yoke of
foreign subjugation, following the collapse of the Kingdom of Cilicia,
and provided just the right kind of succor for his people.
Stone says the work is comparable in scope and range to classics such
as John Milton’s "Paradise Lost."
He has not attempted to retain any meter or rhyming pattern.
"My aim was to navigate between the Scylla of over-literalism and
the Charybdis of inaccuracy for the sake of literary effect," he says.
Arakel was born about 1350 CE in ‘Siwnik, a region separated from
the central Ararat province by a range of mountains, and enjoying a
sort of autonomy with its own which was kingdom founded in 987 CE and
lasted until the 12th Century when the Mongol hordes overran Armenia.
Under the Mongols, the region prospered thanks to the sagacity and
diplomacy of the ruling princely family.
With Prince Elikum Orbelian at the helm, Siwnik became a cultural
and religious center, attracting artists, architects, writers and
intellectuals.
Arakel has a distinguished ancestry. His maternal uncle, and mentor,
was none other than Grigor of Tatew. He was ordained bishop of Siwnik
by 1401 and was Abbot of Tatew in the early fifteenth century.
Grigor held his nephew in great esteem referring to him as "my humble
nephew in the flesh, born poet, virtuous Arakel."
"Grigor and Arakel, labored from within the walls of the important
monastery of Tatew to make Armenian tradition secure and, through the
educational system they developed, to transmit learning and faith to
their students," Stone notes.
At Grigor’s urging, Arakel began an epic poem on the story of Adam
and Eve, producing four versions, which Stone has now translated
into English. Arakel also composed a second biblical epic, the Book
of Paradise, which is shorter and held in less esteem. "Adamgirk"
is being published by Oxford University Press and is available at
all good bookshops or directly from OUP (
in the UK and in the US).
"Arakel writes extremely powerful narrative poetry, as in his
description of the brilliance of paradise, of Satan’s mustering his
hosts against Adam and Eve, and Eve’s inner struggle between obedience
to God and Satan’s seduction," according to the blurb.
"In parts the epic is in dialogue form between Adam, Eve, and God. It
also pays much attention to the typology of Adam and Christ, or Adam’s
sin and death and Christ’s crucifixion. By implication, this story,
from an Eastern Christian tradition, is the story of all humans,
and bears comparison with later biblical epics, such as Milton’s
Paradise Lost," it adds.