Antranig: Marte yev Razmige (Vartkes Aharonian, 1957)
Name/Title
Antranig: Marte yev Razmige (Vartkes Aharonian, 1957)Description
Vartkes (also spelled Vardges) Aharonian (1888–1965), son of the prominent author, statesman, and diplomat Avetis Aharonian, was a lawyer, writer, public figure, and educator who emigrated to the United States in 1923. Trained as a lawyer, he was also active as a writer, literary commentator, and polemicist, and was closely involved in Armenian national and cultural life. In the Armenian diaspora, he devoted himself to the education of Armenian children and the preservation of Western Armenian language and culture. Together with his wife, Armenuhi Tigranian Aharonian (1888–1962)—a poet, literary critic, and educator associated with the culturally influential Tigranian family—he compiled Hraztan, a widely used Western Armenian school reader published in the 1930s and named after the Hrazdan River in Armenia. Aharonian is also the author of Antranig: Marte yev Razmige (Andranik: The Man and the Warrior), a biographical and memoir-based work first published in 1957 in Boston by the Hairenik Association and republished in the 21st century by the Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society. The book, which remains relatively little known in Armenia and among historians of the period, draws on Aharonian’s personal experiences as a volunteer aide-de-camp and interpreter to General Andranik during the First World War, including his involvement in the Armenian Volunteer Movement. Having encountered Andranik frequently both within his family environment and during wartime service, Aharonian presents a firsthand account of the general’s military leadership and personal character, portraying him as both a military figure and a complex individual. The memoir emphasizes aspects of Andranik’s personality and conduct not always reflected in official or later historical narratives, and functions as a primary source on the events of the period and the lived experience of one of the Armenian national movement’s most significant figures, whose political affiliations and legacy were downplayed during the Soviet era. The book is dedicated to the memory of the author’s mother, Anush Nazari Aharonian, with the inscription: “To the shining, shining memory of my mother, Anush Nazari Aharonian, who rests on the skirts of Mount Ararat.”Category
Books