Poetry
A Hundred and One Hayrens
Հարյուր ու մեկ հայրեն
Nahapet Kuchak · 1976
Synopsis
Sung quatrains made of two long lines with a caesura, each of which holds a single motif: the body and beauty of the beloved, waiting, jealousy, separation, the exile of the traveller far from his own, and the human condition. The language, close to speech and far from the Church's grabar, voices desire with a freedom and a bluntness rare for its time.
Context
The authorship of the hayrens remains uncertain: modern criticism attributes a good part of them to an older oral tradition, peddled by the minstrels, of which the poet would have been a link or a collector. The poems were found in the last years of the nineteenth century by Archag Tchobanian in manuscripts of the Mekhitarist monastery of San Lazzaro, in Venice. The philologist Levon Mkrtchian drew from them this selection of one hundred and one quatrains, published in Yerevan in 1976 with a Russian translation.
Who it is for
Very short quatrains, to be read separately. Translations vary greatly from one collection to another, since the corpus is not fixed and attributions remain disputed.
Prizes and reception
Regarded, with Narekatsi and Sayat-Nova, as one of the most illustrious figures of ancient Armenian poetry; his hayrens have been translated into French and English.