Poetry
Տաղեր
Not translated into English
Hovnatan Naghash · 1983
Synopsis
About a hundred songs made to be sung: religious and edifying pieces, love songs, drinking songs, satires and admonitions. Faith and pleasure sit side by side without friction, in a popular language that mixes the dialects of Western and Eastern Armenian with turns of phrase from Classical Armenian, with the verve of a poet who also sang at court.
Context
These songs circulated for a long time by voice and in manuscript copies before being gathered under this title in a volume published in Yerevan in 1983. Their author forms there the link between medieval Armenian lyric poetry and the new school of minstrels, the ashugs; he wrote for singing more than for reading, and it is through him that the path later followed by Sayat-Nova opens.
Who it is for
Short songs, to be read separately and rather listened to: several are still performed by Armenian musicians. The language mixes several dialects.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the founder of the new school of Armenian minstrels and one of the principal secular poets of the late Armenian Middle Ages.