Yeghishe Charents (born Yeghishe Soghomonian, Armenian: Եղիշե Չարենց) (13 March 1897, Kars – 29 November 1937, Yerevan) was an Armenian poet executed in Stalin’s purges. The following two paragraphs summarize a story from Robert Fisk’s Aug 4, 2007 article in The Independent. Yeghishe Charents, one of the nation’s favourite poets – a famous philanderer who apparently sought the Kremlin’s favours – produced a now famous poem called “The Message”. Its praise of Uncle Joe might grind the average set of teeth down to the gum; it included the following: “A new light shone on the world./Who brought this sun?/… It is only this sunlight/Which for centuries will stay alive.” And more of the same. Undiscovered by the Kremlin’s censors for many months, however, Charents had used the first letter of each line to frame a quite different “message”, which read: “O Armenian people, your only salvation is in the power of your unity.” Whoops! Like the distant Mount Ararat, it was a brave, hopeless symbol, as doomed as it was impressive. Charents was “disappeared” by the NKVD in 1937 after being denounced by the architect Tamanian – now hard at work building Yerevan’s new Stalinist opera house – the moment Charents’ schoolboy prank was spotted. Then Tamanian fell from the roof of his still unfinished opera house, and even today Armenians – with their Arab-like desire to believe in “the plot” – ask the obvious questions. Did the architect throw himself to his 1death in remorse? Or was he pushed? His home at No. 17, Mashtots Avenue in Yerevan was turned into a museum in 1975.
A Serenade To My Mother
I remember your old face
My precious mother and very sweet
With light wrinkles and lines
My precious one and very sweet.
You are sitting on the porch
Alongside the growing fig tree
Throwing a shadow on your face
My precious mother and very sweet.
You are sitting sadly and silently
Remembering those old days
That have come and also gone by
My precious mother and very sweet.
And you remember your own son
Who had left you and gone far.
‘Where has he gone ?’ You wonder,
My precious one and very sweet.
‘Where is he now?’ You wonder,
‘Is he alive or is he dead?
And what doors has he been knocking?’
My precious one and very sweet.
And you wonder if he’s been tired
Or if he’s been cheated by love;
And in whose laps has he made love?
My precious one and very sweet.
You are thinking sadly
While the fig tree keeps rocking.
Your sorrow has no limits indeed
My precious one and very sweet.
And then sour tears
Drop down your eyes one by one
Upon your weary hands
My precious one and very sweet.
Yeghishe Charents