GOMIDAS INSTITUTE

Armenian Forum On-Line

About

Armenian Forum On-Line is a timely platform for scholarship related to modern Armenian studies. Submissions can be articles, reviews, notes and studies of academic interest. All submissions will be peer reviewed. Please send all materials electronically to the editor (afol@gomidas.org)

Essay
Paul Mirabile, A Tale of Two Peoples: Armenians and Turks,

Paul Mirabile studied at the French university of Vincennes-Paris VIII for eight years majoring in philology, literature and History, especially mediaeval, defending his doctoral thesis on the Genèse de la Chanson de Roland. He has lived, worked and travelled for the past twenty-five years in Turkey, South India, China and Siberia teaching at universities or secondary schools, studying languages, History and mediaeval literature, publishing books and articles on the mediaeval epic tales of those aforesaid nations....

His interest in Turkic and Armenian relationships stems precisely from this mediaeval continuum and present day political framework, one gleaned from his readings of Dede Korkut Kitabi and David of Sassoun, during thirteen years of working and studying in Turkey, and frequent sojourns in Armenia.

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Emigrating to Soviet Armenia and Back, 1949-1965: the Story of an American -Armenian Family
Essay
Diran Meghreblian, Emigrating to Soviet Armenia and Back, 1949-1965: the Story of an American -Armenian Family,

18 March 2015

The following account was written by Diran Meghreblian in 1999. We are reprinting it with two additional sections added by the author.

* Diran Meghreblian was born in 1945 in Troy, New York, USA. When he was four years old the family went to live to Soviet Armenia where Diran received a Russian education at school and college level in Yerevan. After the family emigrated to France in 1965, he continued his studies at the Sorbonne University in Paris graduating in 1969. In 1970 Diran was invited to England to work at the BBC's World Service as a Russian broadcaster. He took early retirement in 1999. In addition to nearly 30 years' experience as a radio-journalist Diran has done considerable voice-over work, both in Russian and in English. He has also worked in cinema appearing in the 1999 James Bond movie "The World Is Not Enough" and in a thriller  called "Revelation."

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Grossman in Armenia
Review-Essay
Lilit F. Grigoryan, Grossman in Armenia,

10.1.2015

Grossman in Armenia
Discovering a Different Literary Caucasus in Vasily Grossman's An Armenian Sketchbook

As the Caucasus became part of the Russian Empire, Russian writers, beginning with Pushkin, created a "literary Caucasus."  This Caucasus was an exotic "Orient" of adventure, mystery, and romance.  However, this "literary Caucasus" changed in Russian literature with the author and era.  Vasily Grossman, one of the best-known representatives of Russian literature in the 20th century, presents a Caucasus that is different from the "exotic Orient" in his work, An Armenian Sketchbook (1967).  In Grossman's text, the Caucasus is not romanticized.  Though his account is written poetically, it is direct and realistic.  It is a kind of a narration of an ordinary man who visited Armenia.   In this respect, Grossman's Caucasus is unique in Russian literature

* Lilit F. Grigoryan is a graduate student enrolled in the MA program in Russian Translation at Kent State University.  She graduated from Yerevan State University in 2007 with a BA in Russian Philology.

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