Shushanik Kurghinian (August 18, 1876 – November 24, 1927) was an Armenia

Armenia

Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...

n writer who became a catalyst in the development of socialist and feminist poetry. She gave voice to the voiceless and saw her role as a poet as profoundly political. Her first poem was published in 1899 in Taraz, and in 1900 her first short story appeared in the journal Aghbyur. After founding the first Hnchakian women’s political group in Alexandrapol, Kurghinian fled to Rostov on Don in order to escape arrests of the tsarist regime. Her first volume of poetry, Ringing of the Dawn, was published in 1907, and one of her poems from this volume was translated and included in Alice Stone Blackwell

Alice Stone Blackwell

Alice Stone Blackwell was an American feminist, journalist and human rights advocate.-Biography:The daughter of Henry Brown Blackwell and Lucy Stone, she was born in East Orange, New Jersey....

’s anthology Armenian Poems: Rendered into English Verse (1917). After the Russian Revolution, in 1921 she returned to Soviet Armenia where she lived until her death. Throughout her lifetime, Kurghinian cultivated significant relationships with famous members of the Armenian artistic and literary worlds of her time, including Vrtanes Papazian

Vrtanes Papazian

Vrtanes Mesrop Papazian , an Armenian writer, public-political and cultural activist, literary critic, editor, literature historian, teacher and translator.-Biography:Vrtanes Papazian was born in the city Van in 1866...

, Avetik Isahakian, Hovhannes Toumanian, and others.

Background

Shushanik Kurghinian (née Popoljian) was born in Alexandrapol, (present-day Gyumri

Gyumri

Gyumri is the capital and largest city of the Shirak Province in northwest Armenia. It is located about 120 km from the capital Yerevan, and, with a population of 168,918 , is the second-largest city in Armenia.The name of the city has been changed many times in history...

), Armenia

Armenia

Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...

, into a family of artisans. The young Shushanik benefited from the expansion of Armenian education to the working-class and attended an all-girls' primary school at a local monastery, before attending the Alexandrapol Arghutian Girls' School. In 1895 she studied at a Russian gymnasium, which was one of the many schools instituted by Tsar Alexander III to russify the Caucasus and expand the borders of Imperial Russia. At her school Kurghinian's literary ambition was known and encouraged by her teachers.

At twenty-one she married Arshak Kurghinian, a business man and a member of the socialist underground in the Caucasus

Caucasus

The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...

. In 1903 she moved to Rostov on Don with her two children, while Arshak stayed in Alexandrapol. Experiencing utmost hardship and poverty, Kurghinian immersed herself in the Russian revolutionary milieu and some of her most powerfully charged poetry was written between 1907-1909, during the years of her affiliation with Rostov's proletarian underground.

Arshaluysi ghoghanjner (Ringing of the Dawn), her first book of poetry was published in Nor Nakhijevan in 1907. It was a direct response to the failed revolution of 1905 and was published with the assistance of Aleksandr Myasnikyan

Aleksandr Myasnikyan

Aleksandr Teodorosi Myasnikyan a.k.a. Aleksandr Fyodorovich Myasnikov was a prominent Bolshevik of Armenian descent....

. Kurghinian's second volume was heavily criticized and rejected by tsarist censorship. From the late 1910s to the October Revolution

October Revolution

The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...

, she continued to write and participate in social projects, but her activities were curtailed by fragile health. In 1921, the year after the sovietization

Sovietization

Sovietization is term that may be used with two distinct meanings:*the adoption of a political system based on the model of soviets .*the adoption of a way of life and mentality modelled after the Soviet Union....

 of Armenia, she moved back to Alexandrapol, her native city. In 1925 she traveled to Kharkov and Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 for medical treatment and returned home disappointed. In 1926, after the Alexandrapol earthquake, she settled in Yerevan, where she was welcomed with great enthusiasm by literary circles. Due to health complications, Kurghinian died at the age of fifty-one in Yerevan

Yerevan

Yerevan is the capital and largest city of Armenia and one of the world's oldest continuously-inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Yerevan is the administrative, cultural, and industrial center of the country...

 on November 24, 1927. She was buried in the Komitas Pantheon

Komitas Pantheon

Komitas Pantheon-Park is located in Yerevan's Shengavit district, on the right side of the main Arshakunyats Avenue. Many outstanding figures of Armenia's artistic world are buried here, including Komitas , one of Armenia’s great composers...

-Park.

Kurghinian is considered one of the founders of feminist and proletarian literature

Proletarian literature

Proletarian literature refers to the literature created by working-class writers for the class-conscious proletariat, published by the communist parties. It was a literature without literary pretensions....

 in Armenian

Armenian language

The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...

.

Quotations

I WANTED TO SING

I wanted to sing: they told me I could not,

I wove my own songs: quiet, you are a girl!

But when in this troubled world

an elegy I became,

I spoke to the hearts of many.

The more I sang:

the sooner she'll get tired, they said.

The louder I sang:

the faster her voice will fail.

But I kept singing endlessly,

that's when they started to cajole.

1907

(from I Want To Live, AIWA Press, 2005)

External links

• A Review of I Want to Live: Poems of Shushanik Kurghinian at The Critical Corner — 2/27/2006
• "A Forgotten Heritage" at The Critical Corner — 7/15/2003
• "The Keepers of Our Letters" at The Critical Corner — 1/10/2005
• Two or Three Things She Knows About Shushanik a short film by Tina Bastajian (2005)
• That's Her, They Say read by Shushan Avagyan