Vol. 2 No. 17 (2019): 2019-2

The article examines the period of activity of the Minister of Public Education of the
Republic of Armenia Gevorg Melik-Gharagyozyan, which is directly related to the preparatory
period of the foundation of Yerevan State University. Becoming the Minister of Public
Education (December 1918-June 1919) G. Melik-Gharagyozyan with great enthusiasm
dedicated himself to the idea of creating a University in Armenia. First, he made considerable
efforts to move the Transcaucasian private University of Tbilisi to Armenia. But when the
issue did not get a solution he continued his activities in Armenia, which included creating a
University with his own resources implementing a government decision. Gevorg Melik-
Gharagyozyan was sure, that eventually, the important thing was to unite scientific and creative
forces of the Armenian intellectuals in the homeland, the best center of which would become
the Armenian University.

See Armenian and Russian summaries

Medieval Sagmosavank was famous not only for its high school and rich library, but also
for Christian sacred objects preserved under its floors. There were nine of them, four of which
were crosses, one was a khachkar (a cross-stone), and two were relics of saints (the right hand
of St. Hakob Mtsbinatsi and the finger of St. Hakob’s Brother). There were also two graves
that belonged to two well-known leaders of the monastery. Today, some of them are kept in the
Holy See of Echmiadzin, and the others are preserved on the territory of the monastery.

In July 1912 when power was temporarily transferred to the Italians in the Ottoman
Empire, favorable preconditions seemed to have been created for the Armenians of Van to stop
the Kurdish lawlessness. However, the murders continued, and the situation did not change
drastically. On October 11, 1912, during a brief break in a rocky gorge, Kurdish bandits killed
diocese Rafayel Yeritsyan, inspector of education of the Akhtamar region priest Ter-Martiros
from Hyuryuk village of Sparkert and five other Armenians who were accompanying them.
The villagers of Karkar, who were filled with rage, took revenge. The government being
indifferent to the punishment of the Kurdish criminals immediately took measures to ban the
revenge of the Armenians and arrested the offenders. As a result of beatings and torture, many
villagers migrated. In the autumn of 1912, during the First Balkan War, Russia, along with the
recognition of the problem of Armenian reforms, established special relations with many
Kurdish tribes to attract their Russian counterparts. Being cautious of Russian politics, Turkish
authorities in Van and Bitlis were instructed by Constantinople to maintain good relations with
the Kurds. To this end, in December 1912, The Ministry of Internal Affairs sent instructions to
the governors of the six states of Western Armenia on the normalization of Armenian-Kurdish
relations.

The years of the First World War virtually became the second phase of Bishop Khoren
Muradbekyan’s bishoprics in Yerevan, being marked by difficult challenges, as well as
responsible and hard work directed to overcoming them. In those years, besides the spiritual
and educational activities, Yerevan’s cathedra was also in charge of relocation and custody of
the Armenian migrants. Thanks to his efforts and under his direct supervision, Yerevan
Fraternal Relief and Contracting Committees were established which, throughout their
activities, ignoring the difficult situations caused by the war and tragic consequences of the
Genocide attempted to do their best for the salvation and preservation of the Armenian people.

The present article aims at elucidating the steps taken by the German government towards
overshadowing the Armenian Issue in the international community, as well as the standpoint of
the German-Armenian Society in the period of the Genocide. It also presents well-grounded
explanations on the motives that made the Society adjust to the State Decree. Spreading light
on many other questions this paper also introduces the position of the German Evangelic
missionary organizations with reference to the Armenian Issue and the cooperation of the
German-Armenian Society with the East and the Islamic Commission in particular.

XV century poet, artist and public figure Mkrtich Naghash was one of the prominent
figures of Armenian literature and culture. In the songs written in the motives of nature and
love the poet's optimism, love and warmth towards beauty and different phenomena of nature
are revealed. In the songs of love and nature Mkrtich Naghash depicted the awakening of
spring with certain allegory, while the dedication of love and the diverse manifestations of life
appear in the allegory of rose and nightingale.

Greatest Sayat-Nova – a poet, singer and songwriter, is a nationwide phenomenon.
Thanks to his trilingual lyrics, the great artist opened up a new era in the creative thinking of
Armenian, Georgian and Turkish people, enriched the Medieval Eastern poetry and ashugh
music of those peoples with enduring values, playing a crucial role in rapprochement, mutual
recognition and deepening of cultural and friendly relationships of the peoples of Transcau-
casia. With his trilingual songs, due to their scale and content, he surpassed the boundaries of
one nation, gained a universal significance and with his public activities he became more
authoritative and enlightening especially for our days.

The world of narration of the poem “The Play of Aghasi” by Khachatur Abovyan is
constructed on the basis of peculiar relationships between factual and possible narrations. The
symbol of Masis presented in the poem in its contextual meaning is a binding link between the
heavenly and earthly worlds, which becomes a basis for the equal usage of those two patterns.
Abovyan divided the “ego” of the main hero – the narrator, and gave a separate narrator to each
world – the earthly body and the heavenly soul. In the poem the mythological and ritual
motivations, alongside with the plot referring to everyday life, are equally developing: the
earthly wedding is carried out on the universal basis, i.e. with the participation of the celestial
bodies, while the mythological heroes are acting side by side with human beings.

The article presents the circumstances and the process of literary-ideological refinement
of Shahan Shahnour’s story “The Guardian of Luxembourg”. It analyzes the similarities and
differences between the two versions of the story, as well as the artistic-ideological manifesta-
tions of Shahnourian narrative. As a result of refinement of “The Guardian of Luxembourg”,
the reader was granted with a fairly complete and ultimate work, which, apparently, represents
the literary and national life of Diaspora Armenians and the problems they faced during 30-40s
of the last century, which are still relevant today in some of their manifestations.

The aim of the present publication is to study the novel by Nar-Dos “The Death” with new
standards of evaluation of vital issues. Recently the scholars who had studied the works by
Nar-Dos had lightly referred to the nominated issues. In the present study a reference is made
to the author’s five manuscripts, which had their fertile influence on the final version of the
novel “The Death”. It is noteworthy that in the mentioned work the author not only revealed an
artistic approach to the philosophical concept of suicide but also gave the moral psychological
depiction of a man. As a result of the current observations it is concluded that this full-scale
work by Nar-Dos gives peculiar meaning to both physical and moral philosophy of death in the
context of Armenian fiction.

The interconnection between similar or related works of literature is called intertextuality
or intertext. Some writers have investigated the purpose of intertextuality in different cases and
have identified two main areas (approaches). In one case, the author refers to other texts
consciously and it is used as a creative means and in the second case, it is used by
postmodernists as a special, collective unconscious manifestation. Both approaches are
displayed in the literary connection of Bakunts-Mndzuri. In the article we have tried to find
interesting cases and the development of intertextuality.՝

St. Gregory of Nyssa, the father, the teacher (doctor ecclesiae) of the Armenian and
general Christian church, wrote this work in 379 in the ancient Greek language, in Ancient
Armenian this work was translated presumably in 719 in Constantinople by Stepanos Syunetsi
and David Hiwpatos. The vocabulary of this work, which was translated at the end of the
Hellenizing School, is very imaginative, rich in synonymous constructions, philosophical and
anatomical terms, many of which belong to the pen of translators. In this study we wrote out 30
new lexical units from the critical original version of the Armenian translation (compiled by
Stella Vardanyan) that are not fixed in the dictionaries of the Ancient Armenian language, as
well as identified 83 neologisms that are witnessed in the New Haykazyan dictionary only with
the note of Gr. of Nyssa. We uncovered the semantic field of newly – discovered words,
studied their construction, proving that the post-classical Grabar had a large word-building
potential. Here are some interesting examples: անբանաւորագոյն – absolutely devoid of
meaning, irrational, անպարագրել – to embrace the infinity, առաջախնամութիւն – fortu-
ne, providence, նախավաստակեալ – given initially, պատճառագիտութիւն – knowledge
of causes, etc.

In the present study, a structural-linguistic examination of set expressions that are found in
“Saint Shushanik’s Conduct” is carried out. The Armenian people have a great spiritual value
system, thanks to which they can defeat any enemy. Shushanik fights against her apostate
spouse, remaining faithful to the spiritual relics inherited from her ancestors. The work is full
of idioms, some of which are not recorded in R. Ghazaryan’s “Dictionary of Idioms in Grabar”.
They are presented and evaluated for the first time. The work emphasizes the importance of
Christianity as a mighty power of faith. The grammatical formulas that require a complex study
are an important component of the structure of the word. In the text under consideration,
idioms display a wide range of features of constructing sentences due to their stylistic value.
Idioms, being a small unit of expression, play an important role in creating a fictional image.
The Armenian language is verb-oriented, so it is not by chance that verbs predominate in
idioms. These are mainly constructions with the verbs “to be”, “to give”, “to take”. The main
component is a noun or adjective. In theological literature, there are a number of set
expressions that perform a permanent function. We call them idioms because they contain at
least one element of a figurative meaning, such as “heavenly army” or “heavenly reservoir”.

M. Asatryan’s manual was written several decades ago. Since then morphological norms
of the Eastern Armenian language have undergone some changes. In particular, the changes are
manifested in the system of nouns and verbs, especially in practical materials. Naturally, they
are not recorded in the mentioned manual. Nevertheless, M. Asatryan’s manual “Modern
Armenian: Morphology” is unconditionally a successful manual and has been used in
university studies for decades. The discrepancies between the literary norm and the
grammatical material presented in the manual mostly have objective reasons.

Comparing Hero-People interrelationship in the Armenian Epic and Historical Life (from
XIX to the end of XX century), the article expresses an idea that there are obvious significant
similarities between them. But if the development of events in the epic is a “happy end” – the
heroes overcome the enemy, in the real world the same events may have and often have tragic
consequences for people. In fact, both in the Armenian epos and in the real world, there is a
tendency of break up, distrust and misunderstanding and opposing psychological stances
between the heroes (rebels) and the people (conformist-adaptive ones). The people, who are the
conformists, want to live freely, independently but they do not want to change their “secure”
slavery status at the expense of deprivations and sacrifices. They consider rebellion attempts
and liberation struggle meaningless. In their turn, the heroes are not really familiar with the
psychology and thinking of conformist people, the situation, the political intentions of the
external enemies, strength and weaknesses of the enemy, they do not meet the resistance of the
people, and without waiting for people’s participation, without serious calculations, start their
brave and crazy actions. Heroes and people live in non-negotiable worlds.