Vittoria Aganoor, the Dreamed and Unknown Armenia

Abstract

This work concerns the Italian poet Vittoria Aganoor (1855-1910), daughter of Edoardo Aganoor, an aristocrat of Armenian origin. His tutor, Father Zanella, a great poet and pedagogue, detected his poetic talent in his youth. Since the 1870s, she published poems in literary journals. Her first book was released in 1900 and was a great success, but she was already praised by the critics and well-known by the public. Her father refused teaching her Armenian. The frustration linked to this “denied language” will accompany him throughout his life. She will not be able to learn Armenian in her youth because of the inexplicable refusal of her father, and when she was finally free to do so, she was too old. Armenian will forever remain a foreign idiom that does not belong to her: a part of herself has thus been taken away from her and will no longer find her words. Incommunicability and denied language are an integral part of his poetics, and appear in other writings, notably his letters.