Russell to Speak on 'An Armenian Eccentric: The Life and Times of Kara Darvish'

Dr. James R. Russell, Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University, will present a lecture entitled “An Armenian Eccentric: The Life and Times of Kara Darvish,” on Thursday, April 3, 2014, at 7:30 p.m. at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), 395 Concord Avenue, Belmont, Mass.

Kara Darvish (Hakob Genjian) was an Armenian Futurist poet who lived and worked mainly in Tiflis, Georgia, before and after World War I. He wrote several novels and manifestoes, but is best known for the “postcard” poems he distributed at cafés and outside cinemas which proclaim his cosmopolitan and revolutionary credo and experiment with odd typefaces and experiment with incantatory nonsense words in Armenian, dipping also into the Armenian mythological past. (His Russian Futurist colleagues named this technique zaum’, i.e., transrational language.) Among his friends and associates were the poets Osip Mandelstam and Yeghishe Charents. Kostan Zarian evokes the poet and his turbulent surroundings in the novel Nave Leran Vra (The Ship upon the Mountain).

NAASR is especially pleased to present this lecture as its Edward and Helen Mardigian Library holds several rare titles by Kara Darvish, which it has made available to Prof. Russell during his research.

James R. Russell has been the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University since 1992. His books include Bosphorus Nights: The Complete Lyric Poems of Bedros Tourian, Armenian and Iranian Studies, The Book of Flowers, An Armenian Epic: The Heroes of Kasht, Zoroastrianism in Armenia, and Hovhannes Tlkurantsi and the Medieval Armenian Lyric Tradition.

For more information about this program call 617-489-1610, fax 617-484-1759, e-mail hq@naasr.org, or write to NAASR, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA 02478.