User:Revolution Saga/sandbox/Bedros Tourian

Bedros Tourian (also spelled Petros Duryan, Turian, Պետրոս Դուրեան; 1851 –  1872) was a Western Armenian poet, playwright and actor.

Early life and education
Bedros Tourian, born Zmbayan (Զըմպայեան), was born on 1851 in Scutari (Üsküdar), on the Asian side of the Bosporus, today a district of Istanbul. His father, Abraham, was a poor blacksmith with a large family. He had two sisters, Elbis and Ardem, both of whom died at a young age, and three brothers: Harutiun, who died a year after him), Agrippas, and Mehran, who was also a writer and later took the name Yeghishe and became the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem. Despite his family's difficult financial situation, he was able to begin his education from an early age, starting his formal schooling at the age of six. He attended the Armenian academy (jemaran) in Scutari, where he was taught by the satirist Hagop Baronian and the playwright Srabion Tghlian. At the academy, he was taught Classical Armenian (still used as a literary language by Armenians at the time), the Bible, the works of old Armenian historians, arithmetic, Turkish, French, music, and painting, among other subjects. At first, he was a sickly child and did not excel especially in school, but he performed excellently on his end-of-the-year exams in 1865, receiving a volume of Alphonse de Lamartine's poetry as a reward; Lamartine's work greatly influenced Tourian.

Tourian read widely in Armenian and French. He read the works of foreign authors such as Lord Byron, William Shakespeare, Goethe, and Friedrich Schiller. He took interest in theater and read the romantic dramas of Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas. At this time, the Armenian theater of Istanbul was flourishing. Tourian attended plays secretly, against the wishes of his father, who considered it a waste of time and sometimes beat his son for attending the theater. However, Tourian continued to attend the theater and later became a playwright and actor himself. He was encouraged by the theater director Hagop Vartovian (also known as Güllü Agop), who brought French plays to be translated into Armenian by students of the Armenian academy. Tourian translated eight plays from French for Vartovian in his last year at school. None of these translations have survived, although it is known that one of them was a translation of Hugo's Le roi s'amuse. He also translated Shakespeare's Macbeth into Armenian; this translation, too, is considered lost. Tourian wrote his first poem at the age of thirteen and his first play, a partly sung pastoral melodrama titled Vart yev Shushan gam hovivk Masyats (Rose and Lily or the shepherds of Ararat, 1867), at fifteen. This first play, which depicts an intensely emotional story of love and hate, has been described as "lacking artistic merit." In 1867, finding his original surname unsuitable for a poet, he adopted the surname Tourian, formed by translating the Turkish word zımba in his birth name to Armenian tur/dur, both meaning 'chisel'.

Literary and theatrical career
Tourian's talent for poetry was met with indifference by his family and teachers. Before graduating from school, he was briefly sent by his family to become a pharmacist's student, but he remained in this role for only two days before returning to the academy to continue his education. Tourian graduated from the academy in 1867. He worked for free as an Armenian language teacher in 1868, then began working as a secretary for an Armenian merchant. However, his main interest remained the theater and literature. He performed poorly at work, writing poems on business documents. He left his job as a secretary after nine months. Against the wishes of his parents and relatives, he continued his activities in the world of theater, translating plays and writing his own, some of which were performed and brought him fame, but only negligible remuneration. He also became an assistant of the editor of the Armenian newspaper Orakir dziln Avarayrvo (Sprout of Avarayr daily), where he published some articles and poems under his real name or a pen name for small sums of money. Eventually, he was forced to leave this position as well for financial reasons. The highly sensitive Tourian was deeply affected by the hardships of poverty, mockery by relatives and others, and rejection by women. He was constantly urged by his relatives to leave behind art and writing. The bishop and author Khoren Kalfayan (Narbey Lusinian), who promised to print Tourian's works, helped him find a job as a private Armenian tutor, but he soon left this job after his employer cut his salary.

After this, Tourian joined Hagop Vartovian's Tadron Osmaniye (Ottoman theater) as an actor. He wrote a historical tragedy titled Ardashes Ashkharhagal (Artashes the Conqueror), which was first performed in 1870. The premiere attracted more than a thousand people, an unprecedented number for the time. After the success of this play, he wrote several more: Angumn Arshagunyats harsdutyan (The fall of the Arshakuni dynasty, 1870), Asbadagutyunk Parsgats i Hays gam gordzanumn Ani mayrakaghakin Pakradunyats (Persian invasions of Armenia or the destruction of Ani, capital of the Bagratunis, staged in 1908), Gordzanumn Hrovma ishkhanutyan (The destruction of Roman rule, 1870), Shushanig, Dikran II (Tigranes II), and Tadron gam tshvarner (Theater or the wretched, 1878). All of these, save for the last one, are historical tragedies. Tadron gam tshvarner is a social drama about inequality in contemporary Armenian life, the protagonist of which is thought to be a self-insertion by Tourian. It has been called the first Western Armenian social drama. Tourian's most performed play is Sev hogher, another historical tragedy set during the fourteenth-century invasions of Timur. Several of Tourian's historical plays were performed with music composed by Tigran Chukhajian. Tourian also wrote a play titled Darakir i Siberia (Exiled to Siberia), an allegory about the Russian Armenian author Mikayel Nalbandian's exile; this play was found after Tourian's death. Eventually, Tourian felt that he was being treated unjustly by Vartovian and left the theater.

Illness, death and aftermath
The first symptoms of Tourian's tuberculosis appeared in January 1871. In May 1871, Tourian's close friend Vartan Lutfian died of tuberculosis. Tourian wrote an elegiac poem for his friend's funeral. After this, he fell into a state of physical weakness and depression, feeling that death was near. When he felt well enough, he wrote letters and poems. Tourian died on 1872. His funeral was held the next day and was attended by an unprecedented 4,000 people, accompanied by a choir and band. An artist declined to draw Tourian's face after his death, disfigured as it was by his illness. Another artist, Mgrdich Barsamian, began drawing Tourian's portrait based on the descriptions of people who knew him and the features of his family members, but Barsamian died before completing it. This portrait was finally completed by Diran Chrakian in 1893. Tourian was buried in the Armenian cemetery in Üsküdar. In 1957, when the Istanbul municipality was planning to build a road through the Üsküdar cemetery, the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople Karekin Khachadourian had some of the graves, including Bedros Tourian's, removed to be later relocated to a different part of the cemetery. Fragments of Bedros Tourian's skull were disinterred and kept for more than ten years at the Patriarchate's headquarters. Karekin's successor Shenork Kaloustian brought Tourian's skull fragments to Soviet Armenia. These fragments were kept for many years at the Charents Museum of Literature and Arts in Yerevan and were used by anthropologist Andranik Chagharian to reconstruct Tourian's likeness. Tourian's skull fragments were interred in the Komitas Pantheon in Yerevan on 2 February 2011. As of 1993, his grave in Üsküdar was reportedly in good condition and had been moved only a few meters from its original site.

Literary style and themes
Of the writings he produced in his short life, only 41 poems, fifteen letters, seven plays, nine articles and one eulogy by Tourian are known to have survived (Muradyan 472). Tourian wrote poems on themes of patriotism, unrequited love, premature death, nature, and sentiments of loneliness and hopelessness (Oshagan 159) (Kebranian 84) (Bardakjian 120). Most of his lyrical poems are written from the author's perspective and express his inner life (Sharurian 463). The themes of premature death and the injustice of life appears in Tourian's first known poem, which he wrote at the age of thirteen, long before he contracted tuberculosis (Muradyan 489-490). Tourian's patriotic poems were mainly written in the same period during which he was composing his historical tragedies (1867-1870) (Muradyan 489). Unlike Ghevont Alishan, Tourian's patriotic poems mainly express concern about the current state of the Armenian people and its future. In one poem, he called on Armenians to protest, while in another, he exhorted the Ottoman sultan to protect the Armenians or else give them the means to defend themselves (Bardakjian 120).

Kevork Bardakjian writes that Tourian's poetry is "unfettered by conventions and concerns, and thus it is innovative and splendidly spontaneous," and that "[b]eneath his predominantly elegiac and seemingly subdued style, there lurks a tempestuous soul, eagerly but vainly trying to cling to a life sadly cut short by consumption." (Bardakjian 119-120)

Tourian's first play, Vart yev Shushan, was a pastoral melodrama, while in his last play Tadron gam tshvarner, he experimented with the genre of contemporary social drama. Most of Tourian's plays, however, are historical tragedies. These historical plays are set in periods of history in which Armenians were fighting against foreign invaders. His earlier plays display the influence of classicism, although he later abandoned classicist conventions and moved in the direction of romantic drama (Bardakjian 120-121).

Criticism and legacy
A. Sharurian calls Tourian the "first great love poet of modern Armenian lyric poetry." Sharurian credit Most critics rate Tourian's patriotic poems below his more personal poems (Muradyan 491-492). Samvel Muradyan opines that Tourian's best patriotic poems are those which are lyrical in nature, stressing the emotional state of the patriotic individual moved by national tragedy (495).

Although Tourian was better known in his lifetime for his plays, they are regarded less highly than his poetry.

Vahé Oshagan writes that "[t]oday [Tourian] has come to symbolize the prototype of the Armenian romantic poet—highly talented, very patriotic, poor and ungainly, unloved and unappreciated, fervently religious, and doomed to an untimely death․" (Oshagan 159)