Vazken Shoushanian, a talented young writer of the “School of Paris,” was also one of the orphans of the Armenian Genocide.
He
was born in Rodosto (nowadays Tekirdag), a city of Eastern Thrace, on
February 9, 1902. His birth name was Onnig. He studied and graduated
from the local elementary schools. In September 1915 the Shoushanian
family was deported to Asia Minor, from where they continued on the
exile routes. Onnig lost his father, mother, brother, and sister on the
deportation routes between 1915 and 1917. Meanwhile, he had reached
Aleppo in February 1916. The young orphan, deprived of any family
support, managed to survive doing various menial work in Aleppo and
elsewhere until the end of the war, when he went to Constantinople and
then to Rodosto.
In
1919, Shoushanian entered the Agriculture School of Armash, and moved
to the Republic of Armenia with the rest of his schoolmates in September
1920. Caught in the whirlwind of the end of the independence and the
beginning of the Soviet regime, the students finally left the country
and returned to Constantinople in May 1921.
In
July 1922, Shoushanian came to the United States, but he was not
admitted in Ellis Island due to trachoma and he had to return to
Constantinople. Months later, he managed to travel to France. He became a
factory worker, and in the meantime, he studied agronomy from 1923-1926
in Valabre, near Marseilles. Meanwhile, he had started to write poetry,
prose, and essays in the Armenian press of the Diaspora under the name
Vazken Shoushanian, including Hairenik daily and monthly, in
Boston. He had also become a member of the Armenian Revolutionary
Federation and in his twenties he represented the party at the Socialist
International. He would pursue studies of Social Sciences in Paris and
graduate in 1930.
From 1931-1932 he was part of the literary group Menk,
which published the homonymous journal and gathered, for a short while,
the most promising names in Armenian literature in the Diaspora, such
as Shahan Shahnour, Zareh Vorpouni, and others.
Shoushanian
was already a noted writer when in 1932-1933 he became entangled in the
internal struggles of the A.R.F. and was left outside the party.
However, as he wrote in a journal entry of 1939, he considered himself a
member, “whether I have a party card or not.”
In
the last years of his life, Shoushanian remained on the margin of
Armenian life. He worked at a French boarding school in Rouen from
1933-1939. The school was closed due to the war in 1940 and Shoushanian
made a dangerous trip to bring the students to their homes. After a
seven-year absence, he then returned to Paris.
He
caught pneumonia in the spring of 1941 and died practically alone,
forgotten by almost everyone, in a Paris hospital. He did not have a
tomb and was buried in an unmarked grave.
Few
of his books were published in his lifetime; some remained scattered in
the press, while others were left unpublished. His archives, in the
end, went to Armenia, and some of his work started to be published in
the 1950s, with publication still continuing until this day. A famous
passage in his Journal was a testimony of his love for the
Armenian language: “Armenian language, how much I love you! No girl on
earth can brag that has received so much warm affection, so much love,
so much entreaties from me. The fidelity that I feel towards you is more
powerful than this miserable life of ours. I would like to study you
until my last moment, your ultimate accents and your ultimate words,
your internal music and the road you have traced in history. You are our
prayer and our pleasure, Armenian language, I love you.”
