Armenian
literature in the nineteenth and twentieth century had a host of names
who were victims of a disease that was considered incurable until a
vaccine was introduced in the 1920s: tuberculosis.
Poetry
and tuberculosis had a link of sorts. Four talented Armenian poets,
among others, died from the disease without reaching the age of forty:
Bedros Tourian (1851-1872), Vahan Terian (1885-1920), Misak Medzarentz
(1886-1908), and Mateos Zarifian (1894-1924).
Zarifian,
the less known of the four, was born on January 16, 1894, in the
neighborhood of Gedik Pasha (Constantinople). He spent his childhood and
youth in Scutari. He studied at the school of Ijadieh, the Robert
College, and the Berberian School, which he finished in 1913. He was an
active sportsman and earned prizes in the Armenian Olympic games
organized in Constantinople (1912-1913)
He
went to Adana to work as a teacher of English and physical education at
the local Armenian school. The first symptoms of tuberculosis, a strong
chest pain, appeared at that time. In 1914 he interrupted his work and
went to Lebanon, hoping that the mountainous air would help cure him. At
the beginning of World War I, he was drafted into the Ottoman army.
While studying at the school of non-commissioned officers, his unruly
behavior landed him before a military tribunal, which sentenced him to
exile. However, some influential interventions helped commute this
sentence to long-term prison. Some months later, he was freed and
started serving at the military hospital as a male nurse.
After
the armistice of Mudros (1918), Zarifian went to the interior as
translator for the British army to participate in the task of gathering
Armenian survivors. Between 1919 and 1921 he worked at his alma mater,
the Berberian School, as teacher of English and physical education. His
illness prompted him to pour his life experience into literature. In
1919 he started publishing poems in the daily
Jagadamard.
His poetry reflected a hopeful approach to life and death, and his love
poems disclosed the melancholic overtones of his soul, “Ah! The superb
poem of my soul,/ Of my ruined, destroyed soul…”
He published two volumes of poetry,
Songs of Grief and Peace
(1921) and
Songs of Life and Death
(1922),
which were critically acclaimed. His long battle with tuberculosis came
to a critical point after 1922. Zarifian, the last representative of
Western Armenian poetry, passed away on April 9, 1924, at the age of
thirty.
