Diran
Cherakian was an important name of the Western Armenian literary
generation of the first years of the twentieth century, who would become
an indirect victim of the genocide.
He
was born on September 11, 1875, in Scutari (Uskudar), a suburb of
Constantinople. After his primary studies at the local Surp Khach School
(1881-1885), he continued at the famous Berberian Lyceum from
1886-1891. Here he was deeply influenced by its founder and director,
the noted writer and educator Reteos Berberian, to whom he dedicated his
first book.
After
graduation at the age of sixteen, the young Diran, who had already
shown his precocious interest in literature, music, and arts, as well as
natural history, became a teacher at his alma mater for the next seven
years. From 1898-1900 he taught in Trebizonda, on the Black Sea shore,
and he was particularly inspired by that sojourn. He wrote his first
book,
Inner World,
which
he would publish six years later. He had already become a frequent
contributor to the Armenian press with essays, studies, travelogues,
prose pieces, and poems.
In
1900 Cherakian returned to Constantinople to continue his teaching
career at the Berberian, Getronagan, and Bezazian schools, where he
mostly taught Armenian literature. Meanwhile, in 1904-1905 he visited
Paris, where he followed courses of painting and literature, and Egypt.
In 1906 he finally published
Inner World,
a collection of philosophical reflections and impressions, followed by a book of sonnets,
Cypress Wood,
in
1908. He published both books with the pseudonym of Indra (the anagram
of his first name, but also the name of the god of the heavens and
storms in Indian mythology). Cherakian acquired a certain status among
the Western Armenian intelligentsia, even though his literature was
sometimes criticized. His philosophy was that light was the ground for
the material and spiritual world. The infinite was the way to measure
the incommensurable, the universe, and develop universal harmony.
After
1910, the writer went through a deep psychological crisis that would
lead him to renege his past and his literary production. He first
adhered to spiritism and then, in 1913, he entered the Adventist Church,
becoming a wandering preacher. During World War I, he served in the
Ottoman army as a translator and secretary, but refused to take arms,
and his students raised money to free him from military service. He
continued preaching the Bible at his return to Constantinople, which
caused his wife and only child to leave the house, as his attitude
became intolerable. Cherakian, deeply shocked by the annihilation of
1915, gradually lost his mind and was caught into fixation and paranoia.
He burned his manuscripts at that time.
The
drama of his life would come to an end in the postwar. He recreated an
Adventist auditorium in 1919-1920 and preached the love of Christ and
the beauty of eternal life. The wish of death became his fundamental
thought. During the Kemalist movement, in 1921, Cherakian went to Konia,
where he preached going from house to house. He was arrested as a
suspect, charged with sedition and deported in unknown direction. After a
journey of many days in extremely painful conditions, under the strikes
of the whip, Cherakian, hungry, thirsty, and ill, reached the plain of
Diarbekir with his unfortunate companions. He finally passed away on the
banks of the Tigris River on June 6, 1921, encouraging his comrades to
pursue love, unity, and faith.
