Birth of Yervant Odian (September 19, 1869)

A century and a half ago, “the greatest Armenian satirist born for laughter” after Hagop Baronian, in the words of novelist Shirvanzade, was born in Constantinople. Yervant Odian would surpass Baronian, the premier name in Armenian satirical literature, by the sheer number and variety of his works. His ability to write stories at any given instant was unique. Many of Odian’s works were published in daily installments, following the French model of the feuilleton, and some of them remained unpublished as books for long decades.

Born on September 19, 1869, Օdian grew up at the home of his uncle, the statesman and political figure Krikor Odian, where he witnessed the debates of famous literary names. He attended the Berberian Lyceum from 1882-1883, but he dropped out due to his weakness and completed his education with private tutors and insatiable reading in Armenian and French.

He started his literary career in 1887 with translations and literary studies. Five years later, he became assistant editor of the famous daily Hairenik of the Ottoman capital. He was producing a steady flow of chronicles, short stories, and novellas, drawing upon social and political issues. In 1896 Odian became editor of Hairenik, but in the same year, the persecutions and massacres started in Constantinople prompted him to leave the Ottoman Empire. For the next twelve years he would live as an exile in Greece, Paris, England, Austria, Egypt, and India, which he later portrayed in a memoir entitled Twelve Years Out of Constantinople (1912-1913). He published several newspapers in Greece, Paris, and Egypt, and wrote many works, including a series of stories under the title of The Parasites of the Revolution (1899).

After the Ottoman Revolution, Odian returned to Constantinople in 1909. He continued writing and publishing several satirical newspapers. In the period 1909-1915 he wrote several of his masterpieces of political and social satire: the first two parts of his novel The Comrade Panchooni (1910 and 1914), Family, Honor, Moral (1910), The Letters of a Trader (1914), The Wife of the Councilman (1915), two detective novels about the tyrannical rule of Abdul Hamid, Abdul Hamid and Sherlock Holmes (1911) and Saliha Hanum or the Army against the Tyrant (1912), his satirical profiles of Armenian political representatives ( Our Deputies, 1913). He also translated from French into Armenian Leo Tolstoy’s Resurrection (1910) and Anna Karenina (1911), as well as works by Emile Zola, Feodor Dostoyevsky, Maxim Gorky, Mark Twain, and others. He also wrote a series of profiles of Armenian politicians, called Our Deputies (1913).

Odian avoided the roundup of April 24, 1915, but was arrested in August 1915 and deported. However, he survived three years and a half of a deportee life, and he depicted his recollections in the memoir Accursed Years (1918-1919). He returned to Constantinople after the armistice of October 1918 and resumed his literary activities, again contributing to newspapers (he contributed daily columns to various newspapers simultaneously) while editing some newspapers of his own and writing more novels, such as the three-volume The Spy Number 17 (1919-1921) and several others.

Like many other intellectuals, Odian abandoned Constantinople in 1922 after the triumph of the Kemalist movement and moved to Bucharest (Romania). Two years later, he moved to Tripoli (Lebanon), and then to Cairo (Egypt). He passed away օ n October 3, 1926, and was buried at the cemetery of Mar Mina.

The works of Yervant Odian have been translated into many languages (Turkish, French, Bulgarian, Greek, Spanish, and others). Both Comrade Panchooni and Accursed Years have been translated into English.

In 1964 Odian’s story “The False Spy,” directed by Henrik Malian, became one of the episodes of the film Monsieur Jacques and the Others, produced by Armenfilm. Almost three decades later, in 1992, Arman Manarian directed a cinematographic version of Comrade Panchoon that was also released by Armenfilm in Armenia. A street of Yerevan and a school in Vagharshapat have been named after Yervant Odian.

Birth of Varoujan Khedeshian (April 7, 1937)

Varoujan Khedeshian was one of the most innovative directors of Armenian theater in the Diaspora during the second half of the twentieth century.

He was born on April 7, 1937, in Aley (Lebanon). At the age of sixteen, he debuted in the Hamazkayin “Kaspar Ipekian” dramatic troupe, directed by Georges Sarkissian, another famous name of Diasporan theater.

In 1960 he went to London to study at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. He graduated in 1965 and returned to Lebanon, where he joined the Hamazkayin “Levon Shant” dramatic troupe. Two years later, he founded the “Theatre 67” dramatic troupe, which had a very important role in the Lebanese Armenian community until the beginning of the civil war in 1975. Khedeshian was noted for staging works from the Armenian and international repertoire that went outside the mold of tradition, introducing the audience to contemporary works by playwrights like Arthur Miller, Peter Weiss, Edward Albee, and Neil Simon. He would maintain this approach when he took over the direction of the “Kaspar Ipekian” from 1989-2000. He translated a total of 22 plays from English into Armenian.

Some of the works he directed included, along with “Ancient Gods” and “The Emperor” (Levon Shant), “By the Road of Heaven” and “Up to Where?” (Hagop Oshagan), “Alafranca,” “The Oriental Dentist,” and “Brother Balthazar” (Hagop Baronian), “The Piper of the Mountains of Armenia” (Hamasdegh), world-famous works like “The Merchant of Venice” (William Shakespeare), “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (Edward Albee), “Marat/Sade” (Peter Weiss), “The Crucible,” “View from the Bridge,” “The Price,” and “All My Sons” (Arthur Miller), “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” and “Barefoot in the Park” (Neil Simon), “The Master Builder” (Henrik Ibsen), “Romulus the Great” (Friedrich Dürrenmatt), “The Venetian Twins” (Carlo Goldoni), “The Caretaker” (Harold Pinter).

From 1979-1987 Khedeshian staged five dramatic performances in Armenia, both in Yerevan and Leninakan (now Gyumri), and received the “Bedros Atamian” medal in 1987, becoming the first Diasporan Armenian who earned this award during the Soviet period.

His decades-long theatrical activity earned him multiple accolades and several distinctions late in life. In 2000 he was decorated with the “St. Mesrob Mashdots” order of the Holy See of Cilicia by Catholicos Aram I and the Hamazkayin order by the Central Executive Board of this organization. In 2008 the Ministry of Culture of Armenia awarded him its gold medal, and Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II bestowed upon him the “St. Sahag-St. Mesrob” medal of the Armenian Church. Meanwhile, in 2004 he had received the order of the Institute of Arts of Lebanese University, where he had taught dramatic art from 1971-1999.

Varoujan Khedeshian passed away on December 28, 2015, in Beirut, at the age of seventy-eight.

Birth of Hagop Baronian - November 19, 1843

Every society and every point in time needs critics. Critics may lash out at negative points, and they can hit very hard. However, they will hit even harder if they use satire as their weapon. This is why the late nineteenth century critics of Armenian society are not remembered today, but Hagop Baronian has become the most famous Armenian satirist writer of all time.

He was born in Adrianople (nowadays Edirne, in Eastern Thrace) on November 19, 1843, in a family belonging to the poor class. After graduating from the local Arshaguniats School, he studied for a year at the Greek school of the town (1857-1858). Then he had to contribute to family living. He first worked two years at a pharmacy, and then entered a tobacco company as a bookkeeper. Self-teaching and continuous reading made up for his lack of formal education.

He moved to Constantinople in 1863 and taught at the Scutari Lyceum, where one of his students was Bedros Turian, the future poet. He entered journalism in 1871 as editor-in-chief of the newspaper Yeprad, but soon took a position as editor of the newspaper Meghu, published by Harutiun Svajian, and turned it into a well-known satirical publication. Meghu ceased publication in 1874 and Svajian transferred the right of publication to Baronian, who renamed it Tadron. Becoming the publisher, Baronian gave a free ride to his lashing and educational wit to criticize the negative aspects of society. However, economic troubles ended the publication of Tadron in 1879.

Baronian married Satenik Etmekjian in 1879 and they had two children, Zabel and Ashod. In the same year, he started to work for Minas Kapamajian’s Luys, as the editor of the comic section. His writing attracted a lot of attention, but Kapamajian did not appreciate him, and Baronian was forced to stop his contribution to Luys.

He started to publish the monthly Khigar in 1884, and despite financial hurdles and short interruptions, managed to continue it until 1888. Some of his most important satirical works were published here.

Between 1871 and 1888, he published more than 10,000 pages in the newspapers, although most of his works were published in book form posthumously. His most important works were the novel The Honorable Beggars, the collection of stories The Perils of Politeness, the satirical chronicles A Trip in the Neighborhoods of Constantinople and National Big Shots, and the comedies The Oriental Dentists and Brother Baghdasar.

To make ends meet, Baronian became a teacher of accountancy at the Getronagan School of Galatia from 1888-1890. One of his students was the famous linguist Hrachia Ajarian. He died of tuberculosis on May 27, 1891, at the age of 48, leaving his widow and his young children penniless. Nevertheless, a compact crowd participated in his burial. His colleague Mateos Mamurian, another noted journalist, wrote: “How many people who loved education and the nation responded to the invitation formulated by the Armenian newspapers at the time of his illness...? As a matter of fact, what did we do for the poor man? What did the nation make collectively for its brave son? It made the burial and just decided to collect monies for his orphans. There was not a single official body or individual who would put a crown of flowers on the immortal Baronian, even though his works are his perennial crowns.”

As supreme irony, Baronian was buried in the cemetery of Ortakeuy without a tombstone marking his grave, and the exact location was soon forgotten. Nevertheless, his works were widely published and read after his death; his plays have been frequently performed and even turned into movies (The Perils of Politeness and The Honorable Beggars were adapted into plays), and the comedy theater of Yerevan bears his name.