Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Birth of Diran Cherakian (September 11, 1875)

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.