Gevorg Emin, Songbook I

Review / Description

Gevorg Emin (September 30, 1918 – June 11, 1998) was an Armenian poet, essayist, and translator, was born Gevorg Muradian, the son of a school teacher, in the town of Ashtarak. In 1927, his family left Ashtarak and moved to Yerevan, the capital of then Soviet Armenia…

In school, Emin met Armenia’s leading poet Yegishe Charents, who died in 1937 in a Soviet prison. Emin recalls in his preface to For You on New Year’s Day:

Today if I write instead of building canals and power plants it is due to two things: the impact of meeting Yeghishe Charents, and second, the touch of ancient manuscripts at the Matenadaran library where I worked as a student and could read and hold the magnificent old manuscripts from the fifth through the eighteenth centuries…

Emin’s roots as a poet are deeply embedded in the culture and the physical landscape of the country he grew up in. To this is added his extensive reading of modern poetry, especially French symbolist poets, and his enduring faith in the power of poetry. From 1941 to 1945, Emin fought (and was wounded) in World War II. His poetry makes no specific references to his own war experiences but often refers to the Armenian Genocide…

Read more in www.wikipedia.org