| Monument to Avetik IsaakyanAvetik Isahakyan – famous Armenian poet, writer, academician, member of the Armenian Academy of Sciences and a prominent public figure. Isahakian was educated at the Kevorkian seminary in Echmiadzin, and later at the University of Leipzig, where he studied philosophy and anthropology. He started his literary as well as political careers in his early youth. Isahakyans first collection of poetry entitled “Songs and Wounds” was published in 1897. The poet’s best pre-revolutionary work meditates in sorrow and anguish upon the fate of humankind and the injustice of life and is imbued with love for his country and people. His verses called on people to fight against national and social oppression. In 1911, Isahakyan emigrated because of persecution by the tsarist authorities.
Abroad he wrote eastern legends and poems in prose, lyric verses which convey the poet’s anguish at being parted from his own country. In 1936, lsahakyan returned to Armenia, where, with renewed vigour he wrote new cycles of verse in which the key note is struck by his love for his country and people, for the land of his ancestors. Isahakyan’s poetry, with its humanism and great respect for human dignity, is profoundly linked with the history and culture of the Armenian people and with the best traditions of Russian and world literature. Many people of Yerevan remember the figure of the famous poet, as he walked slowly along the streets, with his inevitable long cane. He would slightly incline his head and reply warmly to the respectful greetings of the passers-by. This is how sculptor Sergei Bagdasaryan has portrayed him, as he stops for a minute in thought, before continuing on his way. The statue of the Armenian poet Avetik Isahakyan was unveiled in 1965. |
