Sayat’-Nova, an 18th-century troubadour. A Biographical and Literary Study
This book investigates the life and work, and the literary and historical background, of the most popular Armenian poet and minstrel of the early modern era, Arut’in called Sayat’-Nova (c. 1712-1795). The most important of his songs in Armenian, Tiflis Armenian, Georgian and Azeri Turkish, one in four languages (these plus Persian), are edited in a unified transliteration from the original Georgian and Armenian scripts on the texts in the Tetrak, a 1765/6 MS in at least partly his own hand, and versions made in 1823 at St. Petersburg by his youngest son Ioane, with notes on variants, loanwords, cryptica (“trobar clus”), puns, etc. Six odes in poor Russian, hitherto ignored, are examined for motive and sentiments. Chapters are devoted to versification, genres and influences (mainly Persian), an attempt being made to analyse the attraction of his verse. Comparisons are drawn with the work, and where relevant the lives of Sappho, Ovid (fellow exile), Hafiz, Bernard de Ventadorn (fellow victim of the backbiter), Shakespeare (and his Dark Lady), etc. Sayat’-Nova’s poems are mainly love-songs, others, mainly in Georgian, are complaints to his patron (eulogised as “the Emperor of China”, etc.) concerning injustices at his hand and those of Georgian courtiers who held him, and Armenian Orthodox (which he was proud to be, as he declared in Azeri) among Georgian Orthodox and Muslims, for an unwelcome upstart. His religious odes (ilahis) and his religious views, to some extent coloured by Islam, are discussed. According to tradition, he died a martyr, refusing to apostasize when challenged by the troops of Agha Mahmad Khan on the invasion of Tiflis in 1795. Sayat’-Nova considered himself a builder of bridges between the various ethnic cultures of Georgia in whose languages he sang, reflecting the statesman-like aspirations of his royal patron. The present work is one of the few to treat the poems in each language on an equal basis.
Other Titles in this Series
Catalogue of the Arabic Garshuni Manuscripts and Fragments of the Matenadaran (Yerevan)
Volume 708, 148
La versione siriaca della Vita di Giovanni il Misericordioso di Leonzio di Neapolis
T.
Volume 679, 263
Histoire de Zosime sur la vie des Bienheureux Réchabites
Les versions orientales et leurs manuscrits
Volume 664, 135
Religious Poetry in Vernacular Syriac from Northern Iraq (17th-20th Centuries). An Anthology
V.
Volume 628, 241
La versione siriaca della Vita di Giovanni il Misericordioso di Leonzio di Neapolis
V.
Volume 680, 264
An Andalusian Arabic Version of the Four Gospels
(Bayer. Staatsbibl., München, cod. arab. 238)
Volume 663, 54
The Armenian Scholia on Dionysius the Areopagite. Studies on their Literary and Philological Tradition
Volume 625, 122
The Patristic “Masora”
A Study of Patristic Collections in Syriac Handbooks from the Near East
Volume 689, 265
Similar Books
‘For You I Study, For You I Work, For You I Live, For You I Am Ready To Even Give My Life’
Essays in Honour of Francis (Frank) J Moloney, SDB
Liturgia semper reformanda
Adaptations and accommodations in the liturgy in light of canon 838 of the Code of Canon Law
Volume 6
Punning in Odd or Elegant Constructions in Jeremiah
The Convergence of Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Textuality in the Hebrew Text of Jeremiah
The Therapeutae as the Best Paradigm for the Contemplative Life
A Contextual Reading of Philo of Alexandria's De Vita Contemplativa
Katechetischer Text, oder Unterricht vom christlichen Lehrbegrif für Unstudirte
2 Auflagen: 1765–1772. Bibliothek der Neologie. Kritische Ausgabe in zehn Bänden. Band X
