Biography · 1878–1943
Novelist, eyewitness, feminist, patriot — condemned by the Ottomans in 1915, silenced by the Soviets in 1937, immortal in between.
Zabel Yesayan was born on 4 February 1878 in Scutari — Üsküdar — the Armenian quarter on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, where her family kept a prosperous household among orchards and wooden konaks. From childhood she was fierce: at school she refused to accept the restrictions placed on girls, and she devoured everything she could read. At seventeen, the literary magazine Tsaghik published her first prose poem, «Ode to the Night» — the first of the thousands of pages she would pour onto the page.
In 1895 she moved to Paris — one of the first women from Istanbul to study abroad — and entered the Sorbonne to read literature and philosophy. She survived by correcting proofs for a French–Armenian dictionary and by placing her articles and stories in the Mercure de France, L'Humanité nouvelle and La Grande France, and in the Armenian periodicals Anahit, Masis and Arevelyan Mamoul. There she married Dikran Yesayan, a painter; their children Sophie and Hrant were raised partly apart, between Paris and Constantinople.
After the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, Yesayan returned to Constantinople and became a public and literary figure. In April 1909, massacres tore through the Armenian population of Adana and Cilicia. The Armenian Patriarchate sent her to the disaster zone to deliver food, medicine and consolation — and to see. She saw everything: burned churches, children with missing limbs, mothers who had given up their babies so they would not starve. She suppressed her own horror to work — then wrote it all down. «Աւերակներուն մէջ» (In the Ruins, 1911) made her famous and made her dangerous.
The Young Turk government drew up lists of Armenian intellectuals to be arrested and deported in a single night — the decapitation of a nation's cultural life. On that list, among Zohrab, Siamanto, Varoujan and Zartarian, stood one woman: Zabel Yesayan. Forewarned, she hid and then escaped across the Bulgarian border. From Bulgaria she reached the Caucasus, where refugees and orphans were pouring in from Anatolia; she organised shelter and relief in Tiflis and Baku. In 1918–19 she travelled to Cairo and then Paris as a member of the Armenian delegation to the Peace Conference — and came home disillusioned with the powers that had promised protection.
Disillusioned with the West, Yesayan became a communist and an impassioned advocate of Soviet Armenia as the only homeland Armenians could build. She visited in 1926, wrote «Prometheus Unchained» (1928) about what she saw, and in 1933 — at fifty-five, leaving a comfortable Parisian life — she settled in Yerevan with her daughter Sophie and her son Hrant. She taught French and Armenian literature at Yerevan State University, wrote articles and essays, and produced her masterpiece of memory, «The Gardens of Silihdar» (1935), written in both French and Armenian.
The Soviet state she had embraced devoured her. In 1936 she was accused of fostering «nostalgia» for the past — of the crime of remembering Silihdar too lovingly. On 27 June 1937, during the Great Purge, the Armenian NKVD arrested her with some two hundred Armenian intellectuals, charged as a «nationalist» and «counter-revolutionary». She defended her colleagues — Bakunts and Totovents were shot. Yesayan was sentenced to exile. In prison she was denied pen and paper — the one torture a writer cannot bear. In 1943 she died, most likely in Siberia; some witnesses say drowned. She was sixty-five. Her grave was never marked; her magnum opus, «Barba Khachik», lay unfinished.
4 February 1878, into a prosperous Armenian family on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus.
Her debut — the prose poem «Ode to the Night» — appears in Arshak Chobanian’s magazine Tsaghik; she begins writing for journals across the diaspora.
One of the first women from Istanbul to study abroad. She reads literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne, supports herself proofreading a French–Armenian dictionary, and publishes in Mercure de France, L'Humanité nouvelle and Armenian journals.
Her first novel, «Սպասման սրահին մէջ», is serialized in the magazine Tsaghik.
After the Young Turk Revolution she returns home with her son Hrant; her daughter Sophie remains in France with her husband.
The Patriarchate commissions her to aid survivors of the Adana massacres. She documents burned churches, orphans and emptied towns — material for «In the Ruins» (1911).
Her name appears on the list of Armenian intellectuals to be arrested in a single night. Forewarned, she escapes to Bulgaria, then reaches Tiflis and Baku to organise refugee relief.
«Վերջին բաժակը» is serialized; she serves in the Armenian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference; she also works in Cairo and Cilicia for survivors.
Her memoir-essays of displacement and longing are published; she keeps writing in two languages.
She visits the young republic in 1926–27 and publishes her enthusiastic impressions in 1928 — a book many later read as propaganda, but which she meant as faith.
At 55 she leaves Paris for good, moving with Sophie and Hrant to Soviet Armenia; she teaches French and Armenian literature at Yerevan State University.
Her masterpiece of memory — a luminous account of her Scutari childhood, written in French and Armenian. Soviet critics call it «nostalgia».
Arrested with ~200 Armenian intellectuals; charged as a «nationalist counter-revolutionary»; her novels are used as evidence against her. Bakunts and Totovents are shot; Yesayan is exiled.
In the camps she begs for the right to write. She is refused. She dies in 1943, most likely in Siberia — some say drowned. No grave is marked.
Her unfinished 851-page magnum opus — the portrait of her beloved, Zorba-like uncle — finally reaches readers in Yerevan.