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You will also find folk-songs that weep tears for the fate of Armenia, that cry out for freedom and liberty, that burst with the love of a woman for her man and of nightingales singing to babes in cradles. You will also find the key legends of Armenia-of Vahagn, King of Armenia, deified on account of his valour, of Princess Santoukhd, martyred by her father King Sanadroug for becoming a Christian, of Semiramis' love for Ara, so strong that she thought she could will him back to life. So curl up with this unique and exquisite piece of literature and be swept away by the passion of fourteen hundred years of Armenian poetry.
Over the plains of Armenia towers Mount Ararat, on which, the Bible states, Noah's Ark rested after the flood. Here also is the traditional site of the Garden of Eden, and the four rivers that Genesis describes as rising in the Garden, still flow through the land. Sitting astride an arm of the Silk Route, Armenia has been invaded and occupied at various times by Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and the Seljuk Turks, to name but a few. In the fifth century, Armenia became the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as its national religion. Therefore, even a short outline of Armenian folklore and poetry must acknowledge the influences that have served to shape Armenian literature. These influences reflect the interwoven remnants of an intricate tapestry of ancient and modern cultures, legends, songs, and fragments of epics, creating a unique cultural and linguistic identity. Severed for many centuries from Western Europe by a flood of invasions, Armenian literature has not had the recognition that it deserves.
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Zabelle C. Boyajian (Armenian: 1873 – January 26, 1957) was an Ottoman Armenian painter, writer, and translator, who lived most of her life in London. Her mother, Catherine Rogers, was a descendent of the English poet Samuel Rogers. After her father's murder during the Hamidian massacres, in 1895, Boyajian, her mother and her brother, Henry, moved to London, where she enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art. She also started writing and illustrating her own books. Her first novel, Esther, about the massacres in Sasun was published in 1901 in London under the pen name Vardeni. She was very close with Anna Raffi, the wife of the Armenian novelist Raffi, and her two sons, Aram and Arshak. In 1916, she compiled and translated this anthology Armenian Legends and Poems (1916), which was introduced by Viscount James Bryce and which included several poems in Alice Stone Blackwell's translation. She also translated and published Avetik Isahakian's epic poem Abu Lala Mahari and wrote essays on Shakespeare, Byron, Euripides, Michael Arlen, Raffi, and Avetik Isahakian, as well as comparative works on English and Armenian literature.
