Zabel Yesayan: The Myth of the Armenian Transnational Moment

Abstract

The collection of pieces that follow intersect with what I refer to in this essay as the dual performative acts of iconification and translation that frame our approach to Zabel Yesayan over the last few decades. Maral Aktokmakyan’s critical essay, “So Did We Really Find Yesayan?: Notes on ‘Yesayan Studies’ and Beyond” coins the author’s recent iconification as “Yesayan fever” and warns us that the emergent sub-field of Yesayan Studies may be overly reliant on translations and thus endangering the integrity of the author’s original literary voice in Armenian. Meriam Belli and Elyse Semerdjian offer us two translations from French, of a speech and a report drafted by Yesayan in Paris, in 1919. Belli’s “Chronicle: The Role of Armenian Women during the War” and Semerdjian’s “The Liberation of non-Muslim Women and Children in Turkey: Notes on the question of the abduction of non-Muslim women and children by the Turks, retained until today by Muslims» give us a glimpse of Yesayan’s work as an activist and capture the author’s haunting style of testimonial writing. As Semerdjian notes in her subsequent analytical discussion of the translation, Yesayan’s report not only reveals the gendered mode of the Armenian genocide and women’s victimhood within it, but it also calls for political action in addressing the plight of Armenian women and highlights their capacity for resistance. Together, this collection of think-pieces and translations contributes to the ongoing debates of searching for Yesayan’s elusive figure and understanding Yesayan the writer, but it ultimately guides the reader back to her own words.