The directory «Plots»

Demirchyan Derenik
(1877—1956)

Poet, novelist and translator as well as playwright, Derenik Demirchyan was born on February 6, 1877, in Akhalkalaki in what is now southern Georgia. After completing his schooling in Tiflis, he became a member of the Armenian literary group Vernatun (Upper Room), so named because its members met in the 5th floor residence of poet Hovhannes Tumanian. Demirchyan published his first book of poetry in 1899. He attended the University of Geneva from 1905 to 1909, and then after some years in Tiflis settled in Yerevan in 1925. During the 1920s several of his plays were produced, most notably Nazar the Brave, a rags-to-riches comedy about a folkloric figure which is based on a collation of over 60 sources by the poet Tumanian. Described by Demirchyan as a play for “childlike adults and adultlike children,” Nazar the Brave was first performed in 1924. It was subsequently given professional productions in Yerevan, Tiflis and Baku, made into an opera and later a film (1940). From the mid-1920s, in addition to writing plays, Demirchyan began writing and publishing in other prose genres, including short stories, novels, and children’s stories. He was also known as a translator from the Russian; his translation of Gogol’s Dead Souls is especially esteemed. Demirchyan continued to work and publish up until his death in 1956. In 1980, the Derenik Demirchyan State literary prize for prose was established in Soviet Armenia.

USSR, 1977.02.18, Yerevan. Birth centenary of Demirchyan

USSR, 1967, Derenik Demirchyan

USSR, 1977, Derenik Demirchyan