Vartan Pasha

Vartan Pasha ( Hovsep Vartanian, * 1813, † 1879) was an Ottoman official, author, translator and journalist of Armenian origin of the 19th century, which was collected after 30 years of government service in the rank of Pasha. He wrote the first known novel -like text in Turkish language, the amendment in 1851 published " Akabis history " or history Agapis ( Akabi Hikayesi ). Although the text was published in the Turkish language, but using Armenian letters, in the bilingual newspaper Mecmua -i Havadis.

Life

Hovsep Vartanian was born in 1813 as the son of Catholic- Armenian parents. At the age of 13 years he was sent to the doctrine to Venice, where he was enrolled in the school of Mechitarists. Once he was back in Turkey, he worked for a number of years as a teacher. Then he moved in 1837 to a position as dragoman at the Interior Ministry of the Ottoman Empire. After climbing through the ranks of the state bureaucracy we got him at the same time to the rank of Pasha, when he served as a founding member of the Ottoman Academy ( Encümen -i Danis = society of knowledge) on the pattern of the Académie française. There, the scholar Council since 1853 worked as a liaison directly for the Sultan. The establishment of this academy aroused a great sensation in Europe.

He wrote the novella Akabis History 1851, while he was already a member of the Academy, and a longer story in Turkish, in which it became this big gap and the dispute between the Gregorian Catholic Armenians, which also appeared as an intermediate theme in the novel, in year 1852.

After its adoption in retirement he edited the magazine Mecmua -i Havadis, published bilingually in Turkish and Armenian. In addition, he published a two-volume biography of Napoleon Bonaparte and translated several works from French into Turkish. Vartan Pasha died in 1879.

Akabis history

In the plot of the novel revolves around an impossible love story between two young people from different layers, which were cultured with each other hostilities. In this tradition, the Romeo and Juliet theme several other stories from different cultures emerged through the centuries: from Hero and Leander, Ovid with Pyramus and Thisbe through Romeo and Juliet in the village.

Akabi is the daughter of a Gregorian Armenian and Hagop, her lover, a Catholic Armenians. Although it is an early novel and the author male, Akabis protrudes character is clear from history. Even if Vartan Pasha himself was Catholic, he describes the course of action between the two hostile camps completely objective. However, he is not afraid to criticize back of both behavior. The novel is filled with many minor characters that are characterized short but significant.

Even if the social needs addressed superficially or indirectly, the main theme of the story is the love that ends tragically as the literary model. Thus, one can understand the story as a call for religious tolerance.

This novel stands out not only by the use of the Armenian literary language in Turkey, which was not common diverged during the 19th century, and usually greatly from the Turkish of his time living Armenians. According to the Austrian Andreas Tietze Turcologists is the novella, which he published in 1991 and newly transcribed beyond the first independent Turkish short story, which was published in Turkey, or from a more rigorous perspective, one of the five earliest literary forms, the standard of the Ottoman folk literature differed. Otherwise Sami Frashëris love affair between Talat and Fitnat ( Ta'aşşuk -i Tal'at ve Fitnat ), viewed by 1872 as Turkey's first novel. In the presentation of these five plants Gonca Gökalp presented by the Hacettepe University found that the Cretan Turk Ali Aziz Efendi Giritli was the first work with his work Muhayyelât of 1796, then came " Akabis History " in 1851, followed by Hayalat -ı Dil written by Hasan Tevfik (1868 ), Temaşa -i Dunya of Evangelinos Misailidis, an Anatolian Greeks from Kula (1872 ) and Müsameretname Emin Nihat Bey (1875 ). Despite the fact that the work was published in Turkish, the background is completely Armenian nature, because Armenian was limited at that time almost exclusively to the liturgy.

Expenditure

• Vartan Pasha: Akabi Hikayesi: ILK Türkçe novel. Edited by Andreas Tietze, Eren Yayınevi, İstanbul 1991
• Hovsep ʿ Vardanean: Agapii patmut ʿ iwnē. Delicately ʿ ʿ ONK, Pēyrut ʿ 1954. Translation into Armenian.