Vahe oshagan biography for kids

  • Vahé Oshagan (Armenian: Վահէ Օշական; 1922 – June 30, 2000) was an Armenian poet, writer, and literary critic.
  • Oshagan was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, to the literary critic, Hagop Oshagan, and his wife, Araxie Astardjian Oshagan.
  • Vahe Oshagan, who has died aged 78, was a critic, political activist, renegade poet and prolific novelist, professor of literature and iconoclast.

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    Vahe Oshagan, 78, Pioneer Of a New Armenian Poetry

    Photo credit: Ara Oshagan

    ~~Today marks the thirteenth anniversary of the death of the Western Armenian poet and literary critic Vahé Oshagan, perhaps the most radical, innovative poet of his generation. A native of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, an exile who turned the condition into the source of a prolific body of work, Oshagan died in Philadelphia, from complications following heart surgery.  He was 78.  He was also my beloved maternal uncle.

    On this occasion, I’m re-posting  my translation of his Tebi Gyank (Toward life). The translation is followed by the obituaries in the New York Times and the Guardian.~~

    TOWARD LIFE

    This midday too
    god sits in death’s shade wipes the sweat off his forehead
    takes out the round gold watch
    looks
    thousands cross-legged in circles listen to fairy tales
    that swing from the tongues of tiny, suspended bells—
    this is our life
    dragging a torn fishing-net on our shoulder we walk the str

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    Vahe Oshagan; Poet Gave Voice to the Armenian Experience

    Vahe Oshagan, 78, critically acclaimed Armenian-language poet. He was famed in Armenian intellectual circles for his eight volumes of poetry, six volumes of fiction and many short stories, plays and commentaries. Most of his works were written in Armenian but some have been translated into English. Some scholars saw him as the most important poet of his generation, particularly because he took the revolutionary step of rejecting the imposed formality of traditional Armenian poetry and instead writing in colloquial language. He was also respected for giving a voice to the Armenian diaspora. Born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, Oshagan grew up in Cyprus and Jerusalem and earned a doctorate in comparative literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. He taught and wrote for many years in Lebanon, but moved to the U.S. during the advent of the civil war there and taught Armenian language, history and culture from 1976 to 1982 at the University of P

  • vahe oshagan biography for kids

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    Vahé Oshagan

    Armenian poet, writer and literary critic

    Vahé Oshagan (Armenian: Վահէ Օշական; 1922 – June 30, 2000) was an Armenian poet, writer, and literary critic.

    Life

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    Vahé Oshagan was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, in 1922. His father, Hagop Oshagan, was a prominent writer and critic. Raised in Cairo, Jerusalem, and Cyprus, he studied in France and received a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of Sorbonne, in Paris.[1]

    Like many Armenians, whose villages and homes were destroyed by the Turks in 1915, Oshagan drifted throughout the mittpunkt East and Europe, never finding a permanent home. He lived in Beirut after 1952 and taught philosophy and psychology, as well as Armenian, French and English literature. He was igen uprooted at the början of the Lebanese civil war in 1975 and forced to move to Philadelphia, where he taught at the University of Pennsylvania from 1976 to 1982. The American cityscape became a focus of his work, as exemplif