Tserents
Tserents (Hovsep Shishmanyan) was born on September 16, 1822 in Constantinople.
He studied at Venice, at the Mechitarist Monastery of San Lazarro from 1831 to 1837. In 1837 he returned to Constantinople and was engaged in national-educational activities. In 1843 Tserents traveled through Caucasus and Western Armenia.
In 1848 Tserents entered the medical department of the Sorbonne in Paris, concurrently teaching at the Murad Raphaelian School. In 1849, together with Nahapet Rusinian and others founded the Student Union “Araratian”. In 1852 he graduated the University of Pisa in Italy.
Tserents returned to Constantinople in 1853 where he participated in the drafting of the National Constitution of Western Armenians. In the 1860s he embarked on political activities and became involved in the national liberation movement of the Armenian people. In 1876, under persecution, he moved to Cyprus and served there as a doctor.
In 1878, along with his daughter he moved to Tiflis (Russian Empire, present-day Tbilisi, Georgia) and worked as a teacher in the Nersisian Armenian gymnasium. During that period as a doctor he visited Van, Alashkert and other regions of Western Armenia.
Tserents died on February 1, 1888 in Tiflis. He is buried at the Armenian Pantheon of Tbilisi.
Together with Raffi, Tserents was the founder of the Armenian historical novel. The novel Toros, Son of Levon (1877) was dedicated to the tragic events in the history of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia in the 12th century. His best-known novel, The Travails of the 9th Century (1879), reflects the liberation struggle of the Armenian people against the Abbasid Caliphate in the 9th century. Tserents’s final novel, Theodoros Rshtuni (1881), is about the Armenians’ historic struggle to establish a strong centralized state in the 7th century. Tserents’s political and social ideals were drew on the ideals of the 18th-century European Enlightenment.
Arpiar Arpiarian
History of the Armenian Literature in Turkey in the 19th Century
Hovsep Shishmanian (Tserents)
A Constantinople public figure, a Constantinople publicist, a Constantinople novelist who however is better known among the Armenians of Russia than here among the Armenians of Turkey. The novel “Toros, Son of Levon” about Cilicia was published in 1879 in Constantinople. A Russian language newspaper in Tiflis reported that already 30,000 copies of the novel had been sold. And since it is known that success brings success, this amazing report shows what a literary phenomenon this book was. Tserents was the talk of the town in Tiflis. Remember that at that time readers in the Caucasus had a high opinion of Constantinople because of the events of those times.
Thus Shishmanian’s literary fame spread far and wide. “Toros, Son of Levon” had a second edition. Other historic novels followed, each warmly received. Despite the fact that Tserents wrote his last novels in Tiflis, his true place always remained Western Armenian literature. He has spent his entire public life in Constantinople and all of his writings are in the dialect of Constantinople Armenians.
Prior to being a writer, he was first and foremost a man of public affairs and a public advocate. A graduate of the Mechitarist college in Venice and a doctor educated at Paris University, he became a prominent figure in Constantinople. During the Sagz-Aghachi controversy surrounding the Patriarchate, Shishmanian played a major role in his capacity as chair of the church council.
He, like such Armenian writers as Odian and Rusinian, vied for a seat in the Kumkapı (national assembly), eventually occupying the seats vacated by his old friend in the Kumkapı assembly. All the Armenian leaders active in the liberation movement had to hold a pen in their hand. Shishmanian was a great master in using this weapon. The main newspapers that published his articles were Tsiatsan, Masis, Arevelian Mamul. He was versatile writer and thinking, with a unique style, that was at once simple, yet engaging. While neither Odian, nor Rusinian, nor Beshigtashian or other famous writers had ever been to Armenia, Tserents had the blessing to experience the people and homeland first hand. Inspired by the spirit of his homeland and people, he breathed this spirit into his novels have keep his name and memory alive for succeeding generations.
And when the names of novelists with a more sophisticated and more elegant writing style have been forgotten, for their works were scattered all over and thus more accessible for people, Tserents will always retain his special place. And he will long remain an authentic literary voice of the nation. His novels will remain relevant as teachers of the nation’s history for Armenian hearts.
1944
Hagop Baronian
(In the “The Honorable Beggars”)
His cunning characters sometimes so skillfully disguise their nature and shortcomings that they mislead the people who observe them. Sometimes they pretend to be naive and sometimes artful. At times they are ignoramuses and then they are knowledgeable, at times biased and then unbiased, at times hypocritical and then sincere. Hence, when our outstanding compatriot, the long-haired genius Tserents portrays these strange and unnatural figures, he is jeered from all side as “The Old Man” [trans. – tser means ‘old’], even though he is still but a Manukents [trans. – manuk means ‘child’] in the craft of creating characters. They say in the same character he mixes Adam and Antichrist, a devil and an angel, Zoilus and Homer, male and female traits. However, what fault is it of white-bearded Tserents if the characters he presents are all cunning? Yes, Tserents depicts people not as they are but rather as they appear to others. And Tserents is entitled to continue to grow his hair, so long as we have authors who have grown even longer hair than Tserents, and they present their characters not as what they really are, but what they want them to be.
1887
Yervand Otyan
He was a perfect man, helpful, hardworking person, giving himself generously to whatever good he could do and fighting against things he considered as harmful with all his strength. But of course, all these do not make him unique, nor can we consider his type to be a rare phenomenon among us. Shishmanian and his contemporaries were not paragons and if today we find it essential to refer to the past and to seek inspiration in memory of the previous generation, it is not because they have had unique merit, but because they were worthier than we are.
June 26, 1893
Երվանդ Օտյան, Հովսեփ Շիշմանյան (Ծերենց), «Սասիս» հանդես, Կ.Պոլիս, 1893, հունիս 26. թիվ 3997, Էջ 387:
Leo
Raffi and Terents served the same grand idea of national patriotism, yet by different ways. They are the two greatest men in the evolution of our literature. They constitute the first period of that evolution. They graced our literature. This means they provided a small and depressed people with the means for survival.
Long live their memory in our generation and in those that come
April 18, 1913
Լեո, Երկերի ժողովածու, հ.9, Երևան, «Խորհրդային գրող», 1989, էջ 339