Poem Analysis
About the Poet
Heranush Arshakyan was a young Armenian poet born on July 28, 1887 in Constantinople, Ottoman Turkey. She spent the last few years of her life living in a sanitarium in Yedikule, Turkey suffering with tuberculosis, dying from the disease in 1905 at the age of 18. During her short life, especially when she fell ill, Arshakyan spent her days writing. Through her writing, she found ways to express how she felt about her illness, knowing that it was slowly taking her life.The poetry featured in this project, was taken from V.A Gabrielyan's journal "Heranush Arshakyan (on the occasion of her 85th birthday)". The dates that these poems were written is not known, except for the fact that she wrote them in the final years of her life. Several are also untitled, suggesting that they may have been incomplete or possibly fragments of a lost poem.
What is most evident as you read the poems, is that we are able to read the range of emotions that she felt in those final years of her life when she was cooped up in a village fighting tuberculosis. Several trends emerge upon reading and analysing them.
We see anger, confusion, hopelessness, and sadness in most of her poems. We also see her reminiscing about happier times and writing about her hopefulness in a few of the poems.
Poem Analysis
Hope and Reminising
In several of the poems, Arshakyan reminisces about happier times and her faith in God. In these poems, only one word recurs: heart. Interestingly, this word is used in just one poem. In that poem, 'heart' is seen at the beginning and at the end of the poem. At first, she uses the word and writes
In the dark recesses of my heart, There lives a light.
Although she is suffering and feeling hopeless at times, she continues to hold on to a glimpse of hope. She then uses heart again to say
"Oh God, You lighted that fire in my heart.
In this poem, we see that Arshakyan's source of hope comes from her faith in God. She believes that God will protect her and give her the strength to survive her illness.
Hopeless, Sadness and Confusion
With these poems, we frequently see words like Oh, away, end, sleep, tears, and pain. Alone, away on a farm, to spend her last days Arshakyan writes about her loss in hope of surviving her illness. With these poems, we see her sadness, confusion and anger in dying.
With the word 'end', we see her hopelessness in surviving her illness. Most of the times when the word 'end' is used in her poems, we see her talking about how her end is near. She even goes so far as to write
The end is near, tomorrow morning...
This makes it clear that she has given up her hopes of surviving. Although sad and frustrated, by writing about her death, she has also accepted that she is going to die soon. The word 'Oh', the most frequent word in these poems, mostly come from the following poem (unknown title):
- So why are you so beautiful,
- Oh night, oh flower, oh tree, oh wave, oh moon?
- Why are you all laughing?
- When the oil lamp casts its light,
- And the beautiful eyes are drowning in tears.
Feeling sad, knowing her fate, Arshakyan uses words like ‘pain’ and ‘tears’ to capture her emotions in several poems. Every time these two words appear, Arshakyan is referring to herself, as seen in the lines below. Writing about the pain she has been physically and mentally going through and the tears she has cried, so much that she has "dried out" of them.
"Lord, You made pain my lot"
"The path I walk is called the highway to pain."
"In the circle of pain that engulfs me"
"Although the black fire of pain
Rages within unchecked..."
"My tears dried out in my eyes"
"And I walk in tears."
"Whose eyes are going to pour out tears?"
It is easy to see the the range of emotions that Arshakyan experienced while in the last years of her life. By using Voyant, we can see clear indicators of how she felt by analyzing her use of certain words.
In the dark recesses of my heart, There lives a light.