Sancak Sivas / Σεβάστεια – Sebastaia / Սեբաստիա – Sebastia / Սվաս – Svas / Սրվազ – Srvaz

Daniel Varujan (Daniēl Varowžan; Դանիէլ Վարուժան; West Armenian pronunciation Taniel Varujan) was born on 20 April 1884 as the son of a farmer in the village of Brgnik in Sivas Province; his real family name was Chpug(a)qyarian (Č’powgk’yarean; West Armenian pronunciation: Chbukkyarian). His father was falsely accused and imprisoned in Constantinople during the Armenian massacres of 1896. In the same year, his son moved to Constantinople to attend schools of the Armenian Catholic Mkhitarist Order, from 1902 in Venice and from 1905 in Ghent (Belgium), where he studied history, literature, and Belgian and French art until 1908. In 1909 Varujan returned to his native village as a school teacher, and from 1912 he worked as the director of an Armenian school in Constantinople. In 1914, together with Kostan Zorian, Hakop Oshakan, and others, he founded the literary group and eponymous magazine Mehyan (“Մեհեան”).

Varujan was among those arrested on 24 April 1915. Like most Constantinople intellectuals, the Young Turk regime deported him to Çankırı (Kastamonu province), where deportees were initially interned. From Çankırı, Varujan, together with the poet and doctor Ruben Chilingirian, with Onnig Maghazajian and two others, was sent toward Ankara on 19 August 1915, where the small group never arrived, however, because hired Kurdish assassins killed them after a six-hour journey.

The details of the end of the two poets Varujan and Chilingirian,

who went down in literary history as Ruben Sevak, were described by Bishop Grigoris Palagian (Գրիգորիս Պալագեան; also Palaqian; Western Armenian: Balakian) in his memoirs Armenian Golgotha. Palakian himself was interned in Çankırı, and his recollections contain important, direct information about the fate of his fellow sufferers.

 „It was at dawn on that unforgettable black day, Thursday, August 19, 1915, that we, the remaining eighteen Armenian exiles in Çankırı, assembled in front of the two carriages waiting near the bridge by the riverside café. This was the bridge that those traveling from Çankırı to Ankara had to cross, because the causeway stretched from here to Kalecik via Ankara.

We were all very emotional, and despite our best efforts, we were unable to suppress our tears. A deathly shudder enveloped us, tormented our minds and souls, as we witnessed the lamentations of our soon-to-depart Varoujan, Sevag, Onnig Maghazajian, and two [other] friends.

I had never encountered such instinctual emotion. They said to us. ‘Goodbye, we are going off to die. Reverend Father, pray for us.” Varoujan and Sevag turned to us and said: ‘Take care of our orphans.’ And then Varoujan said, ‘I’ve just had a new boy; let the, name him Varoujan.’ Our emotions overflowed, and our minds were in such shock that we could not even offer a few comforting words. (…)

For a long time the members of the Ittihad club^[2] in Çankırı had wanted to participate in the jihad and become worthy of the reward of the Prophet of Islam. And so, taking advantage of the transfer to Ankara of Dr. Chilingirian, Varoujan, and the three [other] friends, they had sent a Kurdish criminal named Halo [A] on ahead, with a few of his friends, to a place called Tiuna [Tüney], six hours away., to lie in wait for them.

On Thursday, August 19, when our friends were departing Çankırı, the responsible secretary of the local Ittihad committee, Yunuz, phoned the police guardposts along the Çankırı-Kalecik road to inform them of the departure of our comrades. The next day, Friday, he called the guard office in Tüney, asking, ‘Have those arriving been killed yet?’ But as it was Friday, the police soldiers were having a picnic under a tree a little ways from the guard office, and in the guardhouse there was only an Armenian workman who was busy coating the walls with lime, thus he was privy to these incriminating words.

When the two carriages bearing our five comrades reached the summit in Tüney, where the Kalecik headland begins, the four Kurds waiting in ambush came to meet them. The Kurds advanced toward the first carriage and ordered the driver to halt its horses, to which the police soldier ordered the criminals to leave the horses alone or he would shoot them. But the young policeman from Salonica told the police soldier [whom he outranked] not to resist. He didn’t want the police soldier to know in advance that the crime he had been commissioned to expedite was about to be committed, and by some accidental indiscretion undermine the plan. And so with the compliance of the policeman and the police-soldier, the Kurd Halo ordered those in the carriages to disembark.

Having stepped down, Dr. Chilingirian earnestly pleaded with the four Kurds to spare their lives; he promised that he and his friends would give them all their riches and belongings. But despite these heart-wrenching pleas, the Kurds took our five friends to the edge of a brook that runs through the nearby valley and stripped them, so as not to damage their clothing. Then they drew their daggers and attacked them, ripping their bodies apart and slashing their legs and arms and other sensitive parts. Only Varoujan defended himself, and as a punishment, after gutting him, the criminals dug out the eyes of the patriotic poet.”^[3]

Varujan, probably the most important poet of Western Armenian language, left four collections of poems as well as the unfinished cycle The Song of Bread, which could be published only in 1921.

On the bank of the river, in the row of cranes,

That one drooped its head,
Put its beak under its wing, and with its aged
Dim pupils, awaited
Its last black moment.
When its comrades wished to depart,
It could not join them in their flight.
Scarcely could it open its eyes and watch in the air
The path of the little flock that went along
Calling down to those under the roofs
The tidings, the greetings and the tears
Entrusted to them by the exile.
Ah, the poor bird! In the bleak embrace
Of that cold autumnal silence, it is dying.
It is vain to dream any more
Of a distant spring, of cool currents of air
Under strong and soaring wings,
Or of passing through cool brooks
With naked feet, of dipping its long neck
Amongst the green reeds;
It is vain to dream any more!
The wings of the Armenian crane
Are tired of traveling. It was true
To its heart-depressing calling;
It has transported so many tears!
How many young wives have put among its soft feathers
Their hearts, ardently beating!
How many separated mothers and sons
Have loaded its wings with kisses!
Now, with a tremor on its dying day,
It shakes from its shoulders
The vast sorrow of an exiled race.
The vows committed to it, the hidden sighs
Of a betrothed bride who saw at length
Her last rose wither unkissed;
A mother’s sad blessing;
Loves, desires, longings,
It shakes at last from its shoulders.
And on the misty river-bank
Its weary wings, spread for the last time,
Point straight toward
The Armenian hills, the half-ruined villages.
With the voice of its dying day
It curses immigration,
And falls, in silence, upon the coarse sand of the river bank.
It chooses its grave,
And, thrusting its purple beak
Under a rock, the dwelling-place of a lizard,
Stretching out its curving neck .
Among the songs of the waves,
With a noble tremor it expires!
A serpent there, which had watched that death-agony
Silently for a long time with staring pupils,
Crawls up from the river-bank,
And, to revenge a grudge of olden days,
With an evil and swift spring
Coils around its dead neck.

Source: ArmenianHouse.org http://www.armenianhouse.org/blackwell/armenian-poems/daniel-varoujan.html