PROFESSOR MARC NICHANIAN LECTURES ON: "HAGOP OSHAGAN IN THE TCHANGHERE PRISON"
Mira Yardemian
AZG Armenian Daily
25/03/2008
Culture, Diaspora
Beirut, March 18, 2008- Renowned Professor Marc Nichanian, delivered
his second public lecture entitled, "Hagop Oshagan in the Prison of
Tchangere," on March 12, in Haigazian University Auditorium, among
a capacity audience of Armenian intel^_lec^_tuals, writers, faculty,
staff and students.
Dr. Nichanian, who is currently a visiting professor in the Armenian
Studies Depart^_ment, presented his lecture as being an echo of
the questions raised in his most recent French volume, Le Roman de
la Catastrophe, to be published in 2008 by the publish^_ing house
MetisPresse in Geneva.
The event opened with the welcoming words of the University’s Public
Relations Dir^_ec^_tor, Mira Yardemian, who briefly introduced the
educational and teaching back^_ground of the guest speaker Marc
Nichanian, in addition to naming his various pub^_lica^_tions in
French, English and Armenian languages.
The topic of Marc Nichanian’s lecture was the unwritten part of
Oshagan’s novel Mnasortats, of which only the first two parts have been
published. As it is well known, Oshagan was un^_able to write the third
part of the novel, in which he purported to "approach the Catastrophe."
After presenting Oshagan’s biography and describing the general
features of his novelistic output, Marc Nichanian reviewed the reasons
given by Oshagan for this failure and proposed a reading of the
scarce passages (spread in Panorama of Western-Armenian literature),
where Oshagan gives an idea of what he intended to do in this third
part of the novel. One of these passages was supposed to give an
account of the "last" night of the Armenian intellectuals, these
"princes of the spirit," in Tchangere. The latter is the ill-famed
place in Turkey where most of the arrested Ar^_men^_ian intellectuals
during the round-up of April 24 were deported. Very few survived. Of
course, Hagop Oshagan was not arrested on April 24 and has never
been in Tchangere. In this respect, the audience was very curiously
listening to Nichanian, in order to decode the mystery of Hagop
Oshagan’s sojourn in the "Prison of Tchangere."