Author: Nora Sarafian-Tashjian, Translator: Simon Beugekian

Editor’s Note

On this page, we present photographs, documents, and other memory items belonging to Mateos Zarifian and his family. Mateos Zarifian (1894-1924) was a poet who lived and worked in his hometown of Istanbul. All material presented on this page is the property of the Mateos Zarifian Archive, and was provided to us by the custodian of the archive, Sylvia Agémian. The Houshamadyan team wishes to express its special gratitude to Sylvia for her assistance.

Mateos Zarifian, one of the gifted figures of Armenian lyric poetry, was born in Istanbul, in the Gedig Pasha neighborhood, in 1894. He spent most of his short life in the city’s Uskudar neighborhood.

He began his literary career in 1918 and died of tuberculosis in 1924.

Mateos’ life was full of contradictions, reflecting the contemporary experience of the Armenian nation. In quick succession, Ottoman Armenians experienced great hopes and disappointments; a cultural awakening and catastrophes; war, migration and deportations; and the excitement of the Armistice.

The fourth child of Dadjad and Hripsime Zarifian, Mateos Zarifian spent his childhood and youth in beautiful Uskudar/Scutari, in the lap of nature. He came to know death early in his life, when he lost his older brother, Vahakn. The memory of his brother, taken away in at such a young age, always remained vivid in his mind. He dedicated his first published volume of poems to Vahakn.

He received his primary education at the local parochial school of Uskudar before matriculating at the Berberian School (in the Kadıköy neighborhood). He then attended the American Bithynia College in the city of Bardizag and the Robert College (in Istanbul’s Bebek neighborhood), before returning to the Berberian School, from which he graduated with the title of “Laureate in the Arts.”

In those years, athletic and scouting movements were experiencing a period of great growth in Istanbul. Zarifian did not remain indifferent to these movements. Thanks to his great talents, he quickly became a well-known and well-liked name in the local athletic community, winning several prizes. This period also saw the growth of national-ideological movements within the Istanbul Armenian community. Zarifian, after graduating from the Berberian School, volunteered, in 1913,  to leave for Cilicia and to help educate the new generation of Armenians there, namely by teaching English and physical education at the parochial school of Adana. However, before the end of that same school year, he was forced to leave Adana by an acute stomach ailment.

In the spring of 1914, he traveled to Lebanon to receive treatment for his stomach condition. A few months later, he returned to Istanbul and decided to pursue a career in medicine, pharmacy, or architecture, but the outbreak of the First World War thwarted these plans. He was conscripted into the Ottoman army as a non-commissioned officer. Unable to cope with the demands of military life, he resorted to desertion and mutinied against orders several times, which led to a military tribunal sentencing him to exile. Thanks to the intervention of several acquaintances, the sentence was commuted to imprisonment. Then, again thanks to outside intervention, he was able to secure a post in a military hospital as a “warden.”

After the Armistice, Zarifian worked as a translator for the British occupying forces in Istanbul. In 1919, he was dispatched to the Armenian villages of Anatolia, alongside a British team, to assess the situation there and prepare the groundwork for the rounding up of Armenian orphans.

From the start of the school year in 1919 to the summer of 1921, he worked at the Berberian School in Istanbul, teaching English and physical education. He became a beloved poet of the school’s pupils and the wider community, as confirmed by Shahan Shahnour, a pupil at the Berberian School during Zarifian’s tenure. In a letter to Simon Vratsian, Shahnour wrote: “I preferred to stick to my circle, which consisted of Berberian students. This circle revolved around a poet, our poet, Mateos Zarifian” (Shahan Shahnour, “Dear Mr. Vratsian,” Pakin Monthly, Year 18, Number 4, 1979, Beirut).

Zarifian’s illness very quickly consumed his young body, once brimming with such athletic vitality. This filled him with a great desire to end his own life, which in turn fueled his motivation to embrace creative work. Zarifian’s work first appeared in the Armenia media in 1918. The most productive years of his literary career were 1919 to 1923.

It was during these dark years of illness and suffering that Zarifian published two volumes of his verse, Drdmoutyan yev Khaghaghoutyan Yerker [Songs of Sorrow and Peace] and Gyanki yev Mahvan Yerker [Songs of Life and Death], in 1921 and 1922, respectively. These two volumes were enough to immortalize the name of this young poet who breathed his last on April 9, 1924, amidst the roses and fir trees of Istanbul’s Big Island (Büyük Ada).

He was buried in the Armenian cemetery of Uskudar.

In 1956, an anthology of Zarifian’s poetry, titled Complete Works, was published in Beirut. It was edited by the poet’s sister, Siran Seza (Siran Zarifian-Kupelian), and Vahe Vahian. The anthology included the poems published in the two volumes released during Mateos’ lifetime, as well as previously unreleased poems, journal entries, correspondence, and selected prose.

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