1916: Max Jacob, a Poet for Martyred Armenia
Ternon, Yves
1916: Max Jacob, a Poet for Martyred Armenia - 2015.
88
In April of 1916, Max Jacob published a lengthy poem of love and death entitled The Allies are in Armenia. The world was deep in the throes of the Great War, and the Ottoman Empire was carrying out its ‘‘great crime’’: the programmed destruction of the Armenian people. Why this poem, when Max Jacob was not a member of the Armenophile movement? The poem was in fact the fruit of a durable and sincere friendship that the poet had forged with the Armenian Joseph Altounian in the artistic milieu of Montmartre at the beginning of the century. It also reflected the emotion of a Jew who had recently converted to Catholicism, and who was now faced with a martyred Christian nation of which he in fact knew little about. Max Jacob could not have foreseen that, less than thirty years later, after the Armenian people, it would be the Jewish people—himself included—who would be the victims of genocide.
1916: Max Jacob, a Poet for Martyred Armenia - 2015.
88
In April of 1916, Max Jacob published a lengthy poem of love and death entitled The Allies are in Armenia. The world was deep in the throes of the Great War, and the Ottoman Empire was carrying out its ‘‘great crime’’: the programmed destruction of the Armenian people. Why this poem, when Max Jacob was not a member of the Armenophile movement? The poem was in fact the fruit of a durable and sincere friendship that the poet had forged with the Armenian Joseph Altounian in the artistic milieu of Montmartre at the beginning of the century. It also reflected the emotion of a Jew who had recently converted to Catholicism, and who was now faced with a martyred Christian nation of which he in fact knew little about. Max Jacob could not have foreseen that, less than thirty years later, after the Armenian people, it would be the Jewish people—himself included—who would be the victims of genocide.
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