BIRTH OF VAHE VAHIAN

Vahe Vahian was an influential Lebanese Armenian poet and educator.

He was born as Sarkis Abdalian on December 22, 1908, in Gürün, Sepastia. His primary education in the local Armenian school was interrupted by the genocide, during which he witnessed the assassination of his father and two brothers, but survived with his mother and two elder sisters. After the armistice, in 1919 he returned to Aintab with his mother and attended the Vartanian School. After the evacuation of Cilicia, he settled in Aleppo in 1921 and continued his studies at the Armenian Evangelical School, which later became Aleppo College. After graduation, in 1925 he enrolled at the American University of Beirut and completed his studies in 1930, with a BSc in Structural Engineering. By then, he had started writing and publishing his first poems under different pen names, until he finally adopted the name Vahe Vahian.

After teaching physics and mathematics for four years at Broumana High School, he was invited to the Melkonian Educational Institute in Nicosia as lecturer of Armenian language and literature.

In 1946, he returned to Beirut, where he would live until his death. He launched the literary monthly Ani (1946-1955) and in 1947 he was appointed a part-time teacher of Armenian language and literature in senior high schools in Beirut sponsored by the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU). In 1964, he founded the Yervant Hussissian Institute for Armenian Studies in Beirut, where he held the position of principal and lecturer of Armenian language and literature.

In 1970 he received the golden medal of the Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia for his prolific career as educator and writer and received the Mesrop Mashtots medal from the Ministry of Culture of Armenia in 1981.

Vahe Vahian was a well-known poet influenced by the work of Vahan Tekeyan. He gathered his poetry in five collections: Sun and Rain (1933), Golden Bridge (1946), Book of Love and Grief (1968), Monument to My Vahram (1977), and Tolls and Murmurs of the Crepuscle (1990). His collection entitled Farewell Poems was posthumously published in 2009. He wrote a memoir about his visit to Armenia in 1946, and collected his essays in three volumes (1978, 1987, and 1993). He edited a collection of Armenian short stories in 1978 and an anthology of Armenian prose in three volumes (1984, 1985, and 1988). Vahe Vahian translated works from French (Honoré de Balzac) and English (Gebran Khalil Gebran, Rabindranath Tagore, and Oscar Wilde).

He passed away in Beirut on August 19, 1998.