DEATH OF ANAYIS

Anayis is one of the lesser known female writers of Western Armenian literature, particularly remembered for her memoirs.

She was born Yevpime Avedisian on February 20, 1872, in Constantinople. She was a member of one of the branches of the Chobanian family from the town of Akn and thus related to famous writer Archag Tchobanian (1872–1954). She studied at the Makruhiats School and then attended the Fourier School to improve her French, while taking private lessons in Armenian from poets Tovmas Terzian and Khoren Nar Bey. She published her first poem in the Armenian journal Massis in 1893. She contributed works in prose and verse to various periodicals. Following the Hamidian massacres in 1895-1896, she left Constantinople and settled in Switzerland. She returned to the Ottoman capital after the Ottoman Constitution was restored in 1908 and continued publishing her literary works in various journals.

After the victory of the Kemalist movement, in 1922 she moved to Paris, where she spent the rest of her life. She continued writing for French Armenian journals such as Tchobanian’s “Anahid,” as well as other publications in the Diaspora. She collected her poems in a volume entitled Sunrise and Twilight (1942), and her valuable memoirs, called My Memories, appeared in 1949.

Anayis passed away in Paris on August 4, 1950.