Hrant Nazariants, Armenian futurist and founder of carpet factory in Italy - Mediamax.am

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Hrant Nazariants, Armenian futurist and founder of carpet factory in Italy


Hrant Nazariants with members of Bari’s Armenian community
Hrant Nazariants with members of Bari’s Armenian community

Photo: from Centro Studi Hrand Nazariantz di Bari

Hrant Nazariants
Hrant Nazariants

Photo: from Centro Studi Hrand Nazariantz di Bari

Carlo Coppola
Carlo Coppola

Photo: from Centro Studi Hrand Nazariantz di Bari


Italy’s coastal city of Bari became a safe haven in 1920s for survivors of the Armenian Genocide. Armenian refugees founded Nor Araks neighborhood there. The man responsible for bringing the survivors to Bari was writer, public figure Hrant Nazariants, who left his native Constantinople in 1913.

 

“Although those were hard times, fascism raged on in Italy, and ethnic minorities were hardly n favor, Nazariants found a way to bring Armenian refugees to Italy. He’s carrying that wonderful mission by starting a carpet factory in Bari. He does that we support from Mussolini government, funding from Armenian Diaspora, and with the Catholic Church as mediator. The factory was not just for production. It helped the Genocide survivors to recover,” told co-founder and Director of Hrant Nazariants Cultural Center (Centro Studi Hrand Nazariantz di Bari) Carlo Coppola, who’s currently visiting Armenia.

Carlo Coppola Carlo Coppola

Photo: from Centro Studi Hrand Nazariantz di Bari

Not much remains from Nor Araks neighborhood today: the name, the factory building, and a few Armenian homes. However, Bari remembers the name of Hrant Nazariants.

 

The Constantinople-born poet traveled to Paris and London in 1886 to get education. He went back home and started writing intensively, worked with a dozen newspapers and magazines, published his own writings and translations.

 

His first poetry book in Armenian - “Crucified Dreams” - gets published in 1912 and translated into Italian and French. However, personal and creative problems force him to leave Constantinople.

 

“Italy is the only country where a poet can live,” Nazariants said. Bari was his first shelter in Italy.

 

“Nazariants played a very important role in Bari. He worked at the local radio station during WWII, talking about culture. He told about Dostoevsky, Chopin, and Mozart under the sounds of shelling to distract people from horrible events of that time. Many people understood what art is owing to Nazariants’s programs. He is remembered as a man who managed to bring culture with him,” Coppola said.

 

Fluency in English, French, and eventually Italian enabled him to get quickly involved in Italy’s literary and cultural circles. At that time, Nazariants was also fascinated by futurism. He edits monthly magazine Fantasma together with Italian writer Roberto Marvasi, which publishes Daniel Varuzhan, Siamanto, Ruben Zardaryan, and other Armenian writers, “thus introducing Italians to Armenian thought and soul”.

 

“Nazariants’s contribution to representation of Armenian culture is huge. In particular, his first notes on the topic were published in French periodicals and then translated into Italian. That made it possible to show Armenian culture in European countries,” Coppola noted.

 

Hrant Nazariants’s archive is kept at the Center of cultural and historical research of Conversano. It was there that Carlo Coppola first heard the poet’s name. Using his personal connections, Nazariants managed to introduce large groups of Italian society to Armenian culture and the Armenian cause.

 

Nazariants slowly slipped from people’s memory after World War II. He moved from Bari to Conversano, and according to Coppola, he brought a breath of fresh air to the local community, especially youngsters.

 

“He wrote letters to famous intellectuals of the time, saying, “Please, share your latest book with your inscription for this library.” Of course, they sent the books. Those inscribed volumes have been preserved and are of great value today.”

 

From Conversano Nazariants moved to a smaller town of Casamassima, where he changed six houses in two years. Nazariants was living in poverty at that time and simply couldn’t pay the rent. In 1962, member of Italian Academy Hrant Nazariants died in a Bari hospital, alone and abandoned.

Hrant Nazariants Hrant Nazariants

Photo: from Centro Studi Hrand Nazariantz di Bari

In 2011, Carlo Coppola, Center of cultural and historical research Director Cosma Cafueri and Deputy Director Paolo Lopane, and Ruben Timuryan founded the Hrant Nazariants Cultural Center in order to preserve Nazariants’s legacy and publish his little-known works. They hold conferences, publish books and write Wikipedia articles on Armenian culture. Carlo Coppola says they want to open a fund that would preserve Hrant Nazariants’s legacy along with sharing Armenian culture.

 

Lusine Gharibyan

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