When a Teacher and a Student Fall in Love (1): Taniel and Araxie

Varoujan and Araxie. 

A teacher is an authority figure. Sometimes the gap between their ages is not wide enough to keep a teacher and a student a generation apart. Therefore, it has happened that a teacher and a student fall in love. There have been such  instances among Armenians as well and left a mark in history of Armenian literature.  This case is about Taniel and Araxie. Vahe H. Apelian

By Daniel Murphy, Daniel Varoujan's Great-great grandson

The eminent Armenian poet, who wrote under his literary penname Taniel Varoujan was born on April 20, 1884 in the village of Prknig (Բրգնիկ), on the outskirts of Sepastia, Turkey. He hailed from the Tchiboukerian (Չպուգքեարեան) family. His father, Krikor, spent most of his life in Istanbul working in brokerage. His mother, Takouhie, was a homemaker. She bore four sons. Taniel was the eldest. His siblings, all male, were named Vahan (Վահան), Bedros (Պետրոս) and Arshag (Արշակ), the youngest. Arshag was 24 years younger than him and was two years old  when Varoujan married.

After attending the local school, he was sent in 1896, the year of the Hamidian Massacres, to Istanbul where his father worked and also lived. In Istanbul he attended the Catholic Mekhitarian School. He continued his education at Mourad-Rafaelian Catholic School of Venice, and in 1906 entered the Ghent University in Belgium where he studied literature.

In 1909, right after the declaration of the Ottoman Constitution, he returned home and  started teaching at the Aramian School of Sepastia (Սեբաստիոյ Ազգ. Արամեան վարժարան). To supplement his teacher’s meager salary, he gave private lessons to a young girl named Araxie, teaching her French.

Learning French was very fashionable at the time. Those who saw the movie “The Promise” may recall the scene where the daughters of the wealthy Armenian merchant, whose residence overlooked the strait of Bosporus, had a teacher who taught his daughters art and French.

Araxie was the daughter of such a wealthy family. It was natural to keep up with the Joneses, her family had wanted their debutante daughter learn French and what better teacher than Taniel Varoujan who had returned home after studying in Europe and had already established a reputation for himself as a renown poet.

Debutante she was, but according to the local customs at the time, she had been promised from her infancy in betrothal to the son of another wealthy family. That is why Araxie’s mother always chaperoned her daughter and kept a watchful eye over her attending her classes to make sure that the twenty-four years old teacher and his young and impressionable student had no moment on their own other than her teacher’s instruction of the French language. But the improbable happened. The teacher and the student fell madly in love with each other. It is said that she slipped a note stating that no one can separate her from her beloved and adorned Taniel Varoujan

The classes ended abruptly and Araxie’s parents and the prospective in-laws began hasty plans for an earlier-than-planned wedding. But Araxie remained adamant refusing to comply with her parent’s wishes. Instead of a wealthy husband she preferred the country teacher of meager means.

The event became the talk of the town among the Armenians. Many regarded the incident scandalous. Some supported Taniel Varoujan and wanted the lovers to marry. Others blamed him for having seduced his young student. The animosity toward Taniel Varoujan became so great that he began to carry a stick to defend himself should he be attacked.

Finally, the prominent Armenian freedom-fighter Sepastatsi Mourad, who, as his name indicates also hailed from Sepastia, intervened. Mourad was much older than Varoujan but in a strange twist and turns of life, the eminent young man of letter and the eminent unschooled freedom fighter had forged a friendship based on mutual admiration, so much so that Taniel Varoujan had become the best man or the principal witness of Mourad’s wedding, who married at age of 36, a far advanced marital age at the time. 

Murad’s  stature was such that his intervention on behalf of his best-man, young Taniel Varoujan, quelled all gossip and put an end to what was deemed scandalous. The lovers were married and soon after left Sepastia in 1911. In 1912, he became the principal of St. Gregory The Illuminator School in Constantinople, having taught elsewhere during the previous year.

During that year, 1912, Taniel Varoujan published his last work in his life-time, titled “Pagan Songs” (Hetanos Yerker (Հեթանոս երգեր,). In it he has a long poem titled “Pegasus” (Pegas)  dedicated to "comrade Murad and his horse that runs like a lightening", drawing a resemblance of Mourad’s famous horse Asdghig to the mythical winged horse Pegasus. Taniel Varoujan's last work, “The Song of the Bread” was published posthumously. After his murder, his friends had salvaged the manuscript by bribing his Turkish captors.

Taniel Varoujan Family in Paris on their way to the U.S.A.

 Taniel Varoujan and Araxie  had three children a daughter named Veronica, whom her father affectionately called Varoujnag, and two sons Haig (Հայկ); and Armen (Արմէն). After the genocide, during which the tender hearted young poet was tortured to death, the family, with the assistance and support of Armen Garo, Armenia's ambassador to the U.S. at the time,  moved and settled in the U.S.  charting their courses in life. Haig is said to have  adopted Varoujean as their family name, while Armen is said to have  retained their Tchiboukerian family name. Their daughter Veronica married Safrasian and lived in New York.

 Taniel Araxie Varoujan’s descendants are now part and parcel of the patches that make up the American quilt.

The attached landscape above is a personal gift from Daniel Murphy, Taniel Varoujan’s great-great-grandson, the great-grandson of Taniel Varoujan’s daughter Venonica.

What of the dying life. 

When the dream lives on, 

When the dream is immortal. 

Taniel Varoujan