SIAMANTO: “HOMELAND’S CALL” OR “12 APPEALS TO THE EXILED ARMENIANS”

Abstract

          “Homeland’s Call or ‘12 Appeals to the Armenians in Exile” was written between 1909 and 1910. Unlike Siamanto’s rebellious spirit expressed earlier, this work is not dominated by please to struggle or the burden of despair. Instead, the poet, in response to the demand of the time, creates a song of longing for Armenians wandering abroad. It is the call of the homeland directed toward Armenians, the “plea of the Armenian fields” addressed to the distant father, brother, or son. It is the bride’s tearful and unfulfilled dream, wrapped in anxieties for future days.

“Return to our embrace, O labourers,
The mornings will now smell of April...”

Siamanto had foreseen the tragedy awaiting his people. In 1909, after returning to Constantinople, he wrote “Bloody News from My Friend”, which Daniel Varouzhan described as a “masterful tragedy in verse.” Following his heroic and militant poems, Siamanto wrote the optimistic series “Homeland’s Call” or “12 Appeals to the Armenians In Exile”. During relatively peaceful years, he attempted to poetically persuade the exiled Armenians to return home and unite on their native soil. Though his heart continued to be tormented by the fiery tragic images, he called for the Armenian diaspora, scattered across the world, to unite around creative labour. He believed that emigration threatened to turn the homeland into nothing more than a geographic space.