“The First Followers Of “Book Of Lamentations” Poem Of Grigor Narekatsi”

Abstract

The first followers of “Book of Lamentations” poem of Grigor Narekatsi manifested under the conditions of the rise of the Kingdom of Cilicia and its culture. Like their great predecessor, preserving the canonical three-level hierarchy of prayer: perfect God-sinner and man in hardship-salvation plea, hope and thanksgiving. They also absorb the originality of poetic thinking in the supremacy of the Biblical writing, and Nerses Shnorhali includes it in the verse-rhyme structure. Grigor Marashetsi compares human sins to real life, even referring to the images of everyday life, and sees the path of salvation in its devotion to the spiritual life. Grigor Tgha's research leads to philosophical perceptions about human nature, the path of salvation to its native speech-rationality. Nerses Shnorhali completes the illuminatory features of “Book of Lamentations”, combining dramatic outbursts of human duality and social relations with the reminder of the perfection of the God, where the path of salvation is the requirement to illuminate the blindness of the mind with a torch of rationality. Narekatsi associated salvation with creativity, confident in the fact of “the permanence of the book”.

If Grigor Narekatsi includes deep psychological layers of approaching the Perfect throughout the structure of the poem in order to stabilize the certainty of salvation, and Grigor Marashetsi and Nerses Shnorhali mostly maintain the religious requirement with different artistic qualities, then Grigor Tgha is more drastic in his hope and desire to be close to God and for salvation. This nuance also brings a context about the freedom of Renaissance in the progression of time, as Narek's first follower is Marashetsi, then Shnorhali and then Grigor Tgha.

If Grigor Narekatsi includes deep psychological layers of approaching the Perfect throughout the structure of the poem in order to stabilize the certainty of salvation, and Grigor Marashetsi and Nerses Shnorhali mostly maintain the religious requirement with different artistic qualities, then Grigor Tgha is more drastic in his hope and desire to be close to God and for salvation. This nuance also brings a context about the freedom of Renaissance in the progression of time, as Narek's first follower is Marashetsi, then Shnorhali and then Grigor Tgha.