ZABELLIANA: Life & Art of Zabelle Boyajian

ZABELLIANA

Life & Art of the Magnificent Polymath

ZABELLE BOYAJIAN

Painter, Poet, Playwright, Translator, Multi-Linguist

(b. 1872, Diyarbakir, d.1957, London)

Speaker: Khatchatur I. Pilikian

Joint public meeting, Wednesday 6th April 2016: 7.30pm-9.00pm
Talk and slide show
Free to attend (retiring collection)

Marx Memorial Library

37a Clerkenwell Green

London EC1

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Residing in London in early 1900, Zabelle studied at Slade School of Fine Art. She becmae the author of the first play in the English language, Gilgamesh, a Dream of the Eternal Quest, published in 1924, based on the Sumerian epic poem, Gilgamesh, of the second millennium BC.

Zabelle's mother, Catherine, was a kinswoman of the poet Samuel Rogers (1763-1855), and of the Egyptologist Samuel Sharp (1794-1881). Zabelle's father was Thomas Boyajian, the British Vice Consul in Turkey (victim of the Hamidian genocidal massacres of 1894-1896).

After the world was engulfed in the total war of WW1, culminating in the Genocide of the Armenians in 1915, Zabelle fought back by publsihing, in 1916, her Armenian Legends & Poems - another first in the English language. Soon, the noted Shakespeare scholar Sir Israel Gollancz invited her to contribute a poem - which she did - commemorating the tercentenary of the Bard's death, in a book he edited, titled, Book of Homage to Shakespeare, published in late 1916. Hence, ZABELLIANA in 2016.

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