Alongside old Armenian historiography and translated literature, poetry constituted a significant part of Armenian literature from the 5th to the 18th centuries. The rich tradition of oral literature preceded written poetry.
The earliest examples of ancient Armenian poetry were religious; the first collection of spiritual verses was compiled in the 7th century. It was precisely then that secular poetry began. The oldest surviving poem in the Armenian language dates back to the 7th century.
Grigor Narekatsi and Nerses IV the Gracious are considered the most influential poets who created before the 17th century. The literature of the 12th to 17th centuries represents the transition of Armenian civilization from the classical era to the contemporary. From the 13th century, a period of flourishing love poetry begins, and the theme of emigration is touched upon for the first time in verse. Epic poems appeared in the 15th-16th centuries. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the most popular was ashough poetry.
The works of Armenian poets were first published in 1513 in Venice. Old Armenian poetry was characterized by the use of accented rhyme.
General characteristics Pre-modern Armenian poetry underwent centuries of evolution. Written and oral folklore reflect the unified course of development of old Armenian literature. Although they developed differently, they were still interconnected. Secular oral poetry, for example, permeated various genres of written literature. According to the literary scholar Manuk Abeghian, old Armenian literature did not have a distinction between artistic and scientific-popular genres. "Poetic and non-poetic formed an undifferentiated whole." In the spiritual lyrics of the early period, the influence of the Holy Scriptures, theology, and exegesis is noticeably present։
Pre-Christian Armenian poetry has been poorly preserved. In its edited form, it has been cited by historians as historical sources. Christian poets ignored the ancient oral heritage; their main sources of inspiration were faith and the Bible. In this regard, early Armenian poetry is almost entirely spiritual. The entirety of that lyric expresses only religious feelings in its form. Although early spiritual poetry was modeled on biblical Hebrew lyric poetry, it was most influenced by Greek spiritual poetry. The extent of that effect, however, has not been definitively determined. The works of Grigor Narekatsi mark a significant milestone in the history of medieval Armenian lyric poetry, encapsulating the achievements of preceding centuries with its humanistic ideas in the early 10th-11th centuries. Poetry gradually underwent changes, with secular themes coming to dominate it. An Armenian literary revival occurred in the medieval period. The turning point came in the first half of the 11th century when poetry underwent a radical transformation in both content and form, with its themes becoming richer. According to Abeghian, this period of transformation in Armenian literature was a "Renaissance" because during this time, contrary to religious and church ideology, secular spirit and the worldview of pagan centuries were "revived." This is also because Armenian literature of that period shares characteristics similar to the European Renaissance. Mainly, it is the literature of the citizens of Armenia. However, the onset of the Seljuk invasions significantly hindered the development of poetry.
From the 12th century, starting with Hovhannes Imastaser, poets praised nature, life's challenges, and love for the homeland. Poetic forms transformed, abandoning artificiality, remnants of antiquity, and elevated style, with simplicity and naturalness of thought becoming dominant. Simultaneously, literature emerged in Classical Old Armenian and Middle Armenian languages. According to Abeghian, true lyricism first appeared in the works of Nerses IV the Gracious, a contemporary of Imastaser (lover of knowledge). From the last quarter of the 13th century to the following three centuries, several lyrical genres emerged and evolved. It is considered that during this period, Armenian poetry finally freed itself from religious constraints.
Philosophical and didactic poetry continued to develop, and under the influence of preceding mystical poetry, love lyrics emerged. The theme of the turmoil of life took a new direction, touched upon by almost all Armenian poets of that era. According to Abeghian, Persian classical poetry had a significant impact on the lyrical poetry of that time, contributing, alongside internal circumstances, to a radical transformation of national poetry. Although there were various borrowings, especially in terms of form, Armenian poets of the 13th-14th centuries followed their own path. According to Valery Bryusov, Armenians participated in the development of the so-called "Eastern" poetic style, along with other ethnicities of Central Asia. Bryusov noted, "The historical mission of the Armenian people, which was predetermined throughout its development, was to seek and achieve a synthesis of the East and the West. And this aspiration was expressed most of all in the artistic creativity of Armenia, in its literature, in its poetry".
Poetic genres
In old Armenian literature, a poetic work was commonly referred to as a tagh. It was synonymous with poetic expression, as explicitly indicated by Hovhan Vorotnetsi in the 14th century. The definition of the term tagh was provided by several medieval grammarians. The word was first recorded in the second half of the 5th century in the Armenian translation of Dionysius Thrax's "Art of Grammar". The initial explanation was given in the glossary attached to this translation in the same century. "A tagh is that which is written in measure," as Stepanos Syunetsi wrote in the 8th century, emphasizing that the square's dimensions might be disrupted due to neglect of the norms of proper reading. In the 13th century, Vardan Metz spoke of a poem as a vocal composition, highlighting the main condition for its perfection: harmony between words, melody, meaning, and measure. His contemporary poet and scholar, Hovhannes Pluz Erznkatsi, attempted to generalize the theoretical views of his predecessors, refining and supplementing them. Definitions of this concept were also provided by David of Zeitoon and Simeon Jugayetsi in the 16th-17th centuries. Based on the peculiarity of rhythm, David Kerakan in the 5th-6th centuries wrote about two types of rhyme, while Arakel Syunetsi, the author of border stanzas in the 14th-15th centuries, mentioned around four.
From the early Middle Ages, the official genre of spiritual poetry was the sharakan. During the 5th-15th centuries, the genre underwent significant internal transformations. The sharakan, therefore, is not a single and homogeneous genre, but a chrestomathy of medieval Armenian poetry.
Varag Nersisyan identified six main genres of poetry for literature from the 10th-16th centuries: praise, eulogy, admonition, lament, plea, and complaint. Praise is a lyrical work characterized by a laudatory plot, intended to showcase the positive qualities of a particular person or phenomenon. It incorporates elements of both hymn and ode. Praises are divided into three types: religious ones dedicated to saints, churches, the cross, etc.; national themes dedicated to Armenian historical figures, language, etc.; and purely secular praises dedicated to love, female beauty, etc. Most of them are written as acrostics. The opposite of praise was "parsav" (reproach), but their number is relatively small compared to the former. Dealing with moral issues, Parsav condemns evil, debauchery, and the like from certain moral positions.
Another poetic genre is "harat," which emerged in the 12th century. From the perspective of medieval religious and secular ideas, authors of treatises addressed various moral themes. Possibly, these were instructions that were later incorporated into choir compositions.
One of the most popular genres is lament. It had both purely lyrical and various epic-lyrical manifestations. Supplication (prayer) was a relatively rare genre. Its main distinguishing feature is a prayer to God or the Virgin Mary for the salvation of the soul. Such works reflect the aspirations of medieval people towards the salvation of the soul, questions of moral purity, etc. Some petitions were created in a pan-Armenian context.
In the 15th century, Arakel Baghishetsi writes: "Free the Armenians from the sufferings caused by evil nations. God is merciful." Gangat (complaint) is also highlighted as a separate genre. It is characterized by a spirit of complaint, a moderate mood of sadness arising from the lyrical hero's disagreement with the situation. Complaints are conventionally divided into three types: public-political, socio-disciplinary, and love-related.
Sergio La Porta also identified the genre of poetic discussion. He considered the genre's main distinctive features to be a three-part structure, insignificance of narrative elements, lifelessness of the main characters, and an argument about the superiority of one interlocutor over the others. P. Coue wrote about the genre of mirth: verses about joy and feasting. Asmik Simonyan considered kafu as a separate genre. According to her calculations, around 5000 lines of such poems have been preserved. Kaphi refers to poetic interjections in translated and original prose novels. Since the 16th century, they have been imitated separately in poetic anthologies. Like pre-modern Russian literature, some poetic works are not clearly differentiated by genre and, at the same time, carry traits of different genres.
Rhyme and measure in old Armenian poetry
Early works of Armenian poetry were not rhymed; rhyme emerged in Armenia in the 11th century. According to Manuk Abeghian, it was already in use in the 10th century and was adopted into Armenian culture from Arabic poetry. According to Sharafkhanyan, early poetic samples contain repetitions that can be considered the beginning of rhyming. For example, in the pre-Christian song "Birth of Vahagn by Movses Khorenatsi: (Sky—sky, sky—earth, sky and sea—apricot, khur hers). Lexical repetitions are found in several early spiritual songs and hymns. Rhyme appears in the last lines of "Oghb..." by Davtak Kertogh (7th century). Both this poem and its contemporary, "Consecrated Souls" by Komitas Aghtsetsi, are written in acrostic form, where each stanza begins alternately with each of the 36 letters of the Armenian alphabet.
Grigor Narekatsi first wrote about rhyme as a literary phenomenon in the year 1003. "I am one of those whose life is cruel, whose tears flow like a fountain, and who turns a sigh into a word with the monotonous ending of song lines." In 1045, Grigor Magistros's poem "A Thousand Lines of Manuk" was entirely written in rhyme. After the 12th century, non-rhymed poetic works are extremely rare.