Nahapet Kuchak

Year of birth unknown; presumably died in 1592. Armenian poet.

There is little concrete biographical information about Kuchak. According to tradition he was born in the village of Kharakonis, near Van. His probable Western Armenian origin is assumed from the language and geographical references of his poetry. Kuchak wrote airens, songs consisting of quatrains in which each line has 15 syllables and is divided by a caesura into seven and eight syllables. He brought this ancient form of Armenian verse to its pinnacle. Most of his airens are concerned with love—earthly and free from any dogmas. But the poet saw the people’s suffering and social inequality, grieved for the Armenian exiles (the “airens of wandering”), and philosophically considered the events and fates of men (the “airens of meditation”). Democratic and humanistic in its essence, antifeudal in its orientation, the poetry of Kuchak was a challenge to medieval dogmatism.