Sevak, Ruben

(pen name of Ruben Chilinkarian). Born Feb. 27, 1885, in Şilivri, Turkey; died Aug. 26, 1915, in Çankiri, Turkey. Armenian writer.

Sevak graduated from the faculty of medicine of the University of Lausanne and worked for a time as a doctor in Swiss hospitals. In 1914 he returned to Turkey, where he was killed during the mass extermination of the Armenians.

Sevak was the author of The Red Book (1910), which deals with the national misfortunes of the Armenians (the narrative poems “Madman of the Massacres” and “Turkish Woman”) and with social and philosophical problems (the narrative poem “Song About Man”). Individual poems taken from such unpublished collections as “Book of Love,” “The Last Armenians,” and “Chaos” appeared in the periodical press. In his verses, Sevak exposed the contradictions of bourgeois society. He depicted the life and struggle of European workers, expressing faith in the victory of the toilers; examples of works of this kind are “Red Banner,” “This Knife,” and “The Porter.” Sevak also wrote the cycle of short stories Pages Torn From a Doctor’s Diary (1913–14).