Vagarshak Norents

(pen name of V. T. Eritsian). Born Sept. 9, 1903, in the village of Şenik, present-day Turkey; died Jan. 20, 1973, in Yerevan. Soviet Armenian poet. Honored Cultural Worker of the Armenian SSR (1967). Member of the CPSU from 1932.

In 1924, Norents graduated from the Nersisian Armenian Seminary in Tbilisi. He began to publish in 1917. He wrote the collections of lyric poetry On the Road of Days (1925), Second Book (1930), Poems (1936), and Roads (1956), as well as the narrative poems Evening (1926), Shirt of Thorns (1959), and Testament of Centuries (1968). In 1968, Norents published a book of memoirs, Reminiscences and Echoes. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and a number of medals.