My Ledger by by Hagop Baronian, translated by Hratch Demiurge et al.

What do you get when a fearless satirist criticizes the tyrannical government of a crumbling empire?

You get…

My Ledger by Hagop Baronian

(And you also get censored, of course.)

In this penetrating literary diary, Hagop Baronian, one of the world’s great but lesser-known satirists, chronicles the life of 1880’s Constantinople, the colorful cosmopolitan capital of the collapsing Ottoman Empire. As an Ottoman Armenian, Baronian follows the day-to-day developments of the international issue known as the “Armenian Question” on the fate of Christian Armenians under Muslim Turkish control. In the process, he exposes both the perfidious and self-serving European powers and the thoroughly corrupt and indifferent Ottoman government, which either ignored or suppressed calls for reforms and consistently failed to provide Armenians protection from blatant oppression and unchecked Kurdish terror in its eastern provinces. We also get a no-holds-barred portrait of the Armenians of Constantinople, who, even while Armenia to the east experienced famine and oppression, ate, drank, and made merry, blindly pursuing a selfish and superficial life of morally bankrupt material well-being to the exclusion of literature, art, education and everything else that elevates the spirit. Using biting satire as a means to discourage vice and encourage virtue, the great satirist finds much to ridicule, from lazy clergy and do-nothing politicians to disorganized organizations and a theatrical stage turned meat market for ogling beautiful Armenian actresses. My Ledger‘s timeless and hilarious observations cut to the bone in an unsentimental and lucid style, proving that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

This work is the result of a course in translation offered at Rose and Alex Pilibos Armenian School. The instructor of the course and editor of the volume is Hratch Demiurge. The following students are credited as translators for their efforts: Noy Hovaghimian, Marina Manvelian, Anna Gasparyan, Mark Barsikhian, Shant Melkonian, Arthur Atanesian, Jennifer Ghazarian, Elizabeth Mkhsi-Gevorkian, and Lilit Akopyan.

Hratch Demiurge is a comedian, poet, teacher and translator of Daniel Varoujan’s Pagan Songs. He is currently in the process of translating the satirical biographies of the “Armenian Molière”—Hagop Baronian—a timely work on the incompetence/corruption of Armenian bigwigs in the latter half of the 19th century. He has a forthcoming book, an original collection of irreverent Rabelaisian poetry on the fair sex. He lives and works in Los Angeles and insists what makes him so smart is that he is too stupid to understand nonsense.