Zabel Hovannessian, daughter of Mkrtich Hovannessian, was born on the night of February 4, 1878, in the Silahdar neighborhood of
Scutari,
Istanbul, during the height of the
Russo-Turkish War. She attended Holy Cross (Ս. Խաչ) elementary school and graduated in 1892.
Student in Paris In 1895 she was among the first women from Istanbul to study abroad, moving to Paris, where she studied literature and philosophy at the
Sorbonne University in
Paris, France. Inspired by the French
Romantic movement and the nineteenth-century revival of
Armenian literature in the
Western Armenian dialect, she began what would become a prolific writing career. Her work also contributed to the Armenian intellectual movement called
Zartonk (the awakening), along with other female authors such as
Srpuhi Dussap and
Zabel Asatur (Sibyl). While in Paris, she married the painter Dikran Yesayan (1874-1921). They had two children, Sophie and Hrant. After the
Young Turk Revolution in 1908, Yesayan returned to Istanbul. In 1909, Yesayan was appointed to the Armenian Constantinople Patriarchate's Commission and sent to
Cilicia to examine the situation. Yesayan published a series of articles in connection with the
Adana massacres. The tragic fate of the Armenians in
Cilicia is also the subject of her book
In the Ruins (Աւերակներու մէջ, Istanbul 1911), the novella
The Curse (1911), and the short stories "Safieh" (1911), and "The New Bride" (1911).
World War I refugee Attacks on Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during World War I left Yesayan's life in peril. She was the only woman on the list of Armenian
intellectuals targeted for arrest and deportation by the Ottoman Young Turk government on April 24, 1915. Yesayan evaded arrest and fled to Bulgaria and later to Baku and the Caucasus, where she worked with Armenian refugees documenting their eyewitness accounts of atrocities that had taken place during the
Armenian genocide. Yesayan's son stayed with her mother in Constantinople while her husband and daughter were in France. Yesayan would be reunited with her family in France in 1919 after the war. After WWI, she went back to Cilicia with her children to help Armenian refugees and orphans.
Move to Soviet Armenia, arrest and rehabilitation Yesayan visited
Soviet Armenia in 1926 and shortly thereafter published her impressions in
Prometheus Unchained (Պրոմէթէոս ազատագրուած, Marseilles, 1928). In 1933 she decided to settle permanently in Soviet Armenia with her children, and in 1934 she took part in the first
Soviet Writers' Union congress in
Moscow. She taught French and Armenian literature at
Yerevan State University and continued to write prolifically. During
Joseph Stalin's
Great Purge, Yesayan was accused of "counterrevolutionary agitation" and abruptly arrested on June 27, 1937. She was held without trial for one and a half years. During her trial, Yesayan only admitted to having connections with individuals who were deemed enemies of the state. She was exiled to prisons spanning from Yerevan to Baku. She died under unknown circumstances. There is speculation that she drowned and died in exile in Siberia, sometime in 1943. In 1956, Yesayan's son, Hrant Yesayan asked that her case be reevaluated. During this time, one her cellmates, Karine Gyulikekhvyan testified that after each of Yesayan's interrogations, new accusations would be brought against her from the Soviet state. Yesayan's case was dismissed due to lack of evidence on September 27, 1956, and she was posthumously
rehabilitated on January 9, 1957, during the
Khrushchev Thaw. == Early literary career ==