A Semantic Study of Andzkali in Yesayan's Aweraknerun Me'j

Abstract

Zabel Yesayan's Aweraknerun Me'j [In the Ruins] (1911) is widely regarded as one of the most important literary works about the experience of the Armenian Genocide. In a crucial passage in the work, Yesayan states that she is sometimes able to catch a glimpse of the catastrophe in the "andzkali eyes" of the survivors. Andzkali, recently translated as "anxious," is a complex concept and bears scrutiny, not only for the sake of an accurate translation, but also as a means of understanding the experience of the Armenian Genocide. Thus, the present study undertakes a semantic examination of the concept of andzkali. It begins with a review of the semantic range of andzuk and its derivations, determines the four major senses of the lexical family, and isolates "anguish" and "anxiety" as the pertinent senses. It then traces each of the two pertinent senses to embodied metaphors through conceptual metaphor theory, establishing the relationship of each term to the body. Through analysis, it uncovers an essential temporal orientation in each term, further linking them structurally. It identifies andzuk's Proto-Indo-European root, ang'hu, then follows ang'hu's diachronic ramifications back up to a constellation of English cognates whose structure is then examined, synchronically. The study concludes with the proposition that the two sense of andzuk and the English ramifications of ang'hu are all centered around loss, embodied in the original root ang'hu, and differentiated according to time and space and other important factors.