Saint Tlgadintsi

Tlgadintsi or Tlkatintsi (Armenian: Թլկատինցի), Hovhannes Harutiunian (Armenian: Յովհաննես Յարութիւնեան, 1860, Tlkatin village, Kharpert, Ottoman Empire – 1915) was an Ottoman Armenian writer and teacher noted for his leading role in rural literature. He is credited with giving the first authoritative response to a call from Constantinople's Armenian intelligentsia, issued in the early 1890s, for writing firmly rooted in the village life of historic Western Armenia. Tlgadintsi's unique realist works range from probing the darkest corners of village life to revisiting cherished moments of childhood. Through his esteem as a mentor and his power as a writer he opened the way for a new generation of important writers such as Rupen Zartarian, Peniamin Noorigian, Vahé Haig, Vahan Totovents, Hamasdegh, and others. Tlgadintsi was born in 1860 in the village of Tlgadin (present-day Kuyulu) ten miles south of Kharpert. His father was a farmer who died when Tlgandintsi was quite young, leaving him and his mother in poverty. Despite their misfortune his mother persevered and enrolled him in the parish school to begin his education. On finishing the parish school, Tlgadintsi continued his education at the Smpadian School in Kharpert, where his courses included classical Armenian, grammar, geography, and mathematics. By 1878, Tlgadintsi had completed his studies at the Smpadian School and embarked on his dual career as village schoolmaster and journalist, this in the immediate aftermath of the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-78 which had left the Armenian populace of the Ottoman Empire in widespread misery. He found his first teaching position in the village of Chunkoush (Çüngüş), and he established himself as a writer with the reports he sent to the Constantinople (Istanbul) newspapers Arevelk and Masis through the 1880s.