As part of the National Library Week, literary critic, poet, publicist, translator, candidate of philological sciences Ashot Aleksanyan spoke at the National Library of Armenia. In the large hall named after Tamanyan he gave a public lecture French Intonation of the Early Charents Poetry as a Stimulus for Translation Experiments. Those present in the hall got acquainted with the creative biography of the translator, listened to his deep judgments about literary movements and translation activities.

Ashot Aleksanyan also mentioned his monograph Yegishe Charents and the European Literary Tradition dedicated to “the presence of the European literary tradition in the work of Charents, from mysticism to symbolism, from futurism to expressionism, from utopianism to Nordic classicism and back to mysticism”. In addition, the translator spoke about his large project — an anthology of poetry of European modernism that includes works by 40 poets of the first half of the twentieth century from 22 European countries.

Aleksanyan’s first acquaintance with French literature happened under the influence of Yeghishe Charents’s “Enamel Profile Of Your” poetic series and European literature. Then, for more than three decades he translated numerous French-language authors: Michel de Nostradamus, Boris Vian, Milan Kundera, Gustave Le Bon, Philippe Jacquot, Alfred Jarry, Albert Camus, and others. It should be noted that Ashot Aleksanyan was awarded the Gold Medal “For Services to the Republic of Austria” — an annual award in the field of translation art of the Office of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Austria.