Ruben Filian (December 10, 1952, Yerevan - January 7, 1983, Goa, India), Armenian prose writer, translator, and teacher of yoga and karate.
Biography Ruben Filian was born in Yerevan in 1952 and graduated from the Journalism Department of the Faculty of Philology at Yerevan State University. His short stories were first published in the literary magazine Garun. His first book, a collection of short stories entitled An Unknown Autobiography, was published in 1980.
In 1981, Filian left Soviet Armenia. He went to France, then travelled to Egypt and Jordan, and eventually settled in the Indian state of Goa, at the famous Arambol Beach, where he taught yoga, karate, music, and Eastern philosophy.
Ruben Filian's life ended in Arambol on January 7, 1983. His remains are buried in the cemetery in Yerevan's Zeytun district.Հանդիպում ափաչափ արձակի հետ
Works In 1992, with the support of his father, Pargev Filian, Ruben Filian's book Ambassador of Your Country was published. It included the eponymous novel, short stories, and miniatures. Before leaving Soviet Armenia, Ruben Filian adapted into Armenian, through translation, the monumental treatise Viveka Chudamani by the Indian spiritual philosopher Sri Shankaracharya.
Both the novel and his short prose and fairy-tale stories inhabit not only the fantastical world deliberately created by Filian, but also reveal the absurd phenomena of human existence and experience.
Ruben Filian's prose is a dialogue with Armenian medieval texts and the works of Samuel Beckett, Italo Calvino, and Robert Walser.
Books
An Unknown Autobiography, Yerevan, Soviet Writer, 1980, 120 pages Ambassador of Your Country, Yerevan, Nairi, 1992, 256 pages An Unknown Autobiography, 2nd edition, Yerevan, Darak, 2021, 144 pages. Ambassador of Your Country, 2nd edition, Yerevan, ARI Literature Foundation, 2022, 135 pages Sri Shankaracharya, Viveka Chudamani, Yerevan, Newmag, 2022, p. 132 (adapted through translation by Ruben Filian).
References