Remembering Gevorg Ter-Vardanyan with Erin Piñon (Princeton University)
It is with great sadness that we mourn the loss of Gevorg Ter-Vardanyan, a titan in all things Armenian—a man whose forceful presence will not soon be forgotten in the long corridors of the Matenadaran, its conference halls, or his seat in its manuscript vault. Visitors to the vault’s reading room were well familiar with the cacophonous buzz and lively debate between researchers and Ter-Vardanyan, whose recitation of colophons was the closest many of us will ever get to the middle ages in this life. Undecipherable scripts were clarified with less than a squint; texts were edited by ear; shelfmarks were plucked from the depths of his mind. Although hesitant to crack a smile, sometimes witnessing that event felt like more of a reward than anything found sifting through manuscripts for weeks. For those of us who grew stronger as codicologists, philologists, and historians under his watchful gaze, we thank him, for what I choose to believe was a tough love only understood between vardapet and ashakert.
