“Unfortunately, this edition does not bring the poem to completion. Nevertheless, we believe that it substantially clarifies and supplements the version of The Armenian Inferno available to Armenian readers, the content of which in previous editions was reproduced identically.

In the weekly newspaper Spyurk (December 31, 1964, p. 13), the caption beneath a photograph of Hovhannes Shiraz reads: ‘These unpublished quatrains were handwritten by the poet on the backs of photographs, which Hovhannes Shiraz presented to his teacher, Mr. E. Demirchian, on the occasion of the latter’s visit to Armenia.’ The same page also contains a short excerpt (16 lines) from the poem The Armenian Inferno, beneath which, in Eastern Armenian syntax, appears the following statement: ‘The poem contains 4,000 lines, like 4,000 tombstones erected over the graves of millions of Armenian victims.’ Apparently, these lines, like the quatrains, are also by Shiraz. We are therefore left to assume that the poem consists of 4,000 lines.

Transcribed from a recording, this booklet contains approximately 1,154 lines, more than half of which (625 lines) have remained unpublished until now. For the most part, it departs from previous versions in the sequence of its structure and, in some places, in its wording and the metrical arrangement of its lines, owing to revisions and additions made by the author himself.

We have added to this booklet only the poem’s prologue, believing that this addition largely completes the progression of the poem’s artistic and poetic intensity, as befits a work conceived as a poem. Since we did not have access to the original text, we refrained from combining the lengths of the various excerpts, so as not to disrupt the proper sequence of the poem’s internal structure. Needless to say, editing the excerpts would not only have encountered serious obstacles but would also have failed to bring the poem to its full length of 4,000 lines, since passages repeated across different editions (amounting to approximately 1,347 lines) constitute a substantial portion of the poem.

We considered a new edition of The Armenian Inferno necessary because it contains extensive passages that have remained unpublished, while also bringing to light the development of the poem’s artistic structure and refinement.”