‘By way of divertissement, I am studying daily, at an Armenian Monastery, the Armenian Language’

This chapter details Byron’s association with the Mechitarists, the Armenian intelligentsia who found refuge on the island of St. Lazarus in Italy in 1717 and who worked to preserve Armenian culture and literature. From late 1816 to 1819, during the period in which he was a resident of Venice, Byron travelled frequently to St. Lazarus by boat to study Armenian language and culture with the Mechitarists. Bekaryan frames Byron’s commitment to Armenian as part of his lifelong obsession with the East/Orient and explains that, during his daytrips to St. Lazarus, the poet had the opportunity to work with such Mechitarists as Harutiun Avgerian, a priest and translator who taught Byron Armenian. With Avgerian, Byron translated poetry and collaborated on two works: English-Armenian Grammar (1817) and A Grammar Armenian and English (1819), texts which illustrate the English poet’s desire to popularize Armenian in Europe and the English-speaking world.