George Gurdjieff: Difference between revisions

* {{harvnb|Tchekhovitch|2006|pp=244-240}}: "Since for some time I had the privilege of living close to Mr. Gurdjieff's mother, I am sure the reader will understand why I would wish to devote to this woman some recollections that illustrate her exceptional character{{nbsp}}... Her last words, spoken in Armenian, had the character of a Japanese poem."</ref> According to Gurdjieff himself, his father came of a Greek family whose ancestors had emigrated from Byzantium after the [[Fall of Constantinople]] in 1453, with his family initially moving to central Anatolia, and from there eventually to Georgia in the Caucasus.<ref name="Churton2017-1">{{harvnb|Churton|2017|pp=19–25}}: "Archival Records: Hearst columnist and old friend of Aleister Crowley William Seabrook, in reporting Gurdjieff's arrival in New York in 1924, gave the family name as Georgiades, a familiar name to Greek immigrants in the United States. Whence Seabrook got what he took to be the original Greek form of the Anglicized Russian Gurdjieff is unknown. ''Georgos'' means "farmer" in Greek and is the origin of Gurdjieff's Christian name, Georgii. ''Georgeades'' means "son of George" but as far as we know, Gurdjieff's father's name was Ivan Ivanovich (or son of Ivan).{{nbsp}}... There was, however, a village called Gurdji, part of Armutlu on the Turkish Armutlu peninsula by the Sea of Marmara just south of Constantinople (Istanbul), no longer listed, the scene of Greek army atrocities against Turks during the 1920-1921 Greco-Turkish war waged in western Turkey. Gurdjieff maintained in ''Meetings'' his family had been Byzantines before the Turks conquered Constantinople (capital of the Byzantine Empire) in 1453, migrating to central Anatolia due to Turkish persecution around Constantinople. The Marmara peninsula had certainly been part of what was left of Byzantium before the capital's overthrow in 1453."</ref><ref name="Shirley2004">{{harvnb|Shirley|2004}}: "''Gurdjieff'' is a Russian variant of the Greek ''G[e]orgiades'', his actual surname at birth. His full Russian name was Georgei Ivanovich Gurdjieff.{{nbsp}}... Gurdjieff was born in the small Russian-Armenian city of Alexandropol, son of a well-to-do owner of extensive herds of cattle and sheep, Ioann[i]s G[e]orgiades, a Greek.</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Lang |first=David Marshall |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jIstAQAAIAAJ |title=The Armenians: A People in Exile |publisher=[[Allen & Unwin]] |isbn=978-0049560109 |date=1981 |page=166 |language=en |quote=According to Gurdjieff himself, his father came of a Greek family whose ancestors had emigrated from Byzantium after the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. At first, the family moved to central Anatolia, and from there eventually to Georgia in the Caucasus. The name Gurdjieff gives some colour to this account, since 'Gurji' in Persian means 'a Georgian', and the Russian-style surname Gurdjieff would mean 'the man from Georgia'. However, the late John G. Bennett, who knew Gurdjieff intimately for many years, believes that Gurdjieff's father was called John Georgiades.}}</ref>

 

 

Gurdjieff spent his childhood in [[Kars]], which, from 1878 to 1918, was the administrative capital of the Russian-ruled Transcaucasus province of Kars Oblast, a border region recently captured from the Ottoman Empire. It contained extensive grassy plateau-steppe and high mountains, and was inhabited by a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional population that had a history of respect for travelling mystics and holy men, and for religious [[syncretism]] and [[religious conversion|conversion]]. Both the city of Kars and the surrounding territory were home to an extremely diverse population: although part of the [[Armenian Highlands|Armenian Plateau]], Kars Oblast was home to Armenians, Russians, Caucasus Greeks, Georgians, Turks, Kurds and smaller numbers of Christian communities from eastern and central Europe such as [[Caucasus Germans]], [[Estonians]] and Russian sectarian communities like the [[Molokans]], [[Doukhobors]], ''Pryguny'', and [[Subbotniks]].<ref name="John G. Bennett p. 55">John G. Bennett, ''Witness'', Omen press, Arizona 1974 p. 55.</ref>