Dr. James Russell, Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University, will present a program on "The Bells: From Poe to Sardarabad" on Thursday evening, December 15, 2011 at the Armenian Library and Museum of America.

Church bells are deeply symbolic, and of all musical instruments may come closest to language. Edgar Allan Poe's great final poem "The Bells" is language that comes closest to music. Later the Armenian poet Ruben Sevak, in Lausanne, wrote a poem, "Bells, Bells!" in reaction to the Adana massacre; and it echoes in the hidden, unpublished poems of Yeghishe Charents, who was fascinated by Poe, ALMA said in a press release.

Finally Paruyr Sevak rings the bells again in his epic poem Anlreli zangakatun ("The Unsilenced Bell Tower"), changing the tone of their chiming from the clangor of disaster to the ringing of survival, defiance, and victory.