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Perhaps there is a case to be made for some Christian categories for Gurdjieff? Gurdjieff had a complex but generally congenial relationship to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, having been raised in it and mentored by some Fathers he profoundly respected, and his funeral was Russian Orthodox. The book Meetings with Remarkable Men offers useful information on this; therein, he gives Jesus the highest praise. Gurdjieff always carried a well-read copy of the New Testament in Koine Greek. It can be argued that his Fourth Way was somehow a way of communicating the spirit of those teachings to people in the west that would have none of its externals. 74.133.104.185 ( talk) 22:22, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
Gurdjieff: "Inner morality is your aim. Your aim is to be Christian; but for that you must be able to do - and you cannot. When you are able to do, you will become Christian." From talk given on 1 March 1924. See Views From the Real World. Early Talks of Gurdjieff. -- Londonlinks ( talk) 13:46, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
§ Children had the following at the bottom, after the bulleted list:
Obviously this belongs in a reference, not the main text, and I've moved it to one, but I can't check it in the source. And the cited grand-source, "OLW, Autobiography", only makes sense as a typo for "FLW, Autobiography"; that would be An autobiography: Frank Lloyd Wright, originally published in 1932 by Longmans, Green and Company ( Worldcat). -- Thnidu ( talk) 23:05, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
Surely the combination "it is believed that" and "known" is contradictory. If they were "known" children, "it is believed that" is superfluous - but if it is only "believed that" he had them, then they weren't "known" for certain. 213.127.210.95 ( talk) 14:50, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
One thing Gurdjieff said is that his ideas could be thought of as "esoteric Christianity". Could this page be added to the category called "Esoteric Christianity"? Vorbee ( talk) 16:35, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
I looked at biographies of Gurdjieff, and apparently recent archival research indicates that his mother was Greek as well.
From Classical Spirituality in Contemporary America: The Confluence and Contribution of G.I. Gurdjieff and Sufism (2012) by Michael Pittman:
Though the long-held view is that Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian, Paul Taylor, on the basis of recent research, offers that Gurdjieff's mother's father was Greek (Taylor 2008).
From Deconstructing Gurdjieff: Biography of a Spiritual Magician (2017) by Tobias Churton:
Archival Records: [...] One thing we can be reasonably certain of is that both Gurdjieff's parents were Greek. His mother's maiden name comes from the Greek Elephtheros, referring perhaps to the Greek Orthodox saint and martyr of this name as well as the ancient Greek word for freedom: a dangerous surname to have in Turkey in the wake of the bloody 1866–69 Cretan revolt against Turkish rule. Gurdjieff's mother's father Elepheriadis (Greek again) was married to Sophia, whose name was obviously Greek but who was nicknamed in her capacity as midwife padji, Turkish for "sister," a clue as to her birthplace. [...] It is quite possible that Ivan met the Greek Evdokia in Alexandropol's substantial Greek quarter, known as Urmonts, which is recorded as having 363 households during the period when Gurdjieff's cousin, the sculptor Sergei Merkurov's grandfather built a house in Alexandropol (sometime between 1858 and 1869; accounts differ). Merkurov's family was among a hundred other Greek families who migrated from western Armenia (far-east Turkey), specifically the Vilayet of Trebizond in the period before the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–78. Grandfather Merkurov, an architect, would build Alexandropol's Greek Orthodox church, dedicated to Saint George (destroyed by earthquake in 1926).
From Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy (2019) by Roger Lipsey:
In his major book, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (which developed across multiple languages from the mid-1920s through to its English-language publication in 1950), Gurdjieff was ferociously satirical where ancient Greek culture was concerned—though he was born to Greek parents and spoke Greek from his earliest days (as well as Armenian, and soon Russian and Turkish).15
15. It will come as a surprise to readers familiar with the Gurdjieff legacy that both of his parents were Greek; the assumption has long been that his mother, Evdokia, was Armenian.
From G.I.Gurdjieff: A Life (2020) by Paul Beekman Taylor:
Alexandropol records have Ivan's wife as Evdokia Elepterovna, but on Ivan's death announcement, 25 June 1918, her name is given as M[unreadable] Kalerovna. The patronymic Kalerovna is given to Evdokia also on an 1885 document, and the French death notice of Gurdjieff's mother has "Evdoki Kaleroff" as her name, but I find the name Kaler only in Tyrol records from the fifteenth century. I am tempted to believe that Kaler reflects the Greek kalos "good, beautiful." The given and surnames of Gurdjieff's mother have semantic convergences, since Greek kalos "good" is compatible in meaning with Greek Eudoxia "Woman of Good Reputation." Since married women take their husband's family name almost always, I wonder why she was not identified as Evdokia Gurdjieff, as Gurdjieff's wife was identified on her travel documents. In a Church Slavonic register, Ivan and his wife are identified as Orthodox Christians. Gurdjieff's grandmother on his mother's side, Sophia, nicknamed Padji ("sister" in Turkish) was a well-regarded midwife who did not speak a word of Russian. His grandfather on his mother's side was Elepheriadis, a distinctly Greek form. Though Evdokia was thought by many to be Armenian, her name, Евдокия, is a Cyrillic form of Greek Eudoxia ("good thought"). The French form of the name on her death certificate is Eudoxie. Gurdjieff, who gave his mother's name to his youngest daughter, pronounced it in Russian fashion Yevdokeeya with stress on the penultimate syllable. If it seems odd that an Armenian woman would carry a Greek name, it is apparent that that Gurdjieff's mother was Greek as well as his father, confirming Gurdjieff's frequent assertion that his mother tongue was Greek. Gurdjieff's German papers, which he carried during the Second World War, identified him as Greek.
At the age of twenty-three, in 1871, when he was twenty-four years of age, Gurdjieff's father, Ivan, married eighteen-year old Evdokia Eleptherovna (b. 1852), the daughter of a Greek merchant Elepther Eleptherov, Elepheriadis in its Greek form.
Every source that i read, describing Gurdjieff's mother as Armenian, does so in passing; thus, per WP:CONTEXTMATTERS and WP:AGE MATTERS, i believe an update is in order. Are there any other, more in-depth sources on the topic, that contradict the above? Demetrios1993 ( talk) 03:04, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Greek-Georgian were also very common combinations in Kars Oblast and Georgia under Tsarist rule, which is also a possible root of his surname, as Muslims around Georgia call the Georgian people "Gurdji" (with Russified ending -eff).
I am not trying to prove anything User:Londonlinks; that's not our job as editors. You are mistaken again. The authors are all academics, and particularly Paul Beekman Taylor, who is the author of G.I.Gurdjieff: A Life (2020), lived at the Prieuré, and studied with Gurdjieff; he is 92 years old, and he was in his circle along with his mother and sister Eve. He also supports the Greek origin of his mother. Furthermore, speculations are conjectures without evidence; in this case, the authors studied the available archival records that were not accessible to previous authors, and came to their conclusions. Our job as editors is to summarize them. I mentioned his mother's death certificate – among other things – because you touched upon her first name, saying it was Yeva; though, personally i do not recall reading this anywhere. Also, the fact that he didn't write about his mother's Greek ancestry doesn't enhance your argument; likewise, he also didn't write anything about an Armenian ancestry. Also, why would Gurdjieff have a Greek passport? He was never a citizen of Greece. Having an Armenian passport doesn't mean that his mother was ethnically Armenian. But since we are discussing about identity documents, Gurdjieff's German papers, which he carried during the Second World War, identified him as a Greek; not Greek-Armenian or Armenian. Authors who describe Gurdjieff as a magician? You probably haven't read Churton's (2017) book, yet you are judging it because it includes spiritual magician as part of its title. With that kind of superficial rationale, we should also dismiss Gurdjieff's own work, The Struggle of the Magicians (1914). User:Londonlinks, just because his sister was killed by the Turks, it doesn't mean it was due to an Armenian background; the Turks are also responsible for his father's death, and we know for certain that he was Greek. You do know that there was also a Greek genocide taking place during the same period, right? Also, mother tongue simply means native tongue, not mother's tongue. Gurdjieff did indeed speak Armenian as a native speaker, since he learned it from a young age, but his actual native tongue was Greek. Forget about other authors for a second; here is what Gurdjieff wrote about himself in the book Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, in detail:
It must also be said that owing to all kinds of conditions accidentally, or perhaps not accidentally, formed in my youth, I have had to learn, very seriously and of course always with self-compulsion, to speak, read, and write a great many languages, and to such a degree of fluency that if in following this profession unexpectedly forced on me by fate I decided not to take advantage of the "automatism" acquired by practice, I could perhaps write in any one of them. But in order to make judicious use of this automatism acquired by long practice, I would have to write either in Russian or in Armenian, because during the last two or three decades the circumstances of my life have been such that I have had to use just these two languages for communication with others, and consequently have had more practice in them.
In order to assuage the bitterness of my inner hurt owing to this, I must say that in my early youth, when I became interested in philological questions and was deeply absorbed in them, I preferred the Armenian language to all the others I then spoke, even including my native tongue.
Almost the same might be said about my native language, Greek, which I spoke in childhood, and the taste of whose "automatic associative power" I still retain. I could, I dare say, express anything I wish in it even now, but it is impossible for me to employ it here for the simple and rather comical reason that someone must transcribe my writings and translate them into other languages. And who could do this? It can be said with certainty that even the best expert in modern Greek would understand simply nothing of what I would write in the tongue I assimilated in childhood, because during the last thirty or forty years my dear "compatriots," inflamed with the desire to be at all costs like the representatives of contemporary civilization even in their conversation, have treated my dear native language just as the Armenians, anxious to become Russian "intelligentsia," have treated theirs. The Greek language whose spirit and essence were transmitted to me by heredity and the language now spoken by contemporary Greeks are as much alike as, according to the expression of Mullah Nasr Eddin, "a nail is like a requiem."
It is obvious that Gurdjieff didn't consider Armenian as his native tongue; though, per his own admission, he had great fluency as well as respect for it, and had to use it almost exclusively – along with Russian – for much of his life. He also had good command of Turkish; as Bennett wrote of him in an essay that was published in 1997:
A Greek from the Caucasus, he spoke Turkish with an accent of unexpected purity, the accent that one associates with those born and bred in the narrow circle of the Imperial Court.
Even though his native tongue was Greek, and his family lived in the Greek quarter of Alexandropol, their domestic language was chiefly Armenian. Another recent publication is Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation, and Exercises (2019) by the academic Joseph Azize. Azize was a pupil of George Adie, who he met in 1981, and studied with until his death in 1989; Adie himself, had studied with Ouspensky, Gurdjieff, and Mme de Salzmann. He wrote:
First, he was raised in Alexandropol and Kars, in or near what is now Armenia, in a family of ancient Greek descent, whose domestic language was chiefly Armenian. ... Ouspensky brings some contemporary color to this, saying of Alexandropol: ... "There is also the Greek quarter, the least interesting of all outwardly, where G.'s house was situated, ...
That both of these traditions [referring to Neoplatonism and the Athonite "Prayer of the Heart"] are Greek is not accidental: Gurdjieff identified as a Greek, and considered Greek to be his mother tongue.
The above quote regarding the background of his family might appear vague, but he does indeed refer to his mother as well. He is more clear on his position in a 2019 article that he published on his blog ( here):
We need do no more than note some minor mistakes. Gurdjieff's mother was Greek, not Armenian, and he did not just acquire some Greek and Turkish, he was fluent in Greek and at least good in Turkish, and also in Russian, even if he spoke the latter with a Caucasian accent.
By the way, i have no problem including a sentence saying that some authors described his mother as Armenian, but we will not remove newer reliable secondary sources, that also happen to expand on the background of the family via their consideration of archival records. Demetrios1993 ( talk) 02:33, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
It's not a couple of authors User:Londonlinks; i cited five modern authors who support that view, as well as Gurdjieff's own words. What i shared above is not my "personal input", but what reliable secondary sources say. Also, what other Wikipedia projects claim is irrelevant; Wikipedia is an unreliable user-generated source (see WP:CIRCULAR and WP:NOTSOURCE). Concerning Azize's book, i wrote that the claim might appear vague, not that it is vague. I only mentioned an article from his blog because it clarifies his position. Contrary to what you say, i can use self-published sources (such as blogs) if produced by an established expert, whose work in the relevant field has been published by reliable, independent publications ( such as this one); see WP:EXPERTSPS. Furthermore, Paul Beekman Taylor lived at the Prieuré until Gurdjieff's death in 1949; he would have been 19 years old at the time, not a child with no recollections. By the way, i am glad that you asked about Gurdjieff's daughter. She is actually the one i mentioned in my previous comment as Paul Beekman Taylor's sister, Eve; their mother was Edith Annesley Taylor. So, you see, they were part of the family. Here is a photograph at her wedding, in June 1952, with the whole gang present (including Mme de Salzmann). Gurdjieff gave her his mother's Greek name, Evdokia, which French official records have as Eve. From Brancusi and Gurdjieff (2019) by Basarab Nicolescu and Paul Beekman Taylor, we read:
Another unpublished biographical source can be found in the papers and oral testimony of Edith Taylor, the mother of one of the authors of this article. Edith Taylor (1894–1974) was a lovely woman of predominantly Irish origin, (as were Elaine Fayre and Eileen Lane) with wit and intelligence. After arriving in Paris in 1914 and studying there after WWI service in the Morgan Hadjes Ambulance Company, she cultivated relations with Natalie Barney, Gertrude Stein, Kiki Vanderbilt, Djuna Barnes, Jane Heap, Gerald and Esther Murphy, Elsa Maxwell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, as well as with others prominent in the Paris art world. Edith Taylor had met Gurdjieff in London in 1922 and visited at the Prieuré in 1922–1923. Though she attended his talks in a number of places, she was never, strictly speaking, a 'disciple' of Gurdjieff. She had a personal relationship with Gurdjieff, nonetheless, which resulted in the birth of their daughter, whom Gurdjieff named Evdokia ("Eve" in French official records), after his mother.
User:Londonlinks, you were the one who brought up the first name of Gurdjieff's mother, claiming without any reliable sources that it was Yeva, and implying an Armenian origin; now you shrug it off as unimportant. Regarding the quotes of Taylor, here are some additional relevant excerpts from the book that i didn't mention above:
According to the Central Archives of Armenia (File 47, Description 2, n25), he [G's father] was born Ivan Ivanovich Kurchogli (Georgian form Vano Kurdji-ogli) and at the age of twenty-three, in 1871, he married eighteen-year old Evdokia Eleptherovna (b. 1852), the daughter of Elepther Eleptheroff.
P. D. Ouspensky visited the city [Alexandropol] and Gurdjieff's home in the summer of 1917 and described what he heard and saw: "I met his family, and his mother. They were people of a very old and very peculiar culture. G's father was an amateur of local tales, legends, and traditions, something in the nature of a "bard"; and he knew by heart thousands and thousands of verses in the local idioms. They were Greeks from Asia Minor, but the language of the house, as of all the others in Alexandropol, was Armenian ...
Here we have Ouspensky of all people, another contemporary, also claiming that his family (including his mother) were Greeks, but like everyone else in Alexandropol, spoke Armenian. No wonder why some other authors might have confused the background of his mother. I cited a number of reliable secondary sources that provide many more details, and also happen to be in line with Gurdjieff's own writings. On the other hand, Olga de Hartmann's only reference to an Armenian mother is made in passing, and she wasn't even certain of Gurdjieff's date and place of birth. Also, i don't see any quote from Valentin Anastasieff that contradicts the above. Bennett's quotes are likewise made in passing, and i already cited Gurdjieff's own elaboration about his native tongue, which he presented in juxtaposition to Armenian. Did you read the quotes of Gurdjieff that i shared above? We are moving in circles, and apparently veering into a forum-type of discussion. You may ask for a third opinion if you want, but they will essentially agree with what i suggested above; namely to include both views in the article, per WP:NPOV.
Sidenote: Please be careful with the structure of your comments, because you are making it difficult to follow the discussion. Some paragraphs have indentations, some don't, others have unnecessary indentations, and there is even a comment above with two signatures and different time stamps. Demetrios1993 ( talk) 02:18, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
I know that the Prieuré wasn't operating in 1949; i made that error inadvertently. But let me correct you. The Prieuré's mortgagees foreclosed in May 1932, which is when Gurdjieff suspended all of his activities there, and its former inhabitants left. Paul Beekman Taylor did spend most of his first two years there. From Gurdjieff's America: Mediating the Miraculous (2004) by Paul Beekman Taylor:
... Gurdjieff had always been a part of my life. I was born into an environment dominated by his image and his ideas. My mother had been in his circle already for some seven years when I was born in Hampstead, London in a house Orage had found for her near his. I was born the day after he left his wife Jessie and son Richard on the SS Washington for New York. There he played out a final scenario with Gurdjieff that sealed their personal relations for the rest of Orage's life. Six months later, after Gurdjieff had returned to France, my mother moved into the Prieuré where I spent most of my first two years. My scant memories of that time are probably more my mother's than mine, but I can still conjure up an image of children playing "stop" on the lawn in front of the château; and the odor of Gurdjieff's coffee taken on the terrace is still alive in my olfactory memory. After Gurdjieff left the Prieuré in 1933, my mother, sister and I moved to Paris where we saw much of him until he left for the United States in the fall of 1933. We were close to him in early 1934 after his return.
Gurdjieff suspended all his activities at the Prieuré in 1932, though he said that he would repossess the property as soon as possible. After the Prieuré was lost, its former inhabitants scattered. ... In May [1932] the holders of Gurdjieff's mortgages on the Prieuré foreclosed, ...
Also, i don't need to do any math because i didn't claim that Paul Beekman Taylor met Gurdjieff's mother; my reference to his recollections have to do with his experience with Gurdjieff himself, from whom he must have heard stories. As aforementioned, Paul was in the environment of Gurdjieff from the beginning of his life, and even after the Prieuré was foreclosed, his family didn't lose contact with him. He would also become his student, from 1948 until Gurdjieff's death in 1949. Having said that, Paul also learned a lot from his mother, who surely would have met Gurdjieff's mother, being in Gurdjieff's circle from about 1923. Gurdjieff's mother came to the Prieuré in May 1923, and she died in the summer of 1925.
User:Londonlinks, it's not me saying; according to Paul, Eve's brother, Gurdjieff gave her his mother's name, Evdokia. Paul even elaborated that Gurdjieff "pronounced it in Russian fashion Yevdokeeya with stress on the penultimate syllable." What the French official records say is another matter. The first name of Gurdjieff's mother might not be indicative of her origin, but it is suggestive.
I beg to differ; Ouspensky explicitly mentioned meeting Gurdjieff's mother, and then described the whole family as Greeks (in plural). He could have written Greek-Armenian, or mention his mother as Armenian, but he didn't. Furthermore, i am not familiar with Sergey Merkurov's ancestry, but i don't see any contradictions. The quote by Churton (2017) is referring to the Merkurov family as Greek, and mentions Sergey Merkurov's grandfather who built a house in Alexandropol; that doesn't exclude the possibility that his maternal family was Armenian. Having said that, i did a quick search and found this article by an Armenian journalist, which includes the following quote by Merkurov: "My mother and father are Greek, but I am Greek-Armenian". These are all irrelevant however; we are not discussing Merkurov.
User:Londonlinks, it is not me who refers to certain archival sources, the authors of the cited books do. If you want to contact other people to verify the information, feel free to do so, but there are additional references mentioned in those works; you might as well forward them the entire books, or at the very least, the relevant chapters. Or if you want additional clarification for a specific piece of information, you might as well contact the authors directly.
I don't have a problem with your suggested sentence; i will go ahead and integrate it into the article, since we both agree. The fact that there are conflicting views regarding his birthdate is already mentioned in the next sentences; there is no need to repeat it. Furthermore, i do disagree on the removal of the non-English names; contrary to what you think, relevant foreign names aren't prohibited in the English Wikipedia, or any Wikipedia.
The opinions of academic scholars with expertise on the subject are not worthless and we will not be removing them. What i asked in my first comment, was whether there were any other more in-depth sources on the topic of his mother's background, aside of claims that were made in passing. Nothing in-depth has been presented, and even if it was, it wouldn't change the neutral summary we just agreed upon; aside of minor changes maybe. I was already aware of Michel de Salzmann's claim; this is nothing new. Furthermore, the quote of Bennett that i cited, was in order to support the claim that Gurdjieff had good command of Turkish, not to reiterate his Greek ancestry; please read my comment again. Also, the preface you shared above only says that Gurdjieff's mother/native tongue was Armenian and that he spoke Armenian with his mother; but again, we have Gurdjieff's own writings taking precedence over such claims. Gurdjieff presented his actual mother/native tongue (Greek) in juxtaposition to Armenian, and wrote that he had to use Armenian and Russian, almost exclusively, for much of his life. And even Ouspensky said that their domestic language was Armenian, as of all the others in Alexandropol; yet, he clarified their Greek background. We are essentially repeating ourselves here. Demetrios1993 ( talk) 01:52, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
User:Demetrios1993 You have proposed to update the page to announce that Gurdjieff’s mother was not Armenian, but Greek; and you have quoted the following source to support your view along with a great deal of irrelevant anecdotal material:
From G.I.Gurdjieff: A Life (2020) by Paul Beekman Taylor “If it seems odd that an Armenian woman would carry a Greek name, it is apparent that Gurdjieff's mother was Greek as well as his father.”
You then opine User:Demetrios1993 that every source you have read describing Gurdjieff's mother as Armenian does so in passing and that “I believe an update is in order.“ You then ask rhetorically: “Are there any other, more in-depth sources on the topic that contradict the above?"
User:Demetrios1993 you do not need to look far, because the same author has contradicted himself:
From Gurdjieff's America: Mediating the Miraculous (2004) by Paul Beekman Taylor: “His Greek father was Ionnas and Armenian mother was Yevdokia.” (p 10)
You neglected to refer to Mr Taylor's statement when quoting from his book.I am going to revert your edit to say “Gurdjieff was born of a Greek father and Armenian mother.” You can then add citations and references to the authors you wish, who have suggested that Gurdjieff's mother may have been Greek.
I have given you the names of various people who have confirmed that G’s mother was Armenian: Olga and Thomas de Hartmann; Michel de Salzmann and John G. Bennett in conjunction with Gurdjieff’s nephew, Valentin Anastassieff, who are all primary sources.
Mr Taylor by contrast is not a primary source and has said in his 2004 book quoted above: “I cannot recall hearing the name “Gurdjieff” during the formative period of my youth” (p4); and “I am not always successful in confirming facts, even when I have the primary source in front of me.” (p1)
The page should not be updated in the way you have suggested and if you wish to take the matter to review then please do so supported by facts, rather than your own personal opinion, as that is not a proper basis for tinkering with this important page. Londonlinks ( talk) 19:30, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources, and to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources.(see WP:PSTS). So no, primary sources should not be given precedence over secondary sources. Besides that, you are even ignoring other personal or firsthand accounts, such as those of Ouspensky and Gurdjieff himself. You also haven't provided any actual quote by Valentin Anastassieff; you only cited a preface by Bennett, which says something different. That quote by Taylor is simply a repetition of what has simply been the long-held view; nobody disputes that. But even that source, doesn't expand on the background of Gurdjieff's mother; it's just a mention made in passing. Furthermore, Taylor has updated his view in light of additional research, so it doesn't really matter what was published two decades ago. We have a 2020 publication of his that expands on the subject, with a view that is also supported by other secondary sources. The age of the source matters; see WP:AGE MATTERS. I will rephrase your recent edit, to be in line with what the sources actually say. This is indeed the long-held view, but some scholars have recently suggested a different view. Also, i have asked for a source supporting the claim that Yeva was her first name; nothing has been presented yet. If there is no source supporting the claim, then this constitutes original research. Even if there was a source, which i haven't seen yet, the way you summarized it in the article was not neutral; in contrast to you, i have cited sources saying that her first name was Evdokia (and different variants of it), not Yeva.
User:Demetrios1993, you also ask for evidence that Gurdjief's mother was Yeva. Please refer again to your own sources which you have only partly quoted by using [....]. The part you omitted to mention is as follows:
From Deconstructing Gurdjieff: Biography of a Spiritual Magician (2017) by Tobias Churton
Archival Records: "A gazette of local families lists this person Ivan (Gurdjieff’s father) as married to Eva."
Eva of course would have been written in Armenian as Yeva. User:Demetrios1993 please also note the following (I will add citations later):-
Gurdjieff said in his own words in Meeting 17 Thursday 28/10/1943 that he was 76 years old. He died six years later in 1949 and so was 82 years old – and certainly looked 82 - when he died. He was therefore born in 1867.
This accords with what G wrote in his autobiography Meetings with Remarkable Men, that he was about 7 years old at the time of the great plague which affected his father’s cattle, which began in the summer of 1873. So Gurdjieff has confirmed his age and year of birth in his own words.
Gurdjief’s Father was Ivan Ivanovitch Gurdjief and G said in his autobiography that his father was 82 years old when he last saw him in 1916 - and he should know. So G’s father was born in 1834 and would have been 33 years old when G was born in 1867.
Please keep those facts in mind although there may be disputes over dates and read carefully:
From “Deconstructing Gurdjieff: Biography of a Spiritual Magician By Tobias Churton under the heading of 'Archival Records':
“A gazette of local Alexandropol families of 1907 lists Ivan Ivanovitch Gurdjieff as married to Eva, who had three children, Georgii, Dmitri and Sophia.”
Eva would of course have been written as Yeva in Armenian.
Mr Churton having found a reference to Gurdjieff's family then looked elsewere for Ivan Ivanovitch - an exceedingly common name simply meaning “son of Ivan” - and found one in Armenia’s Central Archives: Ivan Ivanovitch Kurchogli, husband of Evdokia Elephtherovna, born 1852, whom Ivan married in 1871, aged 23.
It is this couple instead of the couple identified in the gazette of Gyrumri residents that Mr Churton claims were G’s parents and which Mr Beekman Taylor then refers to in his book written in 2020 to assert that Gurdjieff’s mother was Greek.
Mr Churton states quite logically that because Evdokia’s maiden name comes from the Greek Elephtheros, she must have been Greek and that “If Gurdjieff was born to Ivan and Evdokia .. one thing we can reasonably be certain of is that both Gurdjieff’s parent were Greek.”
Mr Churton's couple however could not possibly have been Gurdjieff’s parents, firstly because Ivan Kurchogli was born in 1848 (rather than 1834) and was not the name of Gurdjieff’s father; and secondly his wife Evdokia had she been Gurdjieff's mother would have borne Gurdjieff when she was still unmarried (unheard of even by Greek standards) and only 15 years old. Furthemore we would need to assume that she died in France in 1925 at the age of 73 – whereas G’s mother as is clear from photographs was considerably older.
The story about Ivan and his wife Evdokia is entertaining, but unfortunately it is a red-herring.
As I have said at the beginning, the whole "Evdokia" nonsense should be deleted from the page, otherwise it just amounts to a form of vandalism.
User:Demetrios1993 there is nothing in any of Mr Churton or Mr Taylor's books to dispute the confirmation by Gurdjieff's contemporaries that his mother was Armenian.
You should refrain from tinkering with the page to advance your Greek theory. Londonlinks ( talk) 23:54, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
User:Demtrios1993 thank you for referring this matter for review. You reverted the long-standing fact that Gurdjief's mother was Armenian by saying that you had read a few recent biographies which indicate from archival records that G's mother was called Evdokia; and you quoted from the following book:
From Deconstructing Gurdjieff: Biography of a Spiritual Magician (2017) by Tobias Churton: pp. 19–25: Archival Records: [...] "One thing we can be reasonably certain of is that both Gurdjieff's parents were Greek"
The part which you omitted between brackets [...] refers to an Armenian archival record which confirmed that G's mother was not called Evdokia, but Yeva (translated into English as Eva). Furthermore, the extract that you do quote deliberately distorts what Mr Churton wrote, which was that "If" a certain Ivan Ivanovitch and Evdokia that he identified were Gurdjieff's parents, then they were certainly Greek.
The fallacy however is that the "Ivan Ivanovitch" and "Evdokia" that Mr Churton managed to turn up allegedly in the Armenian Central Achives could not possibly have been Gurdjieff's parents, for the reasons I have given on this talk page and not least because regardless of dates, Gurdjieff's father was not called Ivan Ivanovitch Kurdjogli and his mother was not called Evdokia. I have refrained from reverting your edit as I do not wish to engage in an edit war with you and look forward to the review decision, but I must say that the damage that you have caused so far in altering the ethnicity of Gurdjieff's mother from Armenian to Greek has already been perpetuated on the internet, as the public relies upon Wikipedia to present facts rather than fiction. Londonlinks ( talk) 01:26, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
User:Demetrios1993 let me again refer you to your own references:
Archival Records: “If Gurdjieff was born to Ivan and Evdokia in 1877 as many official records maintain, then Gurdjieff was almost certainly Greek, as his mother’s maiden name comes from the Greek Elephtheros.”
Evdokia Elephtherovna however could not have been Gurdjieff’s mother as I have stated, because if she was born in 1852 as the record states, she would have been only 73 years old when she died at the Prieure in 1925, whereas Gurdjieff’s mother was much older ( http://www.gurdjieff.am/photos/33-big.jpg); and if Gurdjieff was indeed Evdokia’s son, he would have been only 72 years old when he died in 1949 – which again is pure fantasy.
The whole Evdokia story is based on the marriage of a Mr Ivan Ivanovitch Kurchogli , who clearly cannot have been Gurdjieff’s father Ivan Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. Mr Kurchogli was also born in 1848, whereas Gurdjieff said in Meetings with Remarkable Men that his father was born in 1834, being 82 years old the last time he saw him alive in 1916. We have to respect what Gurdjieff himself wrote in his chapter about his father.
There is no basis for relying upon the biographies you have recently stumbled upon for contradicting the fact which has been confirmed for the last 100 years by all of Gurdjieff's contemporaries that Gurdjief's mother was Armenian - your edit should therefore be reverted otherwise the page could easily get clogged up with speculation and gossip from many other authors who are making a living from the Gurdjieff name. Londonlinks ( talk) 01:18, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
User:Demetrios1993 It is with respect you who is doing the cherry picking: The "Evdokia" whom you are referring to was born in 1852 according to the archival record quoted and so cannot possibly have been Gurdjieff's mother as a matter of commonsense. Look on the internet for photographs of Gurdjieff's elderly mother at the Prieure in 1925.
And if your Evdokia bore Gurdjieff in 1877 after her mariage to Ivan Kurchogli in 1871 according to "all official records", did Gurdjieff look as if he were 72 years old when he died in 1949? The date in his German passport of 28-12-77 is clearly wrong unless G came from another planet (another theory). Somebody at the German consulate in New York may have heard 1877 instead of 1867, but for entry purposes to the USA, it is unlikely that G or anyone else would have wanted to spend valuable time sending the passport back to correct an inconsequential mistake.
User:Demetrios1993 let us not play with words. Even if Kurchogli is somehow a variant of the name Gurdjieff - and Yeva in Armenian is Evdokia in Greek - the same archival record you quote lists the ages of Mr Ivan Kurchogli and his wife Evdokia, which if correct, must rule them out as being Gurdjieff's parents. The "death certificate" of Mr Kurchogli is also dated 1918, according to the researches of Mr Paul Beekman Taylor.
To equate this couple with G's parents would therefore mean not only disregarding the ages of Mr Kurchogli and his wife, but G's own reference to the age of his father and the photographic evidence of his mother, who in reality was clearly at least 83 years old in 1925 and not 73, as Evdokia would have been had she still been alive then. The grave stone of Gurdjieff's father in Gyumri records his date of birth as 1834, which accords with what Gurdjieff later confirmed in his autobiography - and his father's death as 1917, which does not accord with Mr Kurchogli's death.
These facts exist because Mr Ivan Ivanovitch Kurchogli and his lovely Greek wife Evdokia clearly bear no relation to Mr Gurdjieff's parents, although to take a leaf out of the researches of Mr Beekman Taylor and Mr Churton, I could postulate that they may well have been the neighbours of Mr Gurdjieff' parents! Londonlinks ( talk) 10:48, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
User: Demetrios1993 you also say that "for the record" Eva or Eve is not Yeva in Armenian, which is merely my opinion; and that the author Mr Churton asserts that her actual first name was Evdokia, "which is all that matters." May I refer you to the Yeva page on Wikipedia Yeva. Evdokia in Armenian is Եվդոկիա while Eva in Armenian is Եվա ("Yeva") and Mr Churton translated the name he read from the Armenian gazette as Eva and not Evdokia Thanks. Londonlinks ( talk) 11:38, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
"Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any source. Similarly, do not combine different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source."Pistongrinder ( talk) 23:38, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
I came here with the intent of trying to provide a third opinion, but the above is a pretty imposing text wall, and seems to do a fair amount of going in circles. Any chance both of you could summarize, in maybe a paragraph or two, what your position is, what references you think support it, and why? That would be quite helpful to anyone else looking at this matter. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:58, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
His father Ivan Ivanovich Gurdjieff (Greek: Ιωάννης Γεωργιάδης) was Greek, while there are conflicting views as to whether his mother was Armenian or Greek.
His father Ivan Ivanovich Gurdjieff (Greek: Ιωάννης Γεωργιάδης) was Greek; the long-held view is that Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian, but some scholars have recently suggested that she was a Greek named Evdokia (Greek: Ευδοκία) Eleptherovna or Kalerovna.
User:Demetrios1993 I have provided a link to an actual photograph of Gurdjieff's elderly mother as she was in 1925 and knew that you would then say that such a woman could have been 73 years old so that she might still be your "Evdokia" who was born in 1852. Nobody however could rationally say from looking at the photograph of Gurdjieff's mother that she was then 73 years old. On the contrary, she can only have been at least ten years years older and into her 80's.
User:Demetrios1993 as you have quoted Michael Pittman above who refers to an opinion of Mr Beekman Taylor, please read Mr Pittman's book called "G I Gurdjieff and his Armenian Roots" where Mr Pittman states that Gurdjieff was born to an Armenian mother and a Cappadocian-Greek father.
Mr Paul Beekman Taylor's unfounded opinion that the brother of Gurdjieff's father was called Vasilly Kurdchogli is not supported by any cited source, but it does start a wild goose chase which is then followed by his fellow author Mr Churton, who tracks down a Mr "Kurchjogli" (not even Kurdchogli) from the Armenian archives, who was married to a certain Evdokia. Their dates of birth and the date of Mr Kurchogli's death as shown on his death certificate quoted by Mr Taylor do not correspond to Gurdjieff mother or his father, whom Gurdjieff said was born in 1834.
I would prefer to think that Gurdjieff knew the age of his father when lhe said that the last time he saw his father alive was in 1916, when he was 82 years old. That rules out "Mr Kurchogli" as being Gurdjieff's father, or Mr Kurchogli's wife Evdokia as being Gurdjief's mother.
The "researches" of these two authors - one of whom Mr Taylor admits to getting his facts wrong even when faced with primary sources - do not support any rational basis for saying that Gurdjieff's mother was Greek or that the name of his father was Ivan Ivanovitch Kurchogli. The page should state as before that Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian with a reference to your Evdokia theory if you still think it has some relevance. Had I seen your suggested edit back in May I would have challenged your proposal immediately. Londonlinks ( talk) 08:27, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
I agree with Seraphimblade that we should both produce a summmary of our positions to assist other editors understand the issue raised by your edit. Your summary which is currently on the page should however be edited to say that Gurdjieff's father was Ivan Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, but some authors have recently opined that his surname was Kurchogli. This is because the theory that Gurdjieff's mother was Evdokia and that she was Greek can only be advanced if the name Gurdjieff is the same as Kurchogli - who was a man apparently married to a woman called Evdokia who was born in 1852. Do not be surprised if we then find other editors jumping onto the bandwagon to say that Gurdjieff was actually Turkish. Londonlinks ( talk) 10:26, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
User:Demetrios1993 please do not tinker with the page any further. Whether "Gurdjieff" is equivalent to some other name in another language is irrelevant. All the noise you have created is based solely on Mr Beekman Taylor's unsupported opinion that Mr Gurdjieff's uncle (the brother of his father) was a Vasilii Kurdjogli, which in turn has thrown up a search result for a Mr Kurchogli who had a Greek wife called Evdokia born in 1852.
This type of so-called reasearch is completely inane and of no value whatsoever.
I have shown you an actual photograph of Mr Gurdjieff's mother taken in 1925 who cannot possibly have then been 72 years old and Mr Kurcholi whoever he was can only have been Mr Gurdjieff's father if you ignore what Mr Gurdjieff himself said about his father's age.
This is why I have said you have deliberately vandalised the page with this Evdokia nonsense. I am going to escalate this matter rather than reverting your edit because I do not wish to provoke an edit war.
The page should not be turned into a platform for advancing the unfounded opinions of different authors Londonlinks ( talk) 14:48, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
"if a certain Kurchogli couple were the parents of Gurdjieff then....it is reasonably certain that his parents were Greek."Churton clearly accepts that the 1871 archival record you refer to pertains to the parents of Gurdjieff; so does Taylor (2020). Furthermore, variants of his father's surname, as well as his mother's first name, are corroborated by other records as well. Lipsey (2019) and Azize (2019) also support that his mother was Greek. You are in denial if you really believe that no one has expressed a different view. Anyway, two third parties with a lot more experience and a much better understanding of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines than yourself, have already expressed their opinions ( first 3O and second 3O). The article currently presents an accurate and neutral summary of what has been published. If you have an alternative neutral suggestion to share, feel free to do so; but, we are not going to continue this discussion ad infinitum. Demetrios1993 ( talk) 02:18, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
From at least what I've heard so far, there is indeed genuine disagreement among sources regarding this matter. So, that would leave us two choices. First, the article could reflect, as it sounds like it currently does, that uncertainty. Secondly, to be honest, I do not see why it is a particularly pressing need to state his parents' ethnicity at all. So, another option would be to just omit that, at least until a consensus among sources becomes clearer (if it ever does). Seraphimblade Talk to me 06:59, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
Relevant quotes
|
---|
From In Search of the Miraculous (1949) by P. D. Ouspensky:
From Deconstructing Gurdjieff: Biography of a Spiritual Magician (2017) by Tobias Churton:
From Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation, and Exercises (2019) by Joseph Azize:
The quote on page 23 is referring to his mother as well; he is more clear on his position in a 2019 article that he published on his blog ( here):
From Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy (2019) by Roger Lipsey:
From G.I.Gurdjieff: A Life (2020) by Paul Beekman Taylor:
|
His father Ivan Ivanovich Gurdjieff (Greek: Ιωάννης Γεωργιάδης) was Greek, while there are conflicting views as to whether his mother was Armenian or Greek.
His father Ivan Ivanovich Gurdjieff (Greek: Ιωάννης Γεωργιάδης) was Greek; the long-held view is that Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian, but some scholars have recently suggested that she was a Greek named Evdokia Eleptherovna or Kalerovna.
Thank you Pistongrinder for your reference to stonewalling, which however is surely not applicable in this case. Status quo stonewalling is opposition to a proposed change without stating a substantive rationale based in policy, guidelines and conventions or participating in good faith discussion. The policy which is in issue is original material. Wikipedia articles must not contain original research . The phrase "original research" is used on Wikipedia to refer to material such as facts and assumptions for which no reliable, published sources exist. This includes any analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to reach or imply a conclusion not stated by the sources. The material which User:Demetrios1993 has relied on does not refer to any reliable source to suggest that Gurdjieff's mother was Greek. He quotes from "Deconstructing Gurdjieff: Biography of a Spiritual Magician (2017)" by Tobias Churton:
Archival Records: [...] "One thing we can be reasonably certain of is that both Gurdjieff's parents were Greek."User:Demetrios1993 omitted however to include the part in brackets, which presumably he had read. This merely refers to a record of a Mr Ivan Kurchogli and his wife Evdokia, but no source suggested that this couple were the parents of Gurdjieff - only that if they were his parents then both of them were Greek, because of Evdokia's name.
The archival record quoted stated that a Mr Ivan Kurchogli was born in 1848, which meant that he would have been only 68 years old instead of 82, when Gurdjieff said he last saw his father alive in 1916. The gravestone of Gurdjieff's father in Gyumri states that he was born in 1834, and not 1848. Ivan Kurchogli was clearly not Gurdjieff's father and nobody has ever said that this was his name. As for Evdokia, whether that was the name of Gurdjieff's mother rather than Yeva, the Evdokia referred to in the archival record could not have been Gurdjieff's mother, not just because she was married to Mr Kurchogli who was not Gurdjieff's father, but because of extant photographs of Gurdjieff's mother in 1925, which are not that of a 73 year old woman ie., the Evdokia who the record states was born in 1852.
The summary should therefore revert to stating the fact as confirmed by Gurdjieff's nephew Valentin Anastasieff and by Gurdjieff's alleged son Michael de Salzmann
[1] and other contempories that Gurdjieff's father was Greek and his mother Armenian.
If the speculation contained in the material referred to by
User:Demetrios1993 needs to be referred to at all, then it could be cited in an explanatory reference section, along with other opinons of different authors.
The parentage of people of international standing is of importance to illustrate their background and upbringing and is not without interest to the general public. Londonlinks ( talk) 02:42, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
I should also respond to
Demetrios1993 stating that I have mis-quoted the part from Mr Churton's book which
Demetrios1993 failed to include in brackets [....]
. The full extract is here:
[2] Mr Churton states that one thing we can be reasonably certain of is that both Gurdjieff's parents were Greek.
- which is based on his assumption that if Gurdjieff was born to Ivan Ivanovitch (Kurchogli) and Evdokia (Elephtherovna) in 1877, as many official records maintain, then he was most certainly a Greek.
No offical record is cited however by any author to support this assumption. Mr Churton refers to a record unearthed by Mr Paul Beekman Taylor following information given to him by a Mr Benham, who received it from a Georgian scholar Manana Khomeriki, that the brother of Gurdjieff's father was called Vasilii Kurdchogli. This too is not supported by any source, but in any event, the record found by Mr Beekman Taylor in the Armenian Central Archives regarding Ivan Kurchogli (sic) and his wife Evdokia confirms nothing other than their ages and that they were married in 1871. This is not a reliable basis for suggesting that the Kurchogli couple were Gurdjieff's parents. On the contrary, their names if not their ages rule them out, regardless of any other facts. In particular, in the context of this page, it says nothing to suggest that Gurdjieff's mother may have been Greek. Wikipedia has to be based on
reliable and verifiable sources.
Londonlinks (
talk) 23:12, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
Londonlinks (
talk)
12:45, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
These policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in Wikipedia articles. Because they complement each other, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one another."
explicitly statedby those sources. Historians are allowed to synthesize information. Wikipedia editors are not.
This means that we publish only the analysis, views, and opinions of reliable authors, and not those of Wikipedians who have read and interpreted primary source material for themselves."
all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic are represented fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias,per WP:NPOV. It would, therefore, be against WP policy to exclude Gurdjieff's mother's possible Greek heritage, as we would not be representing a neutral point of view on the subject.
Thank you Pistongrinder for your assistance. The whole issue raised by Demetrios1993 regarding Gurdjieff's mother rests upon a marriage certificate of a Mr Kurch-ogli which is held at the National Archive of Armenia [3] It is referred to by Mr Paul Beekman Taylor in his book G. I Gurdjieff a Life (2020). [4] who states:
pp. 12-13: According to the Central Archives of Armenia (File 47, Description 2, n25), he [G's father] was born Ivan Ivanovich Kurchogli (Georgian form Vano Kurdji-ogli) and at the age of twenty-three, in 1871, he married eighteen-year old Evdokia Eleptherovna (b. 1852), the daughter of Elepther Eleptheroff.
The archival record however clearly says nothing about Mr Kurch-ogli being Gurdjieff's father. It simply records the marriage on 12th November 1871 of a Mr Ivan Kurch-ogli to Evdokia Elevtoria "Elevtorovia" (not "Elepherovna"); and that she was 18 years old (and thus born in 1853 not 1852 as Mr Taylor suggests). So she would have been only 72 years old in 1925 when she died, whereas Gurdjieff's mother was much older: [5] The family list of Gyumri residents dated 1907 [6] correctly records the name of Gurdjieff's father as Ivan Ivanovitch Gurdjieff and his wife Eva: and all of Gurdjieff's contemporaries state that she was Armenian.
The marriage certificate of Mr Kurch-ogli and his Greek wife Evdokia dated 1871 (when Gurdjieff was already four years old) does not correspond to the ages of Gurdjieff's parents. Londonlinks ( talk) 00:45, 24 September 2023 (UTC) Londonlinks ( talk) 09:45, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you both User:Seraphimblade and User:Pistongrinder for your input. I believe we have now moved on from this topic (or dead horse) and the conflicting view of scholars have been included by way of footnotes. I think the footnotes of User:Demetrios1993 could be reduced in size to still make his point, but that is simply my own opinion.
I should add that the rendition of Gurdjieff's name in Greek seems quite unnecessary on the English page and conflicts with Romanization which states: "If an entity has a widely accepted conventional English name, that name is to be used." If there no objection then I would delete the Greek version of Gurdjieff's name as being otiose, but I shall wait for the outcome of any discussion if there is to be one to avoid treading on anyone's toes. Maybe this requires a separate section. Londonlinks ( talk) 22:43, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
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Perhaps there is a case to be made for some Christian categories for Gurdjieff? Gurdjieff had a complex but generally congenial relationship to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, having been raised in it and mentored by some Fathers he profoundly respected, and his funeral was Russian Orthodox. The book Meetings with Remarkable Men offers useful information on this; therein, he gives Jesus the highest praise. Gurdjieff always carried a well-read copy of the New Testament in Koine Greek. It can be argued that his Fourth Way was somehow a way of communicating the spirit of those teachings to people in the west that would have none of its externals. 74.133.104.185 ( talk) 22:22, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
Gurdjieff: "Inner morality is your aim. Your aim is to be Christian; but for that you must be able to do - and you cannot. When you are able to do, you will become Christian." From talk given on 1 March 1924. See Views From the Real World. Early Talks of Gurdjieff. -- Londonlinks ( talk) 13:46, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
§ Children had the following at the bottom, after the bulleted list:
Obviously this belongs in a reference, not the main text, and I've moved it to one, but I can't check it in the source. And the cited grand-source, "OLW, Autobiography", only makes sense as a typo for "FLW, Autobiography"; that would be An autobiography: Frank Lloyd Wright, originally published in 1932 by Longmans, Green and Company ( Worldcat). -- Thnidu ( talk) 23:05, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
Surely the combination "it is believed that" and "known" is contradictory. If they were "known" children, "it is believed that" is superfluous - but if it is only "believed that" he had them, then they weren't "known" for certain. 213.127.210.95 ( talk) 14:50, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
One thing Gurdjieff said is that his ideas could be thought of as "esoteric Christianity". Could this page be added to the category called "Esoteric Christianity"? Vorbee ( talk) 16:35, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
I looked at biographies of Gurdjieff, and apparently recent archival research indicates that his mother was Greek as well.
From Classical Spirituality in Contemporary America: The Confluence and Contribution of G.I. Gurdjieff and Sufism (2012) by Michael Pittman:
Though the long-held view is that Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian, Paul Taylor, on the basis of recent research, offers that Gurdjieff's mother's father was Greek (Taylor 2008).
From Deconstructing Gurdjieff: Biography of a Spiritual Magician (2017) by Tobias Churton:
Archival Records: [...] One thing we can be reasonably certain of is that both Gurdjieff's parents were Greek. His mother's maiden name comes from the Greek Elephtheros, referring perhaps to the Greek Orthodox saint and martyr of this name as well as the ancient Greek word for freedom: a dangerous surname to have in Turkey in the wake of the bloody 1866–69 Cretan revolt against Turkish rule. Gurdjieff's mother's father Elepheriadis (Greek again) was married to Sophia, whose name was obviously Greek but who was nicknamed in her capacity as midwife padji, Turkish for "sister," a clue as to her birthplace. [...] It is quite possible that Ivan met the Greek Evdokia in Alexandropol's substantial Greek quarter, known as Urmonts, which is recorded as having 363 households during the period when Gurdjieff's cousin, the sculptor Sergei Merkurov's grandfather built a house in Alexandropol (sometime between 1858 and 1869; accounts differ). Merkurov's family was among a hundred other Greek families who migrated from western Armenia (far-east Turkey), specifically the Vilayet of Trebizond in the period before the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–78. Grandfather Merkurov, an architect, would build Alexandropol's Greek Orthodox church, dedicated to Saint George (destroyed by earthquake in 1926).
From Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy (2019) by Roger Lipsey:
In his major book, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (which developed across multiple languages from the mid-1920s through to its English-language publication in 1950), Gurdjieff was ferociously satirical where ancient Greek culture was concerned—though he was born to Greek parents and spoke Greek from his earliest days (as well as Armenian, and soon Russian and Turkish).15
15. It will come as a surprise to readers familiar with the Gurdjieff legacy that both of his parents were Greek; the assumption has long been that his mother, Evdokia, was Armenian.
From G.I.Gurdjieff: A Life (2020) by Paul Beekman Taylor:
Alexandropol records have Ivan's wife as Evdokia Elepterovna, but on Ivan's death announcement, 25 June 1918, her name is given as M[unreadable] Kalerovna. The patronymic Kalerovna is given to Evdokia also on an 1885 document, and the French death notice of Gurdjieff's mother has "Evdoki Kaleroff" as her name, but I find the name Kaler only in Tyrol records from the fifteenth century. I am tempted to believe that Kaler reflects the Greek kalos "good, beautiful." The given and surnames of Gurdjieff's mother have semantic convergences, since Greek kalos "good" is compatible in meaning with Greek Eudoxia "Woman of Good Reputation." Since married women take their husband's family name almost always, I wonder why she was not identified as Evdokia Gurdjieff, as Gurdjieff's wife was identified on her travel documents. In a Church Slavonic register, Ivan and his wife are identified as Orthodox Christians. Gurdjieff's grandmother on his mother's side, Sophia, nicknamed Padji ("sister" in Turkish) was a well-regarded midwife who did not speak a word of Russian. His grandfather on his mother's side was Elepheriadis, a distinctly Greek form. Though Evdokia was thought by many to be Armenian, her name, Евдокия, is a Cyrillic form of Greek Eudoxia ("good thought"). The French form of the name on her death certificate is Eudoxie. Gurdjieff, who gave his mother's name to his youngest daughter, pronounced it in Russian fashion Yevdokeeya with stress on the penultimate syllable. If it seems odd that an Armenian woman would carry a Greek name, it is apparent that that Gurdjieff's mother was Greek as well as his father, confirming Gurdjieff's frequent assertion that his mother tongue was Greek. Gurdjieff's German papers, which he carried during the Second World War, identified him as Greek.
At the age of twenty-three, in 1871, when he was twenty-four years of age, Gurdjieff's father, Ivan, married eighteen-year old Evdokia Eleptherovna (b. 1852), the daughter of a Greek merchant Elepther Eleptherov, Elepheriadis in its Greek form.
Every source that i read, describing Gurdjieff's mother as Armenian, does so in passing; thus, per WP:CONTEXTMATTERS and WP:AGE MATTERS, i believe an update is in order. Are there any other, more in-depth sources on the topic, that contradict the above? Demetrios1993 ( talk) 03:04, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Greek-Georgian were also very common combinations in Kars Oblast and Georgia under Tsarist rule, which is also a possible root of his surname, as Muslims around Georgia call the Georgian people "Gurdji" (with Russified ending -eff).
I am not trying to prove anything User:Londonlinks; that's not our job as editors. You are mistaken again. The authors are all academics, and particularly Paul Beekman Taylor, who is the author of G.I.Gurdjieff: A Life (2020), lived at the Prieuré, and studied with Gurdjieff; he is 92 years old, and he was in his circle along with his mother and sister Eve. He also supports the Greek origin of his mother. Furthermore, speculations are conjectures without evidence; in this case, the authors studied the available archival records that were not accessible to previous authors, and came to their conclusions. Our job as editors is to summarize them. I mentioned his mother's death certificate – among other things – because you touched upon her first name, saying it was Yeva; though, personally i do not recall reading this anywhere. Also, the fact that he didn't write about his mother's Greek ancestry doesn't enhance your argument; likewise, he also didn't write anything about an Armenian ancestry. Also, why would Gurdjieff have a Greek passport? He was never a citizen of Greece. Having an Armenian passport doesn't mean that his mother was ethnically Armenian. But since we are discussing about identity documents, Gurdjieff's German papers, which he carried during the Second World War, identified him as a Greek; not Greek-Armenian or Armenian. Authors who describe Gurdjieff as a magician? You probably haven't read Churton's (2017) book, yet you are judging it because it includes spiritual magician as part of its title. With that kind of superficial rationale, we should also dismiss Gurdjieff's own work, The Struggle of the Magicians (1914). User:Londonlinks, just because his sister was killed by the Turks, it doesn't mean it was due to an Armenian background; the Turks are also responsible for his father's death, and we know for certain that he was Greek. You do know that there was also a Greek genocide taking place during the same period, right? Also, mother tongue simply means native tongue, not mother's tongue. Gurdjieff did indeed speak Armenian as a native speaker, since he learned it from a young age, but his actual native tongue was Greek. Forget about other authors for a second; here is what Gurdjieff wrote about himself in the book Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, in detail:
It must also be said that owing to all kinds of conditions accidentally, or perhaps not accidentally, formed in my youth, I have had to learn, very seriously and of course always with self-compulsion, to speak, read, and write a great many languages, and to such a degree of fluency that if in following this profession unexpectedly forced on me by fate I decided not to take advantage of the "automatism" acquired by practice, I could perhaps write in any one of them. But in order to make judicious use of this automatism acquired by long practice, I would have to write either in Russian or in Armenian, because during the last two or three decades the circumstances of my life have been such that I have had to use just these two languages for communication with others, and consequently have had more practice in them.
In order to assuage the bitterness of my inner hurt owing to this, I must say that in my early youth, when I became interested in philological questions and was deeply absorbed in them, I preferred the Armenian language to all the others I then spoke, even including my native tongue.
Almost the same might be said about my native language, Greek, which I spoke in childhood, and the taste of whose "automatic associative power" I still retain. I could, I dare say, express anything I wish in it even now, but it is impossible for me to employ it here for the simple and rather comical reason that someone must transcribe my writings and translate them into other languages. And who could do this? It can be said with certainty that even the best expert in modern Greek would understand simply nothing of what I would write in the tongue I assimilated in childhood, because during the last thirty or forty years my dear "compatriots," inflamed with the desire to be at all costs like the representatives of contemporary civilization even in their conversation, have treated my dear native language just as the Armenians, anxious to become Russian "intelligentsia," have treated theirs. The Greek language whose spirit and essence were transmitted to me by heredity and the language now spoken by contemporary Greeks are as much alike as, according to the expression of Mullah Nasr Eddin, "a nail is like a requiem."
It is obvious that Gurdjieff didn't consider Armenian as his native tongue; though, per his own admission, he had great fluency as well as respect for it, and had to use it almost exclusively – along with Russian – for much of his life. He also had good command of Turkish; as Bennett wrote of him in an essay that was published in 1997:
A Greek from the Caucasus, he spoke Turkish with an accent of unexpected purity, the accent that one associates with those born and bred in the narrow circle of the Imperial Court.
Even though his native tongue was Greek, and his family lived in the Greek quarter of Alexandropol, their domestic language was chiefly Armenian. Another recent publication is Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation, and Exercises (2019) by the academic Joseph Azize. Azize was a pupil of George Adie, who he met in 1981, and studied with until his death in 1989; Adie himself, had studied with Ouspensky, Gurdjieff, and Mme de Salzmann. He wrote:
First, he was raised in Alexandropol and Kars, in or near what is now Armenia, in a family of ancient Greek descent, whose domestic language was chiefly Armenian. ... Ouspensky brings some contemporary color to this, saying of Alexandropol: ... "There is also the Greek quarter, the least interesting of all outwardly, where G.'s house was situated, ...
That both of these traditions [referring to Neoplatonism and the Athonite "Prayer of the Heart"] are Greek is not accidental: Gurdjieff identified as a Greek, and considered Greek to be his mother tongue.
The above quote regarding the background of his family might appear vague, but he does indeed refer to his mother as well. He is more clear on his position in a 2019 article that he published on his blog ( here):
We need do no more than note some minor mistakes. Gurdjieff's mother was Greek, not Armenian, and he did not just acquire some Greek and Turkish, he was fluent in Greek and at least good in Turkish, and also in Russian, even if he spoke the latter with a Caucasian accent.
By the way, i have no problem including a sentence saying that some authors described his mother as Armenian, but we will not remove newer reliable secondary sources, that also happen to expand on the background of the family via their consideration of archival records. Demetrios1993 ( talk) 02:33, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
It's not a couple of authors User:Londonlinks; i cited five modern authors who support that view, as well as Gurdjieff's own words. What i shared above is not my "personal input", but what reliable secondary sources say. Also, what other Wikipedia projects claim is irrelevant; Wikipedia is an unreliable user-generated source (see WP:CIRCULAR and WP:NOTSOURCE). Concerning Azize's book, i wrote that the claim might appear vague, not that it is vague. I only mentioned an article from his blog because it clarifies his position. Contrary to what you say, i can use self-published sources (such as blogs) if produced by an established expert, whose work in the relevant field has been published by reliable, independent publications ( such as this one); see WP:EXPERTSPS. Furthermore, Paul Beekman Taylor lived at the Prieuré until Gurdjieff's death in 1949; he would have been 19 years old at the time, not a child with no recollections. By the way, i am glad that you asked about Gurdjieff's daughter. She is actually the one i mentioned in my previous comment as Paul Beekman Taylor's sister, Eve; their mother was Edith Annesley Taylor. So, you see, they were part of the family. Here is a photograph at her wedding, in June 1952, with the whole gang present (including Mme de Salzmann). Gurdjieff gave her his mother's Greek name, Evdokia, which French official records have as Eve. From Brancusi and Gurdjieff (2019) by Basarab Nicolescu and Paul Beekman Taylor, we read:
Another unpublished biographical source can be found in the papers and oral testimony of Edith Taylor, the mother of one of the authors of this article. Edith Taylor (1894–1974) was a lovely woman of predominantly Irish origin, (as were Elaine Fayre and Eileen Lane) with wit and intelligence. After arriving in Paris in 1914 and studying there after WWI service in the Morgan Hadjes Ambulance Company, she cultivated relations with Natalie Barney, Gertrude Stein, Kiki Vanderbilt, Djuna Barnes, Jane Heap, Gerald and Esther Murphy, Elsa Maxwell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, as well as with others prominent in the Paris art world. Edith Taylor had met Gurdjieff in London in 1922 and visited at the Prieuré in 1922–1923. Though she attended his talks in a number of places, she was never, strictly speaking, a 'disciple' of Gurdjieff. She had a personal relationship with Gurdjieff, nonetheless, which resulted in the birth of their daughter, whom Gurdjieff named Evdokia ("Eve" in French official records), after his mother.
User:Londonlinks, you were the one who brought up the first name of Gurdjieff's mother, claiming without any reliable sources that it was Yeva, and implying an Armenian origin; now you shrug it off as unimportant. Regarding the quotes of Taylor, here are some additional relevant excerpts from the book that i didn't mention above:
According to the Central Archives of Armenia (File 47, Description 2, n25), he [G's father] was born Ivan Ivanovich Kurchogli (Georgian form Vano Kurdji-ogli) and at the age of twenty-three, in 1871, he married eighteen-year old Evdokia Eleptherovna (b. 1852), the daughter of Elepther Eleptheroff.
P. D. Ouspensky visited the city [Alexandropol] and Gurdjieff's home in the summer of 1917 and described what he heard and saw: "I met his family, and his mother. They were people of a very old and very peculiar culture. G's father was an amateur of local tales, legends, and traditions, something in the nature of a "bard"; and he knew by heart thousands and thousands of verses in the local idioms. They were Greeks from Asia Minor, but the language of the house, as of all the others in Alexandropol, was Armenian ...
Here we have Ouspensky of all people, another contemporary, also claiming that his family (including his mother) were Greeks, but like everyone else in Alexandropol, spoke Armenian. No wonder why some other authors might have confused the background of his mother. I cited a number of reliable secondary sources that provide many more details, and also happen to be in line with Gurdjieff's own writings. On the other hand, Olga de Hartmann's only reference to an Armenian mother is made in passing, and she wasn't even certain of Gurdjieff's date and place of birth. Also, i don't see any quote from Valentin Anastasieff that contradicts the above. Bennett's quotes are likewise made in passing, and i already cited Gurdjieff's own elaboration about his native tongue, which he presented in juxtaposition to Armenian. Did you read the quotes of Gurdjieff that i shared above? We are moving in circles, and apparently veering into a forum-type of discussion. You may ask for a third opinion if you want, but they will essentially agree with what i suggested above; namely to include both views in the article, per WP:NPOV.
Sidenote: Please be careful with the structure of your comments, because you are making it difficult to follow the discussion. Some paragraphs have indentations, some don't, others have unnecessary indentations, and there is even a comment above with two signatures and different time stamps. Demetrios1993 ( talk) 02:18, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
I know that the Prieuré wasn't operating in 1949; i made that error inadvertently. But let me correct you. The Prieuré's mortgagees foreclosed in May 1932, which is when Gurdjieff suspended all of his activities there, and its former inhabitants left. Paul Beekman Taylor did spend most of his first two years there. From Gurdjieff's America: Mediating the Miraculous (2004) by Paul Beekman Taylor:
... Gurdjieff had always been a part of my life. I was born into an environment dominated by his image and his ideas. My mother had been in his circle already for some seven years when I was born in Hampstead, London in a house Orage had found for her near his. I was born the day after he left his wife Jessie and son Richard on the SS Washington for New York. There he played out a final scenario with Gurdjieff that sealed their personal relations for the rest of Orage's life. Six months later, after Gurdjieff had returned to France, my mother moved into the Prieuré where I spent most of my first two years. My scant memories of that time are probably more my mother's than mine, but I can still conjure up an image of children playing "stop" on the lawn in front of the château; and the odor of Gurdjieff's coffee taken on the terrace is still alive in my olfactory memory. After Gurdjieff left the Prieuré in 1933, my mother, sister and I moved to Paris where we saw much of him until he left for the United States in the fall of 1933. We were close to him in early 1934 after his return.
Gurdjieff suspended all his activities at the Prieuré in 1932, though he said that he would repossess the property as soon as possible. After the Prieuré was lost, its former inhabitants scattered. ... In May [1932] the holders of Gurdjieff's mortgages on the Prieuré foreclosed, ...
Also, i don't need to do any math because i didn't claim that Paul Beekman Taylor met Gurdjieff's mother; my reference to his recollections have to do with his experience with Gurdjieff himself, from whom he must have heard stories. As aforementioned, Paul was in the environment of Gurdjieff from the beginning of his life, and even after the Prieuré was foreclosed, his family didn't lose contact with him. He would also become his student, from 1948 until Gurdjieff's death in 1949. Having said that, Paul also learned a lot from his mother, who surely would have met Gurdjieff's mother, being in Gurdjieff's circle from about 1923. Gurdjieff's mother came to the Prieuré in May 1923, and she died in the summer of 1925.
User:Londonlinks, it's not me saying; according to Paul, Eve's brother, Gurdjieff gave her his mother's name, Evdokia. Paul even elaborated that Gurdjieff "pronounced it in Russian fashion Yevdokeeya with stress on the penultimate syllable." What the French official records say is another matter. The first name of Gurdjieff's mother might not be indicative of her origin, but it is suggestive.
I beg to differ; Ouspensky explicitly mentioned meeting Gurdjieff's mother, and then described the whole family as Greeks (in plural). He could have written Greek-Armenian, or mention his mother as Armenian, but he didn't. Furthermore, i am not familiar with Sergey Merkurov's ancestry, but i don't see any contradictions. The quote by Churton (2017) is referring to the Merkurov family as Greek, and mentions Sergey Merkurov's grandfather who built a house in Alexandropol; that doesn't exclude the possibility that his maternal family was Armenian. Having said that, i did a quick search and found this article by an Armenian journalist, which includes the following quote by Merkurov: "My mother and father are Greek, but I am Greek-Armenian". These are all irrelevant however; we are not discussing Merkurov.
User:Londonlinks, it is not me who refers to certain archival sources, the authors of the cited books do. If you want to contact other people to verify the information, feel free to do so, but there are additional references mentioned in those works; you might as well forward them the entire books, or at the very least, the relevant chapters. Or if you want additional clarification for a specific piece of information, you might as well contact the authors directly.
I don't have a problem with your suggested sentence; i will go ahead and integrate it into the article, since we both agree. The fact that there are conflicting views regarding his birthdate is already mentioned in the next sentences; there is no need to repeat it. Furthermore, i do disagree on the removal of the non-English names; contrary to what you think, relevant foreign names aren't prohibited in the English Wikipedia, or any Wikipedia.
The opinions of academic scholars with expertise on the subject are not worthless and we will not be removing them. What i asked in my first comment, was whether there were any other more in-depth sources on the topic of his mother's background, aside of claims that were made in passing. Nothing in-depth has been presented, and even if it was, it wouldn't change the neutral summary we just agreed upon; aside of minor changes maybe. I was already aware of Michel de Salzmann's claim; this is nothing new. Furthermore, the quote of Bennett that i cited, was in order to support the claim that Gurdjieff had good command of Turkish, not to reiterate his Greek ancestry; please read my comment again. Also, the preface you shared above only says that Gurdjieff's mother/native tongue was Armenian and that he spoke Armenian with his mother; but again, we have Gurdjieff's own writings taking precedence over such claims. Gurdjieff presented his actual mother/native tongue (Greek) in juxtaposition to Armenian, and wrote that he had to use Armenian and Russian, almost exclusively, for much of his life. And even Ouspensky said that their domestic language was Armenian, as of all the others in Alexandropol; yet, he clarified their Greek background. We are essentially repeating ourselves here. Demetrios1993 ( talk) 01:52, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
User:Demetrios1993 You have proposed to update the page to announce that Gurdjieff’s mother was not Armenian, but Greek; and you have quoted the following source to support your view along with a great deal of irrelevant anecdotal material:
From G.I.Gurdjieff: A Life (2020) by Paul Beekman Taylor “If it seems odd that an Armenian woman would carry a Greek name, it is apparent that Gurdjieff's mother was Greek as well as his father.”
You then opine User:Demetrios1993 that every source you have read describing Gurdjieff's mother as Armenian does so in passing and that “I believe an update is in order.“ You then ask rhetorically: “Are there any other, more in-depth sources on the topic that contradict the above?"
User:Demetrios1993 you do not need to look far, because the same author has contradicted himself:
From Gurdjieff's America: Mediating the Miraculous (2004) by Paul Beekman Taylor: “His Greek father was Ionnas and Armenian mother was Yevdokia.” (p 10)
You neglected to refer to Mr Taylor's statement when quoting from his book.I am going to revert your edit to say “Gurdjieff was born of a Greek father and Armenian mother.” You can then add citations and references to the authors you wish, who have suggested that Gurdjieff's mother may have been Greek.
I have given you the names of various people who have confirmed that G’s mother was Armenian: Olga and Thomas de Hartmann; Michel de Salzmann and John G. Bennett in conjunction with Gurdjieff’s nephew, Valentin Anastassieff, who are all primary sources.
Mr Taylor by contrast is not a primary source and has said in his 2004 book quoted above: “I cannot recall hearing the name “Gurdjieff” during the formative period of my youth” (p4); and “I am not always successful in confirming facts, even when I have the primary source in front of me.” (p1)
The page should not be updated in the way you have suggested and if you wish to take the matter to review then please do so supported by facts, rather than your own personal opinion, as that is not a proper basis for tinkering with this important page. Londonlinks ( talk) 19:30, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources, and to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources.(see WP:PSTS). So no, primary sources should not be given precedence over secondary sources. Besides that, you are even ignoring other personal or firsthand accounts, such as those of Ouspensky and Gurdjieff himself. You also haven't provided any actual quote by Valentin Anastassieff; you only cited a preface by Bennett, which says something different. That quote by Taylor is simply a repetition of what has simply been the long-held view; nobody disputes that. But even that source, doesn't expand on the background of Gurdjieff's mother; it's just a mention made in passing. Furthermore, Taylor has updated his view in light of additional research, so it doesn't really matter what was published two decades ago. We have a 2020 publication of his that expands on the subject, with a view that is also supported by other secondary sources. The age of the source matters; see WP:AGE MATTERS. I will rephrase your recent edit, to be in line with what the sources actually say. This is indeed the long-held view, but some scholars have recently suggested a different view. Also, i have asked for a source supporting the claim that Yeva was her first name; nothing has been presented yet. If there is no source supporting the claim, then this constitutes original research. Even if there was a source, which i haven't seen yet, the way you summarized it in the article was not neutral; in contrast to you, i have cited sources saying that her first name was Evdokia (and different variants of it), not Yeva.
User:Demetrios1993, you also ask for evidence that Gurdjief's mother was Yeva. Please refer again to your own sources which you have only partly quoted by using [....]. The part you omitted to mention is as follows:
From Deconstructing Gurdjieff: Biography of a Spiritual Magician (2017) by Tobias Churton
Archival Records: "A gazette of local families lists this person Ivan (Gurdjieff’s father) as married to Eva."
Eva of course would have been written in Armenian as Yeva. User:Demetrios1993 please also note the following (I will add citations later):-
Gurdjieff said in his own words in Meeting 17 Thursday 28/10/1943 that he was 76 years old. He died six years later in 1949 and so was 82 years old – and certainly looked 82 - when he died. He was therefore born in 1867.
This accords with what G wrote in his autobiography Meetings with Remarkable Men, that he was about 7 years old at the time of the great plague which affected his father’s cattle, which began in the summer of 1873. So Gurdjieff has confirmed his age and year of birth in his own words.
Gurdjief’s Father was Ivan Ivanovitch Gurdjief and G said in his autobiography that his father was 82 years old when he last saw him in 1916 - and he should know. So G’s father was born in 1834 and would have been 33 years old when G was born in 1867.
Please keep those facts in mind although there may be disputes over dates and read carefully:
From “Deconstructing Gurdjieff: Biography of a Spiritual Magician By Tobias Churton under the heading of 'Archival Records':
“A gazette of local Alexandropol families of 1907 lists Ivan Ivanovitch Gurdjieff as married to Eva, who had three children, Georgii, Dmitri and Sophia.”
Eva would of course have been written as Yeva in Armenian.
Mr Churton having found a reference to Gurdjieff's family then looked elsewere for Ivan Ivanovitch - an exceedingly common name simply meaning “son of Ivan” - and found one in Armenia’s Central Archives: Ivan Ivanovitch Kurchogli, husband of Evdokia Elephtherovna, born 1852, whom Ivan married in 1871, aged 23.
It is this couple instead of the couple identified in the gazette of Gyrumri residents that Mr Churton claims were G’s parents and which Mr Beekman Taylor then refers to in his book written in 2020 to assert that Gurdjieff’s mother was Greek.
Mr Churton states quite logically that because Evdokia’s maiden name comes from the Greek Elephtheros, she must have been Greek and that “If Gurdjieff was born to Ivan and Evdokia .. one thing we can reasonably be certain of is that both Gurdjieff’s parent were Greek.”
Mr Churton's couple however could not possibly have been Gurdjieff’s parents, firstly because Ivan Kurchogli was born in 1848 (rather than 1834) and was not the name of Gurdjieff’s father; and secondly his wife Evdokia had she been Gurdjieff's mother would have borne Gurdjieff when she was still unmarried (unheard of even by Greek standards) and only 15 years old. Furthemore we would need to assume that she died in France in 1925 at the age of 73 – whereas G’s mother as is clear from photographs was considerably older.
The story about Ivan and his wife Evdokia is entertaining, but unfortunately it is a red-herring.
As I have said at the beginning, the whole "Evdokia" nonsense should be deleted from the page, otherwise it just amounts to a form of vandalism.
User:Demetrios1993 there is nothing in any of Mr Churton or Mr Taylor's books to dispute the confirmation by Gurdjieff's contemporaries that his mother was Armenian.
You should refrain from tinkering with the page to advance your Greek theory. Londonlinks ( talk) 23:54, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
User:Demtrios1993 thank you for referring this matter for review. You reverted the long-standing fact that Gurdjief's mother was Armenian by saying that you had read a few recent biographies which indicate from archival records that G's mother was called Evdokia; and you quoted from the following book:
From Deconstructing Gurdjieff: Biography of a Spiritual Magician (2017) by Tobias Churton: pp. 19–25: Archival Records: [...] "One thing we can be reasonably certain of is that both Gurdjieff's parents were Greek"
The part which you omitted between brackets [...] refers to an Armenian archival record which confirmed that G's mother was not called Evdokia, but Yeva (translated into English as Eva). Furthermore, the extract that you do quote deliberately distorts what Mr Churton wrote, which was that "If" a certain Ivan Ivanovitch and Evdokia that he identified were Gurdjieff's parents, then they were certainly Greek.
The fallacy however is that the "Ivan Ivanovitch" and "Evdokia" that Mr Churton managed to turn up allegedly in the Armenian Central Achives could not possibly have been Gurdjieff's parents, for the reasons I have given on this talk page and not least because regardless of dates, Gurdjieff's father was not called Ivan Ivanovitch Kurdjogli and his mother was not called Evdokia. I have refrained from reverting your edit as I do not wish to engage in an edit war with you and look forward to the review decision, but I must say that the damage that you have caused so far in altering the ethnicity of Gurdjieff's mother from Armenian to Greek has already been perpetuated on the internet, as the public relies upon Wikipedia to present facts rather than fiction. Londonlinks ( talk) 01:26, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
User:Demetrios1993 let me again refer you to your own references:
Archival Records: “If Gurdjieff was born to Ivan and Evdokia in 1877 as many official records maintain, then Gurdjieff was almost certainly Greek, as his mother’s maiden name comes from the Greek Elephtheros.”
Evdokia Elephtherovna however could not have been Gurdjieff’s mother as I have stated, because if she was born in 1852 as the record states, she would have been only 73 years old when she died at the Prieure in 1925, whereas Gurdjieff’s mother was much older ( http://www.gurdjieff.am/photos/33-big.jpg); and if Gurdjieff was indeed Evdokia’s son, he would have been only 72 years old when he died in 1949 – which again is pure fantasy.
The whole Evdokia story is based on the marriage of a Mr Ivan Ivanovitch Kurchogli , who clearly cannot have been Gurdjieff’s father Ivan Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. Mr Kurchogli was also born in 1848, whereas Gurdjieff said in Meetings with Remarkable Men that his father was born in 1834, being 82 years old the last time he saw him alive in 1916. We have to respect what Gurdjieff himself wrote in his chapter about his father.
There is no basis for relying upon the biographies you have recently stumbled upon for contradicting the fact which has been confirmed for the last 100 years by all of Gurdjieff's contemporaries that Gurdjief's mother was Armenian - your edit should therefore be reverted otherwise the page could easily get clogged up with speculation and gossip from many other authors who are making a living from the Gurdjieff name. Londonlinks ( talk) 01:18, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
User:Demetrios1993 It is with respect you who is doing the cherry picking: The "Evdokia" whom you are referring to was born in 1852 according to the archival record quoted and so cannot possibly have been Gurdjieff's mother as a matter of commonsense. Look on the internet for photographs of Gurdjieff's elderly mother at the Prieure in 1925.
And if your Evdokia bore Gurdjieff in 1877 after her mariage to Ivan Kurchogli in 1871 according to "all official records", did Gurdjieff look as if he were 72 years old when he died in 1949? The date in his German passport of 28-12-77 is clearly wrong unless G came from another planet (another theory). Somebody at the German consulate in New York may have heard 1877 instead of 1867, but for entry purposes to the USA, it is unlikely that G or anyone else would have wanted to spend valuable time sending the passport back to correct an inconsequential mistake.
User:Demetrios1993 let us not play with words. Even if Kurchogli is somehow a variant of the name Gurdjieff - and Yeva in Armenian is Evdokia in Greek - the same archival record you quote lists the ages of Mr Ivan Kurchogli and his wife Evdokia, which if correct, must rule them out as being Gurdjieff's parents. The "death certificate" of Mr Kurchogli is also dated 1918, according to the researches of Mr Paul Beekman Taylor.
To equate this couple with G's parents would therefore mean not only disregarding the ages of Mr Kurchogli and his wife, but G's own reference to the age of his father and the photographic evidence of his mother, who in reality was clearly at least 83 years old in 1925 and not 73, as Evdokia would have been had she still been alive then. The grave stone of Gurdjieff's father in Gyumri records his date of birth as 1834, which accords with what Gurdjieff later confirmed in his autobiography - and his father's death as 1917, which does not accord with Mr Kurchogli's death.
These facts exist because Mr Ivan Ivanovitch Kurchogli and his lovely Greek wife Evdokia clearly bear no relation to Mr Gurdjieff's parents, although to take a leaf out of the researches of Mr Beekman Taylor and Mr Churton, I could postulate that they may well have been the neighbours of Mr Gurdjieff' parents! Londonlinks ( talk) 10:48, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
User: Demetrios1993 you also say that "for the record" Eva or Eve is not Yeva in Armenian, which is merely my opinion; and that the author Mr Churton asserts that her actual first name was Evdokia, "which is all that matters." May I refer you to the Yeva page on Wikipedia Yeva. Evdokia in Armenian is Եվդոկիա while Eva in Armenian is Եվա ("Yeva") and Mr Churton translated the name he read from the Armenian gazette as Eva and not Evdokia Thanks. Londonlinks ( talk) 11:38, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
"Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any source. Similarly, do not combine different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source."Pistongrinder ( talk) 23:38, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
I came here with the intent of trying to provide a third opinion, but the above is a pretty imposing text wall, and seems to do a fair amount of going in circles. Any chance both of you could summarize, in maybe a paragraph or two, what your position is, what references you think support it, and why? That would be quite helpful to anyone else looking at this matter. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:58, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
His father Ivan Ivanovich Gurdjieff (Greek: Ιωάννης Γεωργιάδης) was Greek, while there are conflicting views as to whether his mother was Armenian or Greek.
His father Ivan Ivanovich Gurdjieff (Greek: Ιωάννης Γεωργιάδης) was Greek; the long-held view is that Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian, but some scholars have recently suggested that she was a Greek named Evdokia (Greek: Ευδοκία) Eleptherovna or Kalerovna.
User:Demetrios1993 I have provided a link to an actual photograph of Gurdjieff's elderly mother as she was in 1925 and knew that you would then say that such a woman could have been 73 years old so that she might still be your "Evdokia" who was born in 1852. Nobody however could rationally say from looking at the photograph of Gurdjieff's mother that she was then 73 years old. On the contrary, she can only have been at least ten years years older and into her 80's.
User:Demetrios1993 as you have quoted Michael Pittman above who refers to an opinion of Mr Beekman Taylor, please read Mr Pittman's book called "G I Gurdjieff and his Armenian Roots" where Mr Pittman states that Gurdjieff was born to an Armenian mother and a Cappadocian-Greek father.
Mr Paul Beekman Taylor's unfounded opinion that the brother of Gurdjieff's father was called Vasilly Kurdchogli is not supported by any cited source, but it does start a wild goose chase which is then followed by his fellow author Mr Churton, who tracks down a Mr "Kurchjogli" (not even Kurdchogli) from the Armenian archives, who was married to a certain Evdokia. Their dates of birth and the date of Mr Kurchogli's death as shown on his death certificate quoted by Mr Taylor do not correspond to Gurdjieff mother or his father, whom Gurdjieff said was born in 1834.
I would prefer to think that Gurdjieff knew the age of his father when lhe said that the last time he saw his father alive was in 1916, when he was 82 years old. That rules out "Mr Kurchogli" as being Gurdjieff's father, or Mr Kurchogli's wife Evdokia as being Gurdjief's mother.
The "researches" of these two authors - one of whom Mr Taylor admits to getting his facts wrong even when faced with primary sources - do not support any rational basis for saying that Gurdjieff's mother was Greek or that the name of his father was Ivan Ivanovitch Kurchogli. The page should state as before that Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian with a reference to your Evdokia theory if you still think it has some relevance. Had I seen your suggested edit back in May I would have challenged your proposal immediately. Londonlinks ( talk) 08:27, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
I agree with Seraphimblade that we should both produce a summmary of our positions to assist other editors understand the issue raised by your edit. Your summary which is currently on the page should however be edited to say that Gurdjieff's father was Ivan Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, but some authors have recently opined that his surname was Kurchogli. This is because the theory that Gurdjieff's mother was Evdokia and that she was Greek can only be advanced if the name Gurdjieff is the same as Kurchogli - who was a man apparently married to a woman called Evdokia who was born in 1852. Do not be surprised if we then find other editors jumping onto the bandwagon to say that Gurdjieff was actually Turkish. Londonlinks ( talk) 10:26, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
User:Demetrios1993 please do not tinker with the page any further. Whether "Gurdjieff" is equivalent to some other name in another language is irrelevant. All the noise you have created is based solely on Mr Beekman Taylor's unsupported opinion that Mr Gurdjieff's uncle (the brother of his father) was a Vasilii Kurdjogli, which in turn has thrown up a search result for a Mr Kurchogli who had a Greek wife called Evdokia born in 1852.
This type of so-called reasearch is completely inane and of no value whatsoever.
I have shown you an actual photograph of Mr Gurdjieff's mother taken in 1925 who cannot possibly have then been 72 years old and Mr Kurcholi whoever he was can only have been Mr Gurdjieff's father if you ignore what Mr Gurdjieff himself said about his father's age.
This is why I have said you have deliberately vandalised the page with this Evdokia nonsense. I am going to escalate this matter rather than reverting your edit because I do not wish to provoke an edit war.
The page should not be turned into a platform for advancing the unfounded opinions of different authors Londonlinks ( talk) 14:48, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
"if a certain Kurchogli couple were the parents of Gurdjieff then....it is reasonably certain that his parents were Greek."Churton clearly accepts that the 1871 archival record you refer to pertains to the parents of Gurdjieff; so does Taylor (2020). Furthermore, variants of his father's surname, as well as his mother's first name, are corroborated by other records as well. Lipsey (2019) and Azize (2019) also support that his mother was Greek. You are in denial if you really believe that no one has expressed a different view. Anyway, two third parties with a lot more experience and a much better understanding of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines than yourself, have already expressed their opinions ( first 3O and second 3O). The article currently presents an accurate and neutral summary of what has been published. If you have an alternative neutral suggestion to share, feel free to do so; but, we are not going to continue this discussion ad infinitum. Demetrios1993 ( talk) 02:18, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
From at least what I've heard so far, there is indeed genuine disagreement among sources regarding this matter. So, that would leave us two choices. First, the article could reflect, as it sounds like it currently does, that uncertainty. Secondly, to be honest, I do not see why it is a particularly pressing need to state his parents' ethnicity at all. So, another option would be to just omit that, at least until a consensus among sources becomes clearer (if it ever does). Seraphimblade Talk to me 06:59, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
Relevant quotes
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From In Search of the Miraculous (1949) by P. D. Ouspensky:
From Deconstructing Gurdjieff: Biography of a Spiritual Magician (2017) by Tobias Churton:
From Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation, and Exercises (2019) by Joseph Azize:
The quote on page 23 is referring to his mother as well; he is more clear on his position in a 2019 article that he published on his blog ( here):
From Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy (2019) by Roger Lipsey:
From G.I.Gurdjieff: A Life (2020) by Paul Beekman Taylor:
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His father Ivan Ivanovich Gurdjieff (Greek: Ιωάννης Γεωργιάδης) was Greek, while there are conflicting views as to whether his mother was Armenian or Greek.
His father Ivan Ivanovich Gurdjieff (Greek: Ιωάννης Γεωργιάδης) was Greek; the long-held view is that Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian, but some scholars have recently suggested that she was a Greek named Evdokia Eleptherovna or Kalerovna.
Thank you Pistongrinder for your reference to stonewalling, which however is surely not applicable in this case. Status quo stonewalling is opposition to a proposed change without stating a substantive rationale based in policy, guidelines and conventions or participating in good faith discussion. The policy which is in issue is original material. Wikipedia articles must not contain original research . The phrase "original research" is used on Wikipedia to refer to material such as facts and assumptions for which no reliable, published sources exist. This includes any analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to reach or imply a conclusion not stated by the sources. The material which User:Demetrios1993 has relied on does not refer to any reliable source to suggest that Gurdjieff's mother was Greek. He quotes from "Deconstructing Gurdjieff: Biography of a Spiritual Magician (2017)" by Tobias Churton:
Archival Records: [...] "One thing we can be reasonably certain of is that both Gurdjieff's parents were Greek."User:Demetrios1993 omitted however to include the part in brackets, which presumably he had read. This merely refers to a record of a Mr Ivan Kurchogli and his wife Evdokia, but no source suggested that this couple were the parents of Gurdjieff - only that if they were his parents then both of them were Greek, because of Evdokia's name.
The archival record quoted stated that a Mr Ivan Kurchogli was born in 1848, which meant that he would have been only 68 years old instead of 82, when Gurdjieff said he last saw his father alive in 1916. The gravestone of Gurdjieff's father in Gyumri states that he was born in 1834, and not 1848. Ivan Kurchogli was clearly not Gurdjieff's father and nobody has ever said that this was his name. As for Evdokia, whether that was the name of Gurdjieff's mother rather than Yeva, the Evdokia referred to in the archival record could not have been Gurdjieff's mother, not just because she was married to Mr Kurchogli who was not Gurdjieff's father, but because of extant photographs of Gurdjieff's mother in 1925, which are not that of a 73 year old woman ie., the Evdokia who the record states was born in 1852.
The summary should therefore revert to stating the fact as confirmed by Gurdjieff's nephew Valentin Anastasieff and by Gurdjieff's alleged son Michael de Salzmann
[1] and other contempories that Gurdjieff's father was Greek and his mother Armenian.
If the speculation contained in the material referred to by
User:Demetrios1993 needs to be referred to at all, then it could be cited in an explanatory reference section, along with other opinons of different authors.
The parentage of people of international standing is of importance to illustrate their background and upbringing and is not without interest to the general public. Londonlinks ( talk) 02:42, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
I should also respond to
Demetrios1993 stating that I have mis-quoted the part from Mr Churton's book which
Demetrios1993 failed to include in brackets [....]
. The full extract is here:
[2] Mr Churton states that one thing we can be reasonably certain of is that both Gurdjieff's parents were Greek.
- which is based on his assumption that if Gurdjieff was born to Ivan Ivanovitch (Kurchogli) and Evdokia (Elephtherovna) in 1877, as many official records maintain, then he was most certainly a Greek.
No offical record is cited however by any author to support this assumption. Mr Churton refers to a record unearthed by Mr Paul Beekman Taylor following information given to him by a Mr Benham, who received it from a Georgian scholar Manana Khomeriki, that the brother of Gurdjieff's father was called Vasilii Kurdchogli. This too is not supported by any source, but in any event, the record found by Mr Beekman Taylor in the Armenian Central Archives regarding Ivan Kurchogli (sic) and his wife Evdokia confirms nothing other than their ages and that they were married in 1871. This is not a reliable basis for suggesting that the Kurchogli couple were Gurdjieff's parents. On the contrary, their names if not their ages rule them out, regardless of any other facts. In particular, in the context of this page, it says nothing to suggest that Gurdjieff's mother may have been Greek. Wikipedia has to be based on
reliable and verifiable sources.
Londonlinks (
talk) 23:12, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
Londonlinks (
talk)
12:45, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
These policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in Wikipedia articles. Because they complement each other, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one another."
explicitly statedby those sources. Historians are allowed to synthesize information. Wikipedia editors are not.
This means that we publish only the analysis, views, and opinions of reliable authors, and not those of Wikipedians who have read and interpreted primary source material for themselves."
all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic are represented fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias,per WP:NPOV. It would, therefore, be against WP policy to exclude Gurdjieff's mother's possible Greek heritage, as we would not be representing a neutral point of view on the subject.
Thank you Pistongrinder for your assistance. The whole issue raised by Demetrios1993 regarding Gurdjieff's mother rests upon a marriage certificate of a Mr Kurch-ogli which is held at the National Archive of Armenia [3] It is referred to by Mr Paul Beekman Taylor in his book G. I Gurdjieff a Life (2020). [4] who states:
pp. 12-13: According to the Central Archives of Armenia (File 47, Description 2, n25), he [G's father] was born Ivan Ivanovich Kurchogli (Georgian form Vano Kurdji-ogli) and at the age of twenty-three, in 1871, he married eighteen-year old Evdokia Eleptherovna (b. 1852), the daughter of Elepther Eleptheroff.
The archival record however clearly says nothing about Mr Kurch-ogli being Gurdjieff's father. It simply records the marriage on 12th November 1871 of a Mr Ivan Kurch-ogli to Evdokia Elevtoria "Elevtorovia" (not "Elepherovna"); and that she was 18 years old (and thus born in 1853 not 1852 as Mr Taylor suggests). So she would have been only 72 years old in 1925 when she died, whereas Gurdjieff's mother was much older: [5] The family list of Gyumri residents dated 1907 [6] correctly records the name of Gurdjieff's father as Ivan Ivanovitch Gurdjieff and his wife Eva: and all of Gurdjieff's contemporaries state that she was Armenian.
The marriage certificate of Mr Kurch-ogli and his Greek wife Evdokia dated 1871 (when Gurdjieff was already four years old) does not correspond to the ages of Gurdjieff's parents. Londonlinks ( talk) 00:45, 24 September 2023 (UTC) Londonlinks ( talk) 09:45, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you both User:Seraphimblade and User:Pistongrinder for your input. I believe we have now moved on from this topic (or dead horse) and the conflicting view of scholars have been included by way of footnotes. I think the footnotes of User:Demetrios1993 could be reduced in size to still make his point, but that is simply my own opinion.
I should add that the rendition of Gurdjieff's name in Greek seems quite unnecessary on the English page and conflicts with Romanization which states: "If an entity has a widely accepted conventional English name, that name is to be used." If there no objection then I would delete the Greek version of Gurdjieff's name as being otiose, but I shall wait for the outcome of any discussion if there is to be one to avoid treading on anyone's toes. Maybe this requires a separate section. Londonlinks ( talk) 22:43, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
References