Talk:George Gurdjieff

Gurdjieff the Christian?

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)

Svetlana Hinzenberg

§ Children had the following at the bottom, after the bulleted list:

Clarification: Svetlana Hinzenberg – b. Sept. 27, 1917, d. Sept. 30, 1946 Mother: Olga (Olgivanna) Ianovna Lazovich, Father (of Record): Valdemar Hinzenberg. "In the winter of 1919, humoring a friend, she (Olgivanna) left her apartment to see a visiting Armenian-born mystic, a man who was said to teach dances that could develop the will. She was, she recalled, "looking for something beyond the limits of my senses." Friedland & Zellman: "The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright & The Taliesin Fellowship." HarperCollins, 2006. page 18, citing OLW, Autobiography.

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)

@Thnidu The year of Svetlana's birth, 1917, is two years before her mother met Gurdjieff, precluding the possibility of her being a child of Gurdjieff. Also the fact that she remained with her father Hinzenberg when Olga left them. Blainster (talk) 05:47, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

"it is believed that he had seven known children"

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)

@213.127.210.95 You are correct. The article clearly states that the supposed children are unverified. For example, the first one listed as "known" cannot be Gurdjieff's child: The year of Svetlana's birth, 1917, is two years before her mother met Gurdjieff, precluding the possibility of her being a child of Gurdjieff. Also the fact that she remained with her father Hinzenberg when Olga left them Blainster (talk) 05:52, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Esoteric Christianity

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)

The reference to Gurdjieff labelling his teaching as esoteric Christianity is on page 110 from In Search of the Miraculous.He is also quoted in Views from The Real World (meeting New York 1/3/1924) as saying "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." Whether there should be a separate section on Christianity is worth considering. Perhaps one should first collect the various references on this talk page and then publish? Londonlinks (talk) 14:34, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Mother of Gurdjieff

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:

• p. 223: 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:

• pp. 19–25: 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:

• p. 11: 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
• p. 316: 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:

• pp. 13–14: 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.
• p. 270: 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)

I went ahead and updated the article, per what was presented above, concerning his mother. In addition, i removed Gurdjieff's ethnicity and birthplace from the lead (per MOS:CONTEXTBIO), as well as from the short description. Furthermore, i removed the following sentence from § Early years:

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).

Though the claim is not really wrong, there are some issues. First of all, out of the two references that are given, one failed verification, and is traced back to a false quote added by a sockmaster (diff), that was later used by another editor to expand the text (diff); the second source mirrors Wikipedia content and cannot be used, per WP:CIRCULAR. The surname is actually a little more complicated than what was presented above, and could be better explained in a note, but i don't have time to do it now. Last, i did some additional minor cleanup, and also changed the image in the infobox. Demetrios1993 (talk) 03:24, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

1-8-23 Can this nonsense about Gurdjieff's mother being Greek be deleted? The "long-held view" that Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian goes back to when he was born. Firstly, his mother was not called Evdokia but Yeva - the Armenian name for Eve. Secondly, he was not 24 years old in 1871 according to the biographies you have quoted - which would mean that he was born in 1847 - and since he died in 1949 that would mean he died at 102. Gurdjieff said that his father was Greek but didn't say that his parents were. Gurdjieff's cousin Sergey Merkurov is said by Wikipedia to be a Greek Armenian and nobody has suggested otherwise. Gurdjieff's relatives are still alive, such as Margarita Gurdjieff in France - you can refer to her. If you wish to refer to a book then read Our Life with Mr Gurdjieff written by Olga and Thomas de Hartmann where it is again confirmed on page 15 that Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian. Olga carefully prepared the book for publication and was Gurdjieff's personal secretary. Any why delete Gurdjieff's birthplace which was in Gyumri Armenia? It might be due to your Greek name? If this edit is not in its correct place then please move it but you have now been given some in-depth sources on the topic and should revert the changes to refer to the fact - long established and confirmed - that Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian. Londonlinks (talk) 22:15, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

User:Londonlinks, i do appreciate your comment, but the claim about Gurdjieff's mother being Greek is supported by a number of recent reliable sources, and is based on archival research; it's not a claim made in passing, without any substantiation. Indeed, Gurdjieff said that his father was Greek, and even wrote that his family was originally from the area around Constantinople, and migrated to central Anatolia following the events of 1453; later they would move to Georgia, and then Armenia. The real question is whether he wrote anything about his mother's background? Now, regarding her name, there are a number of archival records attesting multiple versions of it; i haven't seen any that used Yeva. Do you have any sources for that claim? Having said that, since she lived in a multiethnic environment, such as Alexandropol (present-day Gyumri) at the time, i wouldn't find it strange if she was also known as Yeva, but that doesn't really tell us anything about her native name, or even her origin. An actual attested version of her name is Евдокия, which is essentially the Greek Ευδοκία in Cyrillic script, not the Armenian Yeva. Furthermore, Gurdjieff gave his mother's name to his youngest daughter, and pronounced it in Russian as Yevdokeeya. On top of that, Evdokia died in France, and the name on her death certificate is Eudoxie, which is the French variant of the Greek name. Second, regarding your sentence about the age of 24 and 1871, you are confused; the quote is referring to Gurdjieff's father, Ivan (Ιωάννης), who actually died in 1918, not in 1949. Thanks for referring me to the book Our life with Mr. Gurdjieff (1964); i am already aware of it and have full access. Actually, what you are saying is on page XV (not 15 proper). That book was published in 1964, and the fact that Olga de Hartmann was Gurdjieff's personal secretary for many years, doesn't really mean she was an expert in his background; the claim is made in passing, and on the very same page we read that they aren't even certain of Gurdjieff's date and place of birth. As already mentioned in my original comment above, there are a number of 20th century sources that describe Gurdjieff's mother as Armenian, but they likewise do so in passing, without any actual details. The sources i shared were all published after 2010, and again, what they write is based on recent archival research, to which earlier authors didn't have access to. I am not aware of Margarita Gurdjieff, and i don't know how to contact her; but regardless, i don't think there is anything additional to learn from her, which isn't already published. I am aware of other relatives of his though, such as George Kiourtzidis, the great-grandson of Gurdjieff's uncle Vasilii, whose essential information about the family line of Gurdjieff is included in G.I.Gurdjieff: A Life (2020); along with other valuable information. Lastly, i didn't remove his birthplace from the article; it's still there. Demetrios1993 (talk) 02:38, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

User:Demetrios1993 You are trying to prove your view by relying upon biographical authors who were not even alive when Gurdjieff was alive and who themselves have not provided any citation of authority for their own views. Your source for saying that Gurdjieff's mother was Greek is based purely on the speculations of a couple of authors who had no connection with Gurdjieff or his work. You refer to his mother's death certificate but provide no evidence of it other than speculation. None of the people who were actually living with Gurdjjeff or who were his direct pupils have ever said that G's mother was Greek! Olga de Hartmann who was Gurdjieff's personal secretary lived with Gurdjieff's mother at the Prieure in France as did others and all say that his mother was Armenian! They would surely know whether his mother was Greek and would have said so. Gurdjieff himself could have easily said that his mother was Greek as well as his father but did not do so. He also had an Armenian passport issued to him, rather than a Greek passport. Your reference to G's father and his Greek origins is correct, but trying make Gurdjieff's mother a Greek after 100 years because you happen to be Greek is not acceptable or correct. The citation I have given you from Olga de Hartmann's book which is her direct account of living with Gurdjieff and along with his mother needs to be respected and not simply ignored just because it doesn't fit into your theory. I will provide further citations to you and then see what your attitude is - but if you wish to rely upon unfounded speculation from a couple of modern day authors who describe Gurdjieff as a magician etc then I will move to delete your edit from Wikipedia as being nonsensical. Londonlinks (talk) 07:57, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

User:Demetrios1993 You state that every source you have read only states "in passing" that G's mother was Armenian. G's nephew Valentin Anastasieff who survived a massacre of Armenians which killed his mother Anna (G's sister) asked John G Bennett after G's death to write the preface to G's 3rd book "Life is Real Only Then, When I am". It was written with the assistance of Valentin: [1]

Page 5: "Armenian was G's mother tongue." Page 7: "the family were terrified of the Armenian massacres." Page 8: "G spoke Armenian with his mother." More citations will follow. Let me know your thoughts, but if Armenian was G's mother tongue then she can hardly have been Greek. Londonlinks (talk) 09:47, 2 August 2023 (UTC) Londonlinks (talk) 14:26, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

As you happened to mention George Kiourtzidis, although it is now rather academic since we have reached a consensus, you will note from his own book that he refers to Gurdjieff as being half Armenian. You also ask about whether there is a document stating that his mother was called Yeva and I have provided a link to the 1907 Family List showing her name as Yeva. However, I agree that this name could be written as Eudoxia in Greek, just as it could equally be Eva in English. It wouldn't however alter the ethnicity of the person. Londonlinks (talk) 15:11, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

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:

• pp. 9–10: 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.
• p. 11: 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.
• p. 12: 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:

• p. 23: 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, ...
• p. 83: 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)

User:Demetrios1993, I am sorry but you cannot and should not base your personal input into Wikipedia by quoting blogs and comments by newly baked academics. You need to cite actual records and not different opinions of New Age authors if you wish to overturn statements that have been made or endorsed by people who were actually related to G or lived with him and his family - as did Olga de Hartman and was Valentin Anastasieff - G's nephew. These are the type of people who should be regarded and who have been regarded for the last 100 years. Simply being in a group as many recent authors have been does not mean that their views should be given any credence over the views of people who actually lived with G and who knew his mother personally. You have said that G's youngest daughter was given a Greek name. Who precisely are you referring to as being G's youngest daughter? And even if a son or daughter was given a Greek name, how does that suggest that G's mother must have been Greek? You are right to use the word "vague" to defend your input but unless you can come up with some concrete facts then you should revert to G' mother as being Armenian, although some recent authors suggest that she was Greek. I will provide more input in due course but would encourage you to stop reading blogs and opinions about Gurdjieff but rely upon more reliable sources - otherwise some editor will soon be sayin that Gurdjieff was related to Rasputin. Mr Taylor and some other authors like Fritz Peters and Stanley Nott were children when they stayed at the Prieure before moving to America. Their recollections can be given what weight you wish but unless you can site actual sources from the records held in Yerevan that relate to G's mother or G's relatives then you should not begin to promote your views as an editor to make changes to the status quo. Londonlinks (talk) 16:27, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

The other issue User:Demetrios1993, is that your suggested edit of making G's mother Greek based upon reading a couple of authors and your own view is completely at odds with every other reference to G's mother being Armenian that you can find on the internet - including other Wikis in other languages. Are you suggesting that all these peoples and thousands of references on Google going back years must be mistaken and only you must be correct? That is effectively what you are suggesting.

You have quoted Mr Taylor as saying "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 where are all these "documents" and "notices"? There are records relating to the former citizens of Gyumri in Armenia and their homes which are held in Yerevan. The childhood home of Gurdjieff has been identified in Gyumri but that is another subject. If Mr Taylor has seen a death announcement somewhere with the name Ivan on it whose wife was supposedly called M.. Kalerovna, are we even referring to Gurdjieff's father at all rather than to some obscure Russian chap? The fact is we also don't know what "1885" document Mr Taylor has purportedly seen or what death notice. If Mr Taylor had a good relationship with Madame de Salzmann (and many other authors knew her) he could easily have asked her about G's mother - but clearly he didn't. So I would agree with your original thought that the theory you are raising about G's mother being Greek may be seen as rather "vague." Wikipedia should not be used as an outlet for pushing vague suppositions and if we cannot agree then we may need to refer the matter for a review. Londonlinks (talk) 23:03, 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:

• p. 189: 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:

• 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.
• p. 15: 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)

User: Demetrios1993, Firstly you say that Mr Beekman Taylor lived at the Prieuré until 1949, but in fact it was closed in 1925 and eventually sold in circa 1935, so Mr Taylor could not have been living there in 1949. Please also do the maths: If G's mother died in 1925 a year after G's car accident and Mr Beekman Taylor was 19 in 1949, then he wasn't even born when G's mother was alive.

Mr Beekman Taylor was actually born on 31-12-30, so please also check the facts you are relying on to support your theory when you assert that "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." He may have been 19 in 1949, but whatever his childhood recollections, they cannot possibly have been about G's mother.

Secondly you say that G's youngest daughter was called "Evdokia", yet she was called Eve according to the caption of the photo you have provided. Her name however is irrelevant as to whether G's mother was Greek. Your long preamble about who Eve's mother met during her lifetime is also irrelevant to this talk page, which as you note should not be a discussion forum.

As for Ouspensky's reference in his book In Search of the Miraculous to meeting G's family and his mother, there is no doubt that G's family came from a Greek background including his brother Dmitri whom Ouspensky would have met. But Ouspensky says nothing specific about G's mother. What of G's cousin however, the famous sculptor whose home is open in Gyumri as a museum - Segei Mercourov? How is he considered to be half-Armenian?

You refer to documents at the Central Archives of Armenia (File 47, Description 2, n25. So I will forward this reference to Mr Avetik Melik-Sargsyan who has made a detailed study of the records held in Yerevan and Mrs Anmeghikyan the head of the Cultural Center in Gyumri for their views. If such a file exists then I will ensure that the document is actually copied and published.

There are now conflicting views on whether G's mother was Armenian (most references on the internet state that she was Armenian) or whether as some recent authors have opined she was Greek. In that situation the statement you have made should be amended to encompass both points of view. Such as "G's father was Greek but there are conflicting views as to whether his mother was Armenian or Greek. There are also conflicting views over G's date of birth."

I trust that you are content with that suggestion. In the meantime I will report back on the documentary evidence from Yerevan as soon as I receive it in order to resolve this matter. Thank you for your understanding.

I would also say in passing that there seems no need to provide a translation of G's name into Greek and Russian on the English Wikepedia page. Its an English page and should remain English. What is your view, although I realise that I am asking a Greek editor and therefore asking for trouble! Londonlinks (talk) 11:49, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

As for Mr Azize and other academic scholars like Mr James Moore, their own opinions unless corroborated in some way are practically worthless. Gurdjieff only spoke about his father being Greek and if you are going to rely at all on biographies to form your opinion then you should rely upon authors who actually lived with G's mother at the Prieuré such as Olga and her husband Thomas de Hartmann. They followed G throughout the Bolshevik revolution, lived with him in Esseuntuki and followed him until he settled in Paris. They must have had frequent and deep conversations both with G's mother and wife. If they wrote in their book "Our Life with Mr Gurdjieff" that G's mother was Armenian, then they cannot both have been mistaken.

Finally I note your acceptance of John G Bennett confirming that G's father was Greek: "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."

However, when I have pointed out to you that the same author has confirmed in his preface for the 3rd series that G's mother was Armenian, it is not something you are prepared to accept. Your view is that Mr Bennett was right about G's father, but wrong about his mother! Londonlinks (talk) 14:15, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

You ask at the beginning of your thread whether there are any more reliable sources other than the few books you have quoted that may shed light on whether G's mother was Armenian. It would be useful I think if you were to refer to what Michel de Salzman said: "Gurdjieff was born in Alexandropol in the southern Transcaucasian part of Russia. His father was Greek and his mother Armenian." https://www.gurdjieff.org/salzmann-m1.htm

Now having regard for the fact that Michel de Salzmanm was the son of Madame de Salzmann (and some have speculated was even the son of Gurdjieff) with direct knowledge of the position, I don't think you should seriously be thinking about tinkering with the long-held and accepted fact that G's mother was Armenian; and unless you can provide something to seriously contradict what Mr de Salzmann has himself written who is a primary source, then you should revert your edit or I shall do so myself. If any archival research can actually be verified that contradicts the sources I have referred to, there may then be a reason to question the long-established ethnicity of G's mother. Londonlinks (talk) 22:18, 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:

• pp. 3–4: ... 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.
• pp. 150–151: 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, Michel de Salznann was not making any "claim" when he said that G's mother was Armenian - he was stating a fact as he knew it to be and he is a primary source rather than secondary. He therefore has to be given precedence over your own view which is based upon reading a couple of secondary and insignificant biographical sources. If your edit does not reflect this reality then I will revert your edit to avoid misleading the public and refer the matter for review. If the review goes your way then it can revert back to your rendition which would be unfortunate. As for the Greek and Russian at the beginning of the page there is no purpose whatsoever to this as it clutters up the opening paragraph for no reason with gobbledegook. You may as well add the Armenian language which would also serve no purpose. I propose to delete it unless you or somebody can provide an intelligent reason for its inclusion. You have been criticised in the past for your editorial input and I think you are repeating your mistakes on this page.

Londonlinks (talk) 03:11, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

User: Demetrios1993 please also refrain from quoting large chunks of text from biographies which serves no useful purpose. Mr Taylor's childhood recollections are of no relevance to the ethnicity of Gurdjieff's mother. Londonlinks (talk) 03:19, 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)

User:Londonlinks, maybe you don't know this, but 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.

Lastly, there is no Greek text in the lead, only Russian. An argument could be made for retaining the Russian name, but i don't consider its removal a big issue. I will go ahead and remove it. Demetrios1993 (talk) 01:39, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

User:Demetrios1993 The primary sources I have provided are those who have not just lived with Gurdjieff and his mother, but in the case of Michael de Salzmann he is said to be Gurdjieff's own son! Regardless of that, Madame de Salzmann was with Gurdjieff for 30 years.

You believe that all these worthy people must have been mistaken, because a few scholars, who even contradict themselves, say otherwise.

User:Demetrius1993 your opinion is not worth anything. If you wish to express your own view then start a blog somewhere else, but not on Wikipedia.

Gurdjieff himself has said nothing specific about his mother - but those who lived with him on a daily basis have.

Whether she was Yeva as in Armenian or Evdokia as in Greek is actually totally irrelevant.

Have respect for the people I have referred to and don't enter into an edit war with me because you will lose.

Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian according to the people who lived with him, before your sources were even born.

If you wish to push your Greek agenda then refer the matter for a 3rd opinion. Londonlinks (talk) 11:41, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

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)

Again User:Londonlinks, that's not my opinion. For one, the primary sources you have provided don't expand on his mother's ancestry and simply mention this view in passing; second, you dismiss other primary sources that don't corroborate this view; and third, you also dismiss new secondary sources because they do not fit in with your personal point of view. That's not how we write an encyclopedia. Furthermore, Ouspensky also lived with his mother, and he described all members as Greeks. You say Gurdjieff didn't write anything about his mother, but we know for certain (per the quotes i shared above) that he didn't consider Armenian to be his native tongue, which wouldn't be the case if his mother was indeed Armenian; in fact, he is presenting Armenian in juxtaposition to his native tongue (Greek).

I didn't deliberately omit any information; i cited Churton's (2017) conclusion regarding her ancestry, which is indeed that. I am not going to cite the whole chapter and every single detail. For the record, Eva or Eve is not Yeva (that is your opinion, not the author's), and regardless of that, Churton also agrees that her actual first name was Evdokia, which is all that matters. Then again, if you want to include Eva or Eve as an additional piece of information, i don't have a problem. As a sidenote, although not stated in the sources, Eva is also a Greek name, that can also be used as a diminutive (shortened) form of the Greek Evdokia; i actually have a relative with that first name. Furthermore, Evdokia is also found in the archival records, and is further corroborated by Taylor, as the first name of Gurdjieff's mother. Are you really trying to negate this, when we even know how the name was pronounced by Gurdjieff? Do you understand the meaning of vandalism (see Wikipedia:Vandalism) that you accused me of?

We shouldn't be synthesizing or cherry-picking information, when we both know that Gurdjieff's date of birth is disputed, and even the secondary sources that you cited support a Greek origin; please read WP:SYNTHESIS. With your rationale, we should also dismiss the gazette of local persons from 1907, that lists Ivan's wife as Eva, since according to it, Gurdjieff was born in 1880. Even the Hartmanns that you have been citing, say that Gurdjieff's date and even place of birth are uncertain; they even wrote that Gurdjieff's writings are vague, ambiguous, and sometimes contradictory regarding this and other matters. Not to mention that his tombstone in France, lists 1872 as the year of his birth, not 1867. For the same reason, we cannot be sure of his father's date of birth, which is likewise uncertain. Ivan Ivanovich Kurchogli was a variant of his father's name. It could be a Turkish or Georgian form. In fact, it should be noted that Vasilii, who was Gurdjieff's uncle, had remained in Georgia and didn't initially follow Gurdjieff's father to Alexandropol; though, he did later. According to Georgian records, when Vasilii was married in 1867, he is recorded having the surname Kurdjogli. This would explain why George Kiourtz-idis, a living descendant of Gurdjieff's uncle Vasilii, bears a Greek variant of that surname today.

Anyway, i do not expect us to resolve our disagreement on our own, which is why i went ahead and requested a third opinion via Wikipedia:Third opinion; you can see it here. Demetrios1993 (talk) 02:15, 7 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)

Came across this dispute on the third opinion noticeboard. After reviewing the conversation, it seems clear to me that this is really a matter of whether or not primary sources should be given preferrential treatment above secondary sources, and WP:PST is very clear that verfiable secondary sources must be given preference. As Demetrios1993 has noted, WP:CONTEXTMATTERS and WP:AGE MATTERS also support the change, not to mention the personal logic that goes into an editor's choice to add information (like synthesising other information) but cannot be used as satisfactory support on its own, per WP:SYNTH. Fortunately, I don't see WP:SYNTH as a problem here since the changes requested are well-sourced in their own right.

I would also like to applaud Demetrios1993. We could all learn a thing or two about WP:NEGOTIATION and treating editors with WP:GOODFAITH from reviewing this conversation. I caution Londonlinks against WP:Stonewalling but leave that caution here for other third party reviewers to dispute if I have overstepped my assessment of this situation.

Well done, editors. Much can be accomplished here with your collective interest and knowledge. Pistongrinder (talk) 23:43, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

User:Demetrios1993 let me again refer you to your own references:

From Deconstructing Gurdjieff: Biography of a Spiritual Magician (2017) by Tobias Churton:

• p39: 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:Londonlinks, the initial edit was done back in May, and even though there have been numerous edits since then by different editors, you were the only one who has had a problem with it. Not to mention that i first posted about it in the talk page, waited a week, and then went ahead with the changes. Furthermore, the view about the Armenian ancestry has been reinstated following our discussion; it's not as if it is excluded from the article. But you cannot claim that his mother was Armenian as an absolute fact, when we have a number of other reliable sources that express a different view; it is a violation of WP:NPOV, which is a policy.

We are repeating ourselves, again. Churton (2017), among others, says that the name of Gurdjieff's mother was the Greek Evdokia, and that even though one source has it as Eva, it must be referring to the same person named Evdokia. There is no mention of Yeva whatsoever; that is your own opinion, and it constitutes original research. Furthermore, Ivan Ivanovich Kurchogli not being a variant of Gurdjieff's father's name is your own personal opinion as well, not the author's. We also know that Gurdjieff's date of birth, as well as his father's, is very much disputed, as already explained. You cannot pick and choose what suits you out of a source, and then even misinterpret the conclusion of the author you are citing. Please read WP:SYNTHESIS, again. Demetrios1993 (talk) 01:49, 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)

Beware of WP:SYNTH. You're leaning heavily on it regarding the logic behind the parentage argument. "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)

User:Londonlinks, are you really asking me to comment on a photograph, which just shows an elderly woman that could very well be in her 70s? Also, i didn't write that Yeva is not the Armenian version of Eva or Eve, i wrote that Eva or Eve is not Yeva, as in, that's not what the author wrote; i even included it in a parenthesis. Furthermore, Եվդոկիա is just a transliteration of the name Evdokia, not an Armenian name, and i am not even sure if the records were in Armenian; i believe they were in Russian during that time period. Eva is also found in other languages as already explained. Lastly, our opinions don't really matter; what matters is what the reliable source that you (and i) cited says, which is corroborated by additional sources that i shared above. Wikipedia is not a forum to publish our own thoughts and analyses. Demetrios1993 (talk) 01:51, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Summary

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)

I suppose I should ping both Londonlinks and Demetrios1993. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 17:59, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Seraphimblade, I agree. I was hoping for the same thing yesterday. Pistongrinder (talk) 23:32, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

I want to thank both Pistongrinder and Seraphimblade for their comments, and their willingness to participate in the discussion. In summary, User:Londonlinks wants to present the view that Gurdjieff's mother had Armenian ancestry, as an absolute fact, because certain primary sources mention it in passing; these include writings by the de Hartmann couple and Michel de Salzmann. Then, there are a couple of other primary sources, that don't corroborate that view. For example, P. D. Ouspensky met Gurdjieff's mother in 1917, and described the whole family as Greeks, while Gurdjieff himself didn't consider Armenian to be his native tongue; although he spoke Armenian with great fluency from a young age, he only referred to Greek as his native tongue. The relevant quotes have been shared above. In addition, there are a number of newer reliable secondary sources that support a Greek ancestry for Gurdjieff's mother, that also take into account archival records; relevant quotes by Tobias Churton (2017), Roger Lipsey (2019), Joseph Azize (2019), and Paul Beekman Taylor (2020) have been shared above, and most already cited in the article. Personally, i am ok with either of the two following summaries, which are neutral; though, i am open to other suggestions as well.

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.

The second summary is what the article currently has. Demetrios1993 (talk) 01:51, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

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.

G I Gurdjieff and His Armenian Roots (2008) by Michael Pittman

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)

We have already been over most of what you wrote; i am not going to repeat the same things again in this subsection. Please stick to the actual sources; your own interpretation and analysis of the primary sources is irrelevant. You also ignore a number of details from the sources that were shared, and don't even quote the names properly. Furthermore, your proposed summary, stating as an absolute fact that Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian, when we have other sources that support a different view, is not neutral. Regarding the alternative variants of Gurdjieff's father's surname that are attested in the archival records, i have no problem adding an explanatory footnote (so as not to clutter the sentence) with the Turkish or Georgian form Kurchogli, as well as the Russian forms Giordzhev and Gyrdzhev. Demetrios1993 (talk) 01:55, 10 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 authorsLondonlinks (talk) 14:48, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Londonlinks, please clarify what you mean by "escalating this matter." Seraphimblade and I both submit our assistance in providing an unbiased 3rd opinion. Pistongrinder (talk) 20:01, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you - I overlooked that! I propose to present a summary in due course with citations once I have covered the "Kurchogli-Evdokia" reference that User:Demetrios1993 is heavily promoting as justification for editing the page in regard to G's mother.

The point regarding his reference to Mr Churton is that he simply states in his book that "if" Gurdjieff was the son of Mr Ivan Ivanovitch Kurchogli and his wife Evdokia - a couple apparently identified in the Armenian archives but with no address provided to even say where they resided - then " one thing that is reasonably certain is that they were Greek" because Evdokia is a Greek name.

User:Demetrios1993 begins his justification for editing the reference to G's mother being Armenian by using brackets [...] to omit the first part of the reference which clarifies that Mr Churton is merely saying "what if" the Kurchoglys were Gurdjieff's parents.

There is nothing in any source cited by User:Demetrios1993 which says based upon an archival record that the Kurchogli couple were Gurdjieff's parents - only that Mr and Mrs Kurchogli, whoever they were, were Greek.

User:Demetrios1993 has misquoted from the recent biographies which he says he has read, which do not say that the Kurchoglys were Gurdjieff's parents, but only that if they were, then Gurdjieff's mother was Greek.

User:Demetrios1993 has no basis for editing the page on the footing that some authors believe that Gurdjieff's mother may have been Greek, because no author has expressed such a view. All that his sources have said is that "if" the Kurchoglys were Gurdjieff's parents, then it can be reasonably certain that his mother was Greek.

Nobody has however said that the Kurchoglys were Gurdjieff's parents and until that is established, the editing of User:Demetrios1993 is an unnecessary and misleading distraction. Londonlinks (talk) 23:01, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

User:Londonlinks, do you understand the purpose of this section? You were asked to summarize your position in a paragraph or two; instead, all you have done is added new walls of text, which defeats the purpose of the section. No third party will bother reading any of it, and if i begin replying as well, it will end up like the previous section. Demetrios1993 (talk) 01:27, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

User:Demetrios1993 I understand the purpose of a summary and will write one and cite the whole of the extract from your quotation which you distorted by omitting to refer to the part that you dismissed in brackets [...].

Not a single author anywhere since Gurdjieff's death in 1949 has said that Gurdjieff's mother was Greek - and neither does Mr Churton or Mr Paul Beekman Taylor, whom you have mis-quoted.

Please read again the full text that you have omitted to include which speculates that "if a certain Kurchogli couple were the parents of Gurdjieff then....it is reasonably certain that his parents were Greek."

The only reason why I have engaged with you rather than simply revert your edit is because I have tried to explain that there is no possibility that this Kurchogly couple were Gurdjieff's parents and neither author expresses such a view.

The fact that Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian has been established for 75 years in the books and articles of Gurdjieff's own relatives and his contemporaries.

Your Greek theory on the other hand that Gurdjieff's mother was Greek is not sustained by any source - even in the two "biographies" you have quoted at the beginning of your commentary. Consequently there is no basis for making your edit or even to refer to the books you have quoted unless part of a bibliography section. Londonlinks (talk) 07:25, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

User:Londonlinks, you didn't understand the purpose of the section, and still haven't; it was certainly not for us to continue our previous discussion. Anyway, it doesn't matter now. Furthermore, even though this was already explained to you in the previous section, let me quickly repeat, again, that i didn't deliberately omit any information; i quoted Churton's (2017) conclusion regarding her ancestry, which is indeed that. I was not going to quote the whole chapter and every single detail, even though i did cite all of the relevant pages. What's ironic however is that you are the one who is actually misquoting the author. The following quote you shared – within quotation marks – doesn't exist; "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)

I reserve my final verdict on my third opinion. I would like a few questions answered that are difficult to parse out with the text wall above, even though I have read quite a bit of it. Keep in mind, I am no expert on the subject matter. I am, however, well-versed in biographies and the related policies. On that note, I say we try this summary thing again.

See below

Second-Attempt Summary

• Demetrios1993, I would like a brief summary of your opinion along with a list of your sources and the quotes you are pulling from those sources. Similar to Seraphimblade, I question the WP:DUEWEIGHT of including the mother's heritage at all. I would appreciate your summary to be under 300 words. Please also include your suggestions for the article like you have done above. Share your summary in a response edit to this bullet point.

Pistongrinder, thank you for your new attempt to establish consensus. In summary, there is disagreement among sources regarding the background of Gurdjieff's mother; supporting either an Armenian or Greek ancestry. Every source that i read, describing Gurdjieff's mother as Armenian, does so in passing, without even mentioning her name. During the last decade or so, some secondary sources expanded on the background of the family via their consideration of archival records, and came to the conclusion that his mother was Greek. Secondary sources that support that view are those by Tobias Churton (2017), Roger Lipsey (2019), Joseph Azize (2019), and Paul Beekman Taylor (2020). These newer secondary sources are also corroborated – directly or indirectly – by earlier primary sources, such the account of P. D. Ouspensky and Gurdjieff's own writings. I am including the relevant quotes within the following collapsible template, in order to avoid cluttering.

Relevant quotes

From In Search of the Miraculous (1949) by P. D. Ouspensky: p. 340: I met his family, his father, and his mother. ... They were Greeks from Asia Minor, but the language of the house, as of all the others in Alexandropol, was Armenian. 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. 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, ... From Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation, and Exercises (2019) by Joseph Azize: p. 23: 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, ... p. 83: 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 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): 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. From Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy (2019) by Roger Lipsey: p. 11: 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 p. 316: 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: pp. 13–14: 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. p. 270: 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.

Excluding the background of his mother altogether is an alternative option, but it is not an ideal solution in my opinion, and i don't think User:Londonlinks would agree to it. Personally, i am ok with either of the two following summaries, which are neutral; though, i am open to other suggestions as well. The second summary is what the article currently has.

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.

Demetrios1993 (talk) 01:37, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

• Londonlinks, you wanted an opportunity to summarize your opinion after reviewing the resources. I would like to hear your summary from your point of view briefly. Please limit yourself to under 300 words. I fear you will not be happy unless your opinion is chosen over Demetrios1993, which labels you as a stonewaller. If I am wrong in this case, then please share a suggestion that moves us toward WP:CONSENSUS. Can we work together to improve this article? Share your summary in a response edit to this bullet point.

• Please do your best to summarize only your own perspectives and resist the temptation to respond to/argue with each other's summaries or attack your fellow editors (WP:GOODFAITH). I'm intrigued by your passion and want us to find a reasonable solution. Pistongrinder (talk) 23:28, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

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:

• pp. 19–25: 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 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: 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)

Third Opinion

• Thank you, both, for your summaries above. While I've read your arguments a few times over now, it was much easier to see your viewpoints consolidated.

Ultimately, Wikipedia content edits must pass the tests of WP:Verifiability, WP:No original research, and WP:NPOV, according to WP:5P2. From WP:CCPOL, "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."

WP:Verifiability: It seems to me that the meat of the argument hinges on the reliability of Demetrios1993's referenced sources. After reviewing them, I have determined they are written by notable experts in their field and published by reputable, scholarly publishers. We could, of course, post them to the Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard to get consensus there as well, but they pass every test. I believe any other editor will come to my same conclusion. These sources are reliable, notable, and verifiable.

WP:No original research: Additionally, the "synthesis" argument presented against these sources is unfounded and due to a misunderstanding of the policy. WP:SYNTH is a policy subcategory under "No Original Research" that restricts Wikipedia editors from using pieces of information from multiple sources to come to conclusions not explicitly stated by those sources. Historians are allowed to synthesize information. Wikipedia editors are not.

Furthermore, it appears to me that Londonlinks's argument for not incorporating the speculative viewpoint of Gurdjieff's Greek mother is entirely based on WP:SYNTH, which contradicts directly with the reliable sources policy: "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."

WP:NPOV: It's important to note that the proposed edit does not omit Gurdjieff's potentially Armenian parentage. Instead, 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.

I am sympathetic to the time and effort that has gone into this continued debate. It's clear to me that both editors care deeply about the improvement of this article. However, I cannot argue with the facts. The sources cited are verifiable. The proposed edit represents explicit statements made by the verifiable sources. And the proposed edit represents a neutral point of view of all published perspectives. Time to move forward. Pistongrinder (talk) 17:59, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

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 It is referred to by Mr Paul Beekman Taylor in his book G. I Gurdjieff a Life (2020). 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: The family list of Gyumri residents dated 1907 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)

The problem here is that you are using your personal logic and reasoning to make these assertions when reliable sources do not have consensus on this topic. That means the article must reflect the opinion of reliable sources in order to be neutral, which is our job as editors. Pistongrinder (talk) 04:43, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

I would very much agree with Pistongrinder here. Articles summarize what reliable sources have to say. When the sources themselves are not in agreement, the article should reflect and describe that lack of consensus, not "take a side" based upon an editor's own thoughts on the matter. In this case, since there is clearly such substantial disagreement among the available sources for this matter, the article should describe what they disagree on and why, but not take one side or the other. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

I entirely understand the need for neutrality but I think a line has to be drawn somewhere, otherwise another editor could just as easily write that although the long-held view is that G was a philosopher, some scholars say based upon recent research that he was a "charlatan" and "a friend of Stalin" etc.

We should not as an editor change the accepted fact of the ethnicity of Gurdjieff's parents based on the belief of one author (now propagated by others) who argues that the marriage record of a Mr Kurch-ogli dated 1871 is that of Gurdjieff's father.

We should instead as an editor be willing to write that Gurdjieff's father was Greek and his mother Armenian, but add a footnote if it is deemed relevant to refer to the recent research of scholars who have disputed these facts. Londonlinks (talk) 07:36, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

I understand you think that, but at this point, three other people have disagreed with you. I think it's about time to move on. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 11:29, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Your argument, Londonlinks is a slippery slope fallacy, since such a case would be disregarded as WP:UNDUE were it not for multiple verified sources reporting the same thing. Pistongrinder (talk) 20:57, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Anyway I can appreciate the points being made which seeks to maintain impartiality and accordingly have left the "long-held belief" in place. However, that belief seems rather inapt when the "belief" was expressed by G's own blood relations about their grandmother and aunt - and his contemporaries, who lived with G and his mother, such as Olga de Hartmann. Londonlinks (talk) 05:23, 2 October 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)

Where exactly? I'm not noticing a Greek form of Gurdjieff's name. Pistongrinder (talk) 20:40, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

The Greek transcription has since been removed by User:Demetrios1993 as a result of my suggestion. Londonlinks (talk) 05:26, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Londonlinks, you asked me to reduce the size of the references, while at the same time you included three different references to Bennett (1962, 1973, 1984), two different references to Needleman (1996, 2009), two different references to Moore (1980, 1999), one unrelated reference to Tchekhovitch (2006) who doesn't say anything about his mother's background, and one outdated reference to Azize (2014); you were already aware of the latter's more recent publications (2019), where he supported a Greek background. Now, i don't have a problem trimming my references, but you also need to take care of the aforementioned ones you added; regardless of the fact that we have bundled everything into a single footnote, having more than one reference per author repeating the same view is unnecessary. Demetrios1993 (talk) 02:11, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree. Thank you for pointing that out User:Demetrios1993 as two wrongs don't make a right. I will delete the repeat references and hopefully you will trim down your footnotes to an appropriate size.Londonlinks (talk) 06:21, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

References