- Hrant Ignatovich, we met exactly three years ago. What has changed since then for the country, for Armenian literature and for you personally?
- Nothing has changed. Like a buffalo in a swamp, we get stuck deeper. From the point of view of ethics, it is correct that we do not admit this reality, because the spoken and unsaid words have different reactions. So it's a good thing we don't think of ourselves as buffalo drowning in the swamp.
- Today, our people live by the principle of "Whoever can, let him save his head". What will stop the unabated flow of emigration?
- If we compare the 20s and the 90s, in the first case the entire Armenian people, with few exceptions, aspired to Soviet Armenia. But that era ended, and a period of reverse aspiration, outward from the earth, began, and neither dictatorship nor the Iron Curtain could hold the people back... We entered a new era in defeat. The worker defeated the worker, the engineer defeated the engineer, the writer defeated the writer. We must withstand the test of competition, give ourselves momentum and join the march of other peoples of the world. It cannot happen that the people and the state exist and suddenly disappear forever. We have lost and are losing the ambitions of being among the world's powerful people, the French or the Germans, but we will undoubtedly find our place in the general parade of nations.
- Byron considered democracy an aristocracy of murderers and Stendhal a lower form of government. Didn't we give up the totalitarianism that has become so common for us in vain, when they thought and decided for us, and all we had to do was work?
- In no case. Even today, the lazy, unwilling society of yesterday is still in front of my eyes, when the minimum of our capabilities was required of us. I believe that there is an aristocrat sitting in every man, and I would never allow myself to speak so harshly about people and society, although I see what the crowd is doing today. Totalitarianism manifested itself in our country in all its forms and died by exhausting itself, ended by being defeated. Although a beautiful, Christian community of people was formed in contrast to the present jungle. Henrik Siravyan, the artist who left us recently, was from that community.
- What did the 13th Congress of the General Assembly of Armenia testify? What were your pen pals so angry and angry about?
- The question is capacious and comprehensive. Yesterday, writers were a caste that earned their daily bread with a pen, but today neither books nor words provide bread, at the same time, the competitiveness of literature demands that professionals do their work only, and books be distributed in society, but today there is neither bread nor the spread of literary works. There were murmurs that the literary life of the republic could be better organized. Well, those are good ambitions, let them try.
- For a long time, we were comforted by the image of a positive hero in life and literature. But perhaps the contemporary French writer Alain Robbe-Grille is right when he claims, “A living hero can only be negative. With all his vital energy, all his biography and virtues—intellectual, erotic, muscular (O, Sisyphus)—he is opposed to the positive hero." What does the concept of "positive hero" mean to you?
- Was Christ a positive hero in life? I don't know why the French writer said that, but I think that God lives in each of us. And it is only because of the laziness of our mind that we evaluate a person positively after death and negatively and evilly in life. Today, one should see Garegin Nzhdeh in Vazgen Sargsyan, and Vardan Mamikonyan in today's Sparapet. I am sure that my children are more beautiful than my grandfathers and their children will be more beautiful than me.
- Recently, a Russian man confirmed on TV that the future of art is the dilettante-savages. When you see today's youth, you start to believe it. Maybe the weight of intellect and erudition really drags down.
- It's a matter of fifteen years ago, when the mass culture gave rise and it seemed to us that it was possible to stop that movement. Even in Europe they thought so and, concerned about cultural horizons, fought against the invasion. But it is a doomed struggle, mass culture will take over the whole world, and on that level new intellectuals, new personalities will be born. Kostan Zaryan said that yesterday's culture is the culture of shepherds, today's culture is part of civilization. Today, the ultimate goal of culture is achieved in other ways: to inspire humanity with emotional and intellectual power. Christianity destroyed classical culture, condensed space, it seemed to be the end of the Aristotelians, but new names arose in that flat water area. There is no doubt that times and nations (languages) have always striven honorably not to remain mute and unexpressed. The world map is not a desert and there are many personalities. The nation should not be silent, Shakespeare did not make the Russians silent, Pushkin was born, Tumanyan was born in Armenia...
- How do you feel about the celebration of the 1700th anniversary of Christianity in Armenia? I have to admit, I am instinctively alarmed by the loudness of festivities, because the inner world and soul of a person should be touched quietly, carefully and imperceptibly.
- Christianity and the church should occupy as much place in our lives as they deserve. Therefore, there is no need to be too excited about the upcoming celebrations, nor to condemn them, because our nation and state come together on that occasion, attract the attention of the world community, and enter the international arena.
- What is the main conclusion drawn from the life lived? What are the results?
- I can't summarize. I can only say from what the state and government did and did not do, whether I would or would not do this and that. I considered myself one of the nation's intellectuals, but what I thought about the nation and the state was done - in Azerbaijan or Chechnya or Turkmenistan and was defeated, and what we did not do nationally can hardly be considered a good reality. And there were so many mistakes... Why did we delay and not enter Nakhijevan? We realized late that we have to solve our problems ourselves. But most of us have not realized this until now and are stuck in yesterday...
- Can truth, goodness exist outside of us, and real life only in our soul?
- The objective world is our subjective perception. As we are, so is the world. Not long ago, I was walking out on the porch and watching two stray sharks run around in our yard. One of them disappeared, we thought they were shot. And here, nothing much changed for the second dog, he continued playing with his imaginary friend, dancing the same playful dances, because the living dog was only his imagination. So the real world is a reflection of our perceptions.
- Today already man and the whole world are playing "To be or not to be", choosing between "own invasion forever or final extinction". What are your predictions? What prompts the creative instinct for you as a writer?
- I think that your question is rather a question of a resident of a troubled country. But man, even my enemy, is not so stupid and crazy that he does not leave the edge of the abyss. Although there are many examples of letting the genie out of the bottle, there are even more examples of keeping it in, and this is a display of love, patience, and wisdom. Illusion is a necessary component of human existence. Without illusion there would be a black death, illusion becomes a form of life, and then my creative instinct will yield to illusion, and long live that deception that becomes reality, by which life goes on and must "be" because of deception, I accept nothing else. What is the use of accepting destruction, the denial of eternal life? And the benefit of that deception is huge: a calm, peaceful people who are sure of future prosperity. Humanity must have the power to circumvent destruction, the apocalypse, through deception.
- Marshak writes: "Let the actor playing the role of the king not be tempted by the skin of the goat." But disinterestedness does not turn into either stupidity or cowardice. And a living person cannot but be tempted by beauty, glory, wealth, honor. What can keep a person from doing that?
- Not so comprehensive, but this is how I think: humanity is governed by images, and today we, the Armenian people, carry not our image, but the image of wealth and beauty, the image of the world that came to us from Hollywood and forced us to accept it. Socialism was weakly expressed among us, but it did not allow people to be thrown out, we had to weave our flag from the ideas of socialism, Christianity, and justice. If there was speech in the first place, why did the system collapse? Because it was a half-hearted, unspoken speech. We lost the cultural struggle because writers, artists, actors became ideologues of the system, contented with the role of shapers. That is why we did not have an image of ourselves, and we were given a ready-made image that was stripped of ego, beauty and wealth. It took Christ's determination to hold man back from passions and temptations. To the man brought up in the spirit of "We" across the ocean, from Europe came the "I", both totalitarian Christianity and totalitarian communism submit to the rule of the "I" society.
- Today, such concepts as freedom, independence, national ideology are perceived as mythical, and dethroned. What new myths can tomorrow offer us?
- My colleagues in the diaspora will answer that question better, I have always remained behind them. It seems that everything is meaningful in the mind, but the reality is beyond us, we cannot analyze the internal and external politics and make them the basis of our actions. The nation showed a weakness of mind in the national idea. And if in the beginning I could give formulas thanks to the freshness of perception, today the freshness has passed, and I swim with the current, but I do not rule over time. The panorama of history teaches us. pan-Slavism was destroyed, pan-Islamism will also be destroyed, and pan-Turkism will also be destroyed. The idea of man wins, and there is no higher idea. That is why one should have respect for each human-unit, it is necessary to preserve the ambitions of being a newly discovered Christ, Napoleon, Marx. Today's world should become the image of a man who has been liberated from national, social, religious chains. After all, only man sings, plays, creates...
Zulfa Ohanyan led the conversation
"Urartu" ("Урарту"), N 21, 2001