- We will try not to talk about politics, but the first question is more or less related to political life.
Before the movement, you were the only literary opposition of our country to the powerful empire, the guide of the reading part of the people, especially the part that understands and appreciates literature, from whom they expected words, and I want to emphasize, as far as the rules of artistic and literary speech allowed, sharp speech...
Times were changing fast, and somewhere the one calling for rebellion became a scared, trembling father for the existence of a headless family.
- Everything was conceivable, I imagined everything, except the collapse of the empire. You can't say it in two words and pass it by. The so-called empire had its own arsenal of concepts, with which we worked, making adjustments and proofreading in the process. Pen, art people were able to do something, create something. It was just a tendency to put our house in order and we didn't understand the confrontational, downright hostile rudeness against the intelligentsia and dissent, on the other hand, the confrontational attitude of dissent toward the government, that's what we had.
Apparently, we consciously and subconsciously left that confrontation out of the limits of our understanding of the Armenian people, I emphasize, the Armenian people, the people who saw the uprising, because we knew that every disturbance would lead to huge losses from our people. In other words, the Turkish factor was heavily embedded in our psychology, and we relied, one might say, we relied wholeheartedly, on the empire of the International and we tried to update the content of that empire.
The empire collapsed, and we were left alone in the face of reality. Warriors could be fearless or pretend to be fearless, but for people of my age and profession, God had left fear for those same warriors, for this whole people. In your question, my situation is really correctly assessed, it is not offensive to me at all, and it is summed up, I don't seem to have anything to add. In any case, only the edges of today were still opening before us, I did not see today because of yesterday and did not have the audacity to order "forward" or "back".
I don't know how much history will blame me for missing the moment of readiness to make that sacrifice. I don't know. Whatever happened, happened. For 1915, I cannot blame any of us.
- I don't want to use the word opportunism, but aren't the tricks that are present in almost all of your works outdated?
- You still use a very correct adverb: smiths. At other times, I seem to have had a harsher attitude towards the Armenian and Pan-Soviet literature of my generation and my generation. It was flawed literature. It seemed beautiful, it was getting along, but the literature of the West, today's highly realistic, superstitious literature, came to sink the literature of half-spoken, Aesopian language, negative stories, to throw the books away from the desk and establish itself in its place. I regret it very much, because it applies not only to literature, but also to history, art, everything. So much paper has been spoiled, so much money has been spent, so much time has been wasted, so many actors and actresses have grown old on the fictionalization of a false reality.
It is emphasized, and its formula is again Western: "Fascism is doomed to literary barrenness, because fascism is a lie."
Defeated fascism was our reality. The literature created on that reality was as much a sham as its subsoil. Such a reality must die with its literature and culture. No matter how sad we say it, really, not much will attract you, your generation, your children. The story took off. No matter how sad we say it, it is so, and it is possible that I am one of those who will be swept away by that flood.
- With an amazing feeling, we connected the film "Saroyan Brothers" and the writer Hrant Matevosyan, until we accidentally learned that, according to the words of the director of "Hayfilm" at that time, your finger was involved in that case. Of course... "Bless you Hayk, you didn't kill grandfather, you didn't kill Terter, your conscience is clean, clean!"
- A creative association and an author should be so barren that these minor incidents are important as facts of the biography... But if you reminded me, I will repeat. There were some conditions to create. There were efforts to proofread the content of the empire, to make it a tolerable empire, in this case we won the confederation-anti-confederation fight, yes? I say this in view of the real masterpieces that survived even in the world competition, and were more so because they contained in them the Eastern parental shame and responsibility for the whole reality and always did not have the vulgarity of the West, the cult of open relationships, which gives us heartache today.
Andrei Tarkovsky rose, however, Sergey Parajanov took place. Now I'm not talking about the fact that ten years of a person's creativity were swallowed up, the wonderful flight was broken. It was terrifying to see Parajanov, who had just been released from prison. What a beautiful man, what a beautiful existence we sent to prison and what we got back: a ruined masterpiece of art.
A phenomenon occurred with Parajan. And also other secondary authors who did a more or less tolerable job. And it seemed as if there was an opportunity to regain what was unjustly stolen from us.
I could never understand those people who seriously cursed the confederates for so many years, and I also did not consider seriously those from our outsiders who linked this country and people to the same curse. I did not like that party division at all, and I thought they could be reconciled. To create the environment, the atmosphere where everyone would get the evaluation they deserve. Some of the holy martyrs would have become false martyrs under normal circumstances, the true values would have asserted themselves in competition. A boy like Nzhdeh would really find his place in our lives, both his literary work and his work would remain. And many, many other names would confirm themselves. It was possible, those conditions were being created.
- Wouldn't the foundations of the empire be broken? The mindset was about to change, wasn't it?
- There was only one factor to be afraid of, and they saw it better in the Center. The two major nationalisms were pan-Turanism and Russian chauvinism, but they were absolute slogans, and life took its own course, correcting ideologies, and a reality emerged where these colossal monsters lost and occupied their little places in reality. But to become rulers over the whole earth and become guiding figures... Hardly. It seemed that the people would have the sobriety to not give in to ideology and come to terms of mutual tolerance in front of simple life, according to Dostoevsky, in front of a child's tears, in front of the old, the disabled, in front of their everyday images. Rather than as new gods will stand at the beginnings of new life, and here as new orders require new victims.
Since we touched on those times, just for a moment, a few words... I have said in other interviews that Khrushchev himself met the people's desire to be, to banish idolatry from themselves, to make real life a flag. He brought a dry wind to this land, dried up the mold, broke the orthodoxy of ideology. Certain steps have been taken to the point where it turns out that this country has not quite forgotten its ability to create. I said again, I was also born in those days.
Khrushchev himself testified with his prank that the idols sitting above are not really idols, they are human: pranksters, drunkards, sentimental, willful, willful... and they are not the master of your head, you are the master of your head.
National cultures were created. I want to remind you about the Georgian cinema, there were some nice highlights in our cinema, the Ukrainian film studio. Such a great literary personality as Chingiz Aitmatov appeared before our eyes. There are also names in Russian literature: poets, novelists.
But the earth had become so exhausted and ugly that one could no longer feel sorry for the destruction and the perishing. A beautiful woman slowly wore out, grew old and had to leave the arena.
You see, my verbal speech is completely unnecessary.
- A little while ago I gave an example of the film "Saroyan Brothers". In general, I can take a sentence from your works and say that this is definitely Hrant Matevosyan. Only he writes like that. Do you see this as an advantage or a disadvantage?
- No, I really have a service. It will not be an exaggeration if I say that for the first time Armenian language flowed from the screen to the hall: "We are, our mountains". And the pattern was contagious. Everyone followed it the easy way, and it's not my fault they started imitating.
- Let's say a novice, young novelist is under the influence of your speech, he imitates your way of constructing speech. It's his lack of personality, but...
Can we take a random sentence from, say, Leo Tolstoy and make sure it's only his? Only he writes like that.
- No, there is no such question. I am just grateful to my literary language teachers, who taught me something: Charents' stilted speech, Tumanyan's popular expletives, Isahakyan's elegance of language. If I say how much Charents took from Teryan, how much Teryan wrote in Tumanyan. Teaching each other, we go on a journey. But it is unpleasant when you see that there is nothing other than what you have learned, there is nothing of your own. Seconded. Otherwise, we are all the children of Armenian, the sons of our mothers.
- Since we talked about cinema, I want to tell you which of your works you consider to be the best screen adaptation. And in general, in your opinion, what values did Armenian cinema create and why couldn't it do more?
- I was very flattered and expected a cinematic masterpiece from my script "This Green, Red World" written on the themes of Bakuntsi's "Mirhavi". I noticed that case of Bakuntsi a long time ago. Rafael Aramyan once...
Perhaps there is no need for so much detail? He was a wonderful man, not a first-rate writer, but a vibrant existence, a good experimenter. It was a symbol of Yerevan's intelligentsia, and with its loss, the essence of Yerevan seemed to be lost. He had watched a Japanese film, "Lerk Island", and came to the "Literary Newspaper" editorial office to tell about it. A cruel island, man, woman, child. it's their planet, they should make it a garden. One, that "Lerk Island". The other one. there was a wonderful person, Ion Druce, whom we later met, but his "Last Month of Autumn" was told to me by a Moldavian. Here. And the other is Sergey Parajanyan's "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors", which I watched in Moscow. These, and another "Mirhav" by Bakuntsi, I don't know how they got together in me, and I felt that something good was happening in cinema. Desperate, I wrote that 45-page work without opening Bakuntsi's book. I wrote and long congratulated the person who was going to be the author of that masterpiece. Who would be that cruel connoisseur, the connoisseur of the Armenian land, the Armenian farmer, who tied boots, who created grapes in our harsh land, grew difficult apples, made difficult bread? The loyalty, morality, and loyalty of the Armenian man in this fast-paced, sociable, promiscuous world of ours. It was necessary to make a direct "contra" film in this growing and increasingly immoral world.
Just as, let's say, Christ was beaten and tempered by moral people in the absolutism of theft, adultery, betrayal, as a counterweight to them.
It was necessary to create such a counterweight from the Armenian man - not a reflection of the world, but directly against the world itself. I was very fond of that movie and unfortunately the worst thing happened. It was a very unfortunate film and it caused me to not have a very deep attitude towards cinema in general after that.
I referred to the cinema a couple of times. (For example, "August" was also filmed, but I did not write the script). Both times I wrote the script, both times at the instigation of the artist. But to my credit, I have never once opened my book and worked with scissors. I wrote both "Autumn Sun" and the other one anew. I just found it boring to transcribe. But the cinema, which I deserved with my literary talent (and my Armenian audience) and demanded from my people, because I saw a national mission in the national culture, unfortunately did not happen.
Their dirty deeds, those deeds of my so-called colleagues, seemed like national betrayal to me, and I bore their failures with great displeasure. It is a very difficult topic of conversation and, if it is not too late and, again, if it concerns us, let me say. we were not direct and strict with our colleagues, we tolerated the chaos, and it was the chaos that was produced and produced for the whole thirty years, when, I repeat again and again, there were conditions to create tolerable works.
Mikhalkov did, Konchalovsky did, Tarkovsky did, they did, didn't they, "Georgian Film" was becoming the film center of the Soviet Union, every work became a phenomenon there.
And we put little on the shelf, and today in the diaspora, when we tell my brothers, sisters, and their children that I want to offer a movie, I see that there is nothing to offer.
Jean-Luc Godard shot one of his films on narrow amateur tape. that is, if you are a writer, you can create, but here is your pen compartment. It is worthwhile for worthy writers to take up the film camera and do their writer's work with a film camera. Ours were both non-writers and painfully poor craftsmen, whatever you say about, say, Russian directors such as Gerasimov.
How well he knew and what respect he had for Russian literature. It was like an encyclopedia of Russian literature. He did lighting work, staged Russian literature with great skill. Did we have such knowledgeable masters here? Unfortunately we didn't have any. Ignorance of the craft and simply disrespectful attitude towards Armenian literature. How many times has "Anoush" been mentioned to us?
I love Malyan's "Triangle", it's a good movie. About Bagrat Hovhannisyan. He was a restless man with a great taste, a seeker, not satisfied with the standards of thought, an excellent connoisseur of world literature, but unfortunately he knew the cinematography poorly. He was not satisfied with the mediocrity done by others, they gassed him, that's why he was honest, but there was something missing in him to create the high, living, disturbing thing that was in his mind, in his heart.
I think it went wrong on "Terry" too, and it's not the script's fault. It's a decent level scenario in my opinion. In other cases, I would say: well, I'm guilty, but there is Armenian literature. Armenian literature was in front of you, if you were a good craftsman, you would stage well. You met with Tumanyan - you failed, with Bakunts - you failed. No, I have no guilt for "The Lord".
- Yes, the film is very inadequate to the script-novel.
- It was written especially for him, at least. He knew that I left my work aside and wrote a movie script for him. I wrote it for myself. Failing my work, I wrote for him. There were other motives. It was in need. I'm a sentimental person and things like this affect me. He started something very difficult and very responsible, he wanted to be the director of "Yerkir Nairi", but they didn't let him. He did not work for a long time, he had no means. If I didn't have to help my friend there, then... I knew, I didn't expect much from him, the experience of "Autumn Sun" said that he couldn't do it for me, let him go and try his experience on someone else. But I just said for the sake of the company: well, I'll sit for a month, I'll do the job. A month dragged on long enough, I did my part friend. My conscience is calm before me there. It's not a bad novel, it's a tolerable movie script.
- Criticism considered the "Autumn sun" of the drama theater a great value. What do you say now, from the distance of time?
- Apparently, I always have the strictest attitude towards my affairs. There too. Even though I didn't like a lot of things, I modestly kept quiet so that suddenly Violet Gevorgyan and Artashes Hovhannisyan were not given an award, because that work, at least for a few months, was worthy.
Then they had bad taste, went to get laughs, turned it into a joke. It was offensive. They thought they were higher than their heroes, they could make them laugh. Now they can be justified: we have played five hundred, thousand or even two thousand times. It's their business. My ideal of theater is different, I don't know, Chekhov's theater is my ideal of theater.
Once, when an opportunity arose to write a play...
We were coming from Maharu's funeral, Vardan Achemyan offered Vahagn Davtyan and me to write a play, probably reserving Vahagn in his mind to control me, and me to write. Vahagn Davtyan wrote his own, I did my own experiment, I wrote my own play, "The Neutral Zone", which I saw being staged in the style of Chekhov's theater. Gentle, slow, restrained and not a show.
Karlen Varzhapetyan staged the work. You are a person of art and it is not new for you that the work of art is also a living body. and the absence of anything, or the excess of anything, injures that body. In that failed performance, I admit that Sos was good, and Karen Janibekyan was also good. While writing, I almost thought that they would play those roles, but Toros Toramanian's physical data unintentionally suggested that Khoren Abrahamyan would play an architect, and Sos Sargsyan a priest, whose character I really like. I admit those two roles were made, but there were so many bugs. The mass scenes were totally boring, totally unnecessary.
Karlen Varzhapetyan was a brave boy and a talented person, I remember his "Yerkir Nair", but something, lack of time and funds, prevented him from editing those mistakes well. Sometimes I see it as an outdoor performance. Let's say, in a monastery, it was painted on a black and white tape.
Slowly, slowly! Something else happened.
"Neutral Zone" is what I wanted: restrained, anti-play. And while I was writing, there was one thing in my mind: the wine, which has been poured into a jar and is no longer used, must slow down and emerge slowly.
At first, when I took the pen, I thought: in two or three pages, that is, in 5-10 minutes, everyone will come, and everything will fall into place, but unfortunately I could not follow my goal, the group from outside came too late, etc., I don't know what the reason was, but it didn't work out as I wanted.
- However, "Neutral Zone" has a greater literary than stage value. Less is the cost as a theater product. Once, in 84 or 85, you said that you don't write drama because you can't create a "poison and handkerchief" story.
- Really, I can't. You are right. In my opinion, I am saying something very theoretical, the word of prose and the word of drama are completely different things.
They don't understand one very important thing. Let's say, if he made an expressive text, restrain it. It is not possible to play the expressive text expressively, to absolve all the abilities of manifestation. Let another law apply, which is the dynamics of statics. Isn't a rolling stone scarier than a rolling stone? The fear of death is greater than death itself. You have to leave the audience with something, it seems. Let him make it absolute. You are inviting the audience to socialize. Isn't it? In the other case, when you take that initiative of co-authorship away from him, then you have to stage it so magnificently that you turn him into a mere, simply enjoying spectator, a mere puppet. If you want something more serious, then something seems to have to be restrained. "Neutral Zone" is what I wanted.
- You said that you always have the strictest attitude towards your affairs. It's natural. What you have created is a verbal value that becomes a different meaning and value on stage. I don't know if there is a good writer who is satisfied with the performance of his work.
- There is. Saroyan was completely satisfied with his performance "My heart is in the mountains", and I was also satisfied. It was a wonderful performance.
- I am talking about the prose work of the writer.
- I think the writers, I in particular, consider myself satisfied, or I silence myself when I see that even if it is not mine, but something is, it has arisen, as a living body, it is.
- The film "We are our mountains" is an example. I remember you saying that Malyan took what he needed from you.
- Yes, yes. For this reason, when I was compiling a book of scenarios, I did not include "We are, our mountains". It was a body, it appeared, I was satisfied. There were so many stillbirths that one could already rejoice for a living body.
- What do you consider to be the best performance you have seen in the Armenian theater?
- It refers to very early times. "The Rock" by Vardan Achemyan. Grigor Aghan of Gurgen Janibekyan. It was just one hell of a performance. An absolute example of classicism. It was definitely an accurate representation.
- In what sense, exactly, in relation to the author?
- None of the characters were missing. As a whole of the evening, as a whole of the performance, nothing was superfluous. The characters worked like all the parts in a good machine. No one interfered with the establishment of the other, everyone bent and polished everyone else. All in one mighty hand. The tension was constant.
The other was a watercolor, light, transparent, romantic representation of a different tone, "My heart is in the mountains", as if Mozart was sifting from the sky.
What a great person Achemyan was, what a great existence, what an artist, a beautiful person.
- Your opinion about the different Aghuns of Violet Gevorgyan and Anahit Ghukasyan is interesting.
- In order to talk about the Aghuns, both of them should have been established. But if I considered Violet Gevorgyan's Aghun, especially before the play became outdated, I considered it accomplished, I cannot say the same about Bagrat Hovhannisyan's film. In my opinion, it didn't happen. There was only a small piece when the baby was breastfed. There are only the walls of the house, there is a wonderful light, and the wonderful melody of Tigran Mansuryan is sifting with the rain. That part alone was magnificent. The rest was broken and damaged...
I don't know, it didn't happen. I'm sorry, maybe now he will read it and be offended, but what can I do?
- Years ago, Hrant Matevosyan's "The Lord" was "preparing for a performance" in the theater named after Sundukyan.
- Valery Tumasyan's initiative to stage "Teri" as well as "Autumn Sun", by the way. Yes, it was one of Tumasyan's fantasies, which I met with less reserved enthusiasm.
May there be success, I would also go, watch, enjoy the glory with them.
On the other hand, there was another doubt. In the Russian criticism of that time, which was able to be more sincere and frontal, it was said that the novel is already a late work, "the train has already left".
I'm afraid it really was. That feeling of fear and reservation came from the performance of "Hatsavan". it seems like a real success, but there was something foreign, strange, repulsive. That work has not been in dialogue with us since our youth, it was already outdated when it was written, just as it was dead and repulsive in its time.
- The only key to success was Sos Sargsyan's game. He did not go for the traditional interpretation, by which the author seems to have discredited his character.
- Yes, it's true. Soss was playing it right. Many years ago, Levon Hakhverdyan said that the time will come, and we will say that Balabek did the right thing by not working, avoiding working in the collective farm, and the hero will rebel against the author. I had a similar fear on the occasion of "Teri".
- During the gathering held at the House of Writers on the occasion of your 50th anniversary and the State Prize, you gave the name of Vano Siradeghyan as a notable endowment. What happened and what are your expectations from the novelist Vano Siradeghyan now?
- 1988 changed the fate of many of us. His too. I consider Vano Siradeghyan a good writer, but he engaged in other work. No one dared, everyone was talking, but no one dared to undertake the difficult task of that always discredited and discredited ministry. Vano was a daring boy, he took that risk. Either he will eat the mafia, or the mafia will eat him. I'm afraid it's the second one.
- I would rather you tell me what you liked about his works.
- He wrote straightforward, lively, unsullied literature. To answer your question, I should be able to say in one word what makes our texts come alive and what kills our pages. I don't have that word. Vano's lyrics played and vibrated before your eyes. But... Let's leave it... Vano won't come to literature anymore, like most of us.
- Hrant Matevosyan had ominous thoughts about spending his 54th birthday. Did it have anything to do with Tumanyan's death at the age of 54? Thank goodness 54 passed.
- A thousand praises to God, but... 54 did not pass. There was no way around it, 54 stood up in its worst image of 1988 and began the relentless march of death - maddened, depressed and brought down everyone and everything... like a Mongol, like a Mongol in our Middle Ages, he choked all the sources that fed my fortress, by which I stood. In my 54th there was a break with my previous life, and I am now in a different atmosphere, perhaps also a different person. And it will be very difficult for me to reflect on the works that I started before forty and after forty.
I don't know how to relate to the work of the person I used to be. It's very difficult.
There are manuscripts that have accumulated, unfinished works that exist and live, but it is an observed phenomenon that at this age one cannot interfere in the affairs of youth. I noticed this when I interjected my daughter, the barmaid's, into the shrill translations. I was trying to get hold of translations from Saroyan. I used to write correct, solid, superbly precise words and... I killed the text. Something he did was different, it required intervention, but I would touch it and the text would die. I fear the same will happen again with my own affairs. That risk is there.
But I want to go back to one of your previous questions. "I don't want to use the word opportunism, but aren't the tricks that are still in all your works outdated? How do you adapt to the new conditions as a writer?"
They are outdated. Thank you for the politeness and the refinement of the question, but they are really outdated. It's hard to write with blacksmiths now. At that time, we were prone to proofreading, but now there is a whole series of concepts that should receive their correct arithmetical assessment. Our unscrupulous reality paraded headlong must get its response to your wife of the writer. The grotesquely cruel reality demands from you the answer of a man - that I, behold, know you. That I won't get along with ksmith, aphorism. You must be true, rough, precise, upright, as much as Charents was in its time.
- In Eckermann's book "Conversations with Goethe", Goethe, referring to Byron's poetry, says that if he had been given the opportunity to give speeches, half of his poetry would not have been written. Goethe calls that part of Byron's poetry "unspoken speeches in parliament." I'm talking about the artistic layer that becomes inevitable when giving a correct assessment of reality.
- No, art is always hindered by something: the nobility of the artist. Due to his lack of understanding, lack of education, due to the darkness of the mind, which leads to lack of courage, a difficult task arises. The Shia sect says: "If you meet hell on your way, turn back, the darkness of your mind is to blame, return to your teacher." If you have encountered hellish darkness, then you have been unprepared. By enlightenment I mean the knowledge and courage to call an angel an angel, a devil a devil, a thief a thief and everything else by its proper name.
Then with those characters you can make your desire absolute. Then you really have a happy ending, not a dark hell. Then the tragedy is born, from which you emerge enlightened.
In other cases, hard art makes the reader despair, pushes him to a dead end. This is the culture where incomplete characters stumble in the dark, they shake both the author and the reader. So the enemy is not mastered.
How much Gogol crushed them, the Sobakevs, all the others, that they are funny, that they are even lovable, but they are hideous, aren't they, they are eating Russia? But Gogol appropriated them and revealed the comedy of evils. That's appropriation, right?
"Team leader Shavarsh". "Khambapet Shavarsh" repeats our reality today. But you come out of that cruel tragedy with a smile, enlightened. Are you attending a birthday party? The revival of the thought of sacrifice. No, right? The discovery was made, the question was not left pending. Discovery, birth. It is the birth of fine art, great art.
"Anoush" is the birth of great art, "Hamlet" is the birth of great art, right? That's right. You attended a birthday, why do you leave work smiling? Otherwise, there are bad things about bright things, right? Disgusting, isn't it? Action is also a sin. Work is a body, work must also breathe. It was stillborn, killing both the reader and the audience.
- Again, years ago, it was spread that Roman Balayan would film "Buffalo".
- He signed a contract, but he didn't do it, he wrote a not so bad script, but he didn't do it, and I'm glad he didn't do it. It wasn't his. The case had grown old in him. Now, anyone with a fresh attitude can come and do it, but it was beyond Roman, and it is beyond me. Too much has already left me.
- I see something good in our current situation. Those who were not in their place leave literature, art. Now those who should be engaged in art are engaged in art, they are called to engage in it, they cannot engage in anything else.
- But they were necessary people. They had to create an atmosphere and the individual could act. An actor must play every day, a writer must write every day in their environment. You should have seen Sergey Parajanov. he was not alone for a minute, there were always people around, there were always people who would never be individuals. They gave themselves to the cause of being Parajanov. Mother bee, mother bee reminded that she is always in a procession...
The interview was conducted by Hovhannes ERANYAN
"Arar", NN 2-3, 1993.