- Twenty-five years have passed since your first literary speech. What can you say about your past creative path, your topic, how do you evaluate your twenty-five years of literary merit?
- I wrote little and my share of guilt is not so great. The exaggerated reaction of "Ahnidzor", the controversy of the novel "We are our mountains" and then the film script took away from me how much strength that could have become a literary merit, an artistic value. I consider the years spent in the cinema to be wasted, the cinema gave me only bitter disappointment and heavy defeats, except, perhaps, the film "We are our mountains", which is one of Henrik Malyan's successful screenplays. I had no intention of publishing the collection "The Lord", they were written as literary scripts, but I published them in the hope of asking for the forgiveness of my audience-reader. Disappointments and defeats should have been a lesson, but I have not lost faith in having a great national cinema. I would like, even if it was not created by the work of one of us, it would become an achievement of our culture and our national image would be shown on the screens of the vast country with all its shine and brilliance.
I wrote the review "Ahnidzor" in the sixties, the novel "The Lord" in the eighties. Both are saying the same thing. I think I was still a student, I found something to say, and the material has not changed in these twenty years, it has been revealed and grown. The novel "We are, our mountains" actually repeated what the "Ahnidzor" review said. There is a section titled "The Bear" about the "brotherhood" of the local resident and the forest, the local resident feels like the owner of the land, then discovers that his situation is different in front of his forest, his bear, his village, a tone of estrangement and enmity enters between him and nature. My material and what I have to say, no, have not changed, expanded and deepened, and in the meantime, often, as in the novel "Tashkend" ("Rainy Clouds"), feminine cruelty was required to look at the destructive changes between man and man, man and nature.
- You spoke about painful changes in nature. How do you imagine the struggle that could lead to positive results?
- It should have been the daily work of each and every mind and hand, not the alarm of one or two sympathetic writers or forest rangers. The loss of land, industrial aggression, the clash of nature and man, the deprivation of future generations - these are serious problems that must be examined according to everything, the constitutional article should be clarified, the means of their solution should be specified and implemented in an environment of universal concern and seriousness. It should be talked about either all over the country and with full voice, or it should not be talked about at all. Failure to respond is worse than silence, failure to respond wears out and numbs the issue.
- What would you say about the current literary process, writers of your generation? By the way, when I ask this question, I remember a phrase from your novel "The Living and the Dead": "Each bird alone cannot go to Egypt, because it does not know the place of Egypt. Only the herd knows the place of Egypt."
- Many of the writers of my generation were gifted, one can say that my entire generation and its time were gifted - Agassi Ayvazyan, Mushegh Galshoyan, Vardges Petrosyan, Zorayr Khalapyan, Ruben Hovsepyan, Hovhannes Melkonyan, Perch Zeytuntsyan, Manuk Mnatsakanyan, Norayr Adalyan, Karen Simonyan. this quantity was power, with this one could create good literature. But all of us had setbacks and stops, all of us had a distortion in one way or another, one's cinema got in the way, another something else, and the prose of the Armenian language, which we were all going to create together, has not yet taken place, has not been realized. Many of us gave glorious testimonies, like Aghasu's "Caucasian Esperanto" and "Tiflis", but the expression of the united world of all of us did not exist, the "herd instinct" that wings us all, orients us all, did not arise. Any theorist can argue: arose, was, but I am talking about unrealized possibilities. There was no full expression of the author's talent, no success was reinforced by new success, no celebration of great achievements. The generation has not created its "Humble Girl" yet. Maybe my demands are excessive? I don't argue. It is necessary to work, to fill the painful gaps. Mushegh is gone, and we, the generation, don't have much time left either.
- What would you say about youth prose, which today appears in the press and in individual books? What literary values do you see in those works?
- I am waiting, watching, reading. I was simply amazed by the uniquely accurate adverb of Sasunik Torosyan's "Fire Cover" review, and the right choice of words in general. I have long said about my great hopes for Vano Siradeghyan and Meruzhan Ter-Gulanyan. I want to remind you that writers created their best works at the age of 30-35. Abovyan wrote his "Wound", Tumanyan his "Anoush", Charents his "Team Leader Shavarsh" at that age, and I'm even sure that Narekatsi wrote "The Log" at that age. I would like young writers to be able, to have the opportunity to make good use of that age of nature's favor.
- What about your heroes? The reader knows those kind, strong, sometimes poor and naive Tsmakout residents. But he would like to know what maximum you strive for when creating their characters.
- It would not be correct if I say that they are there, I go and describe and come back. My heroes are awakened in me simultaneously by literature and life itself. I have often said: "I am the documenter of my time, the biographer of my heroes." It's not quite like that, but I say it like that in order to direct all eyes to a specific person, to call respect to each specific human unit. All are, yes, real people, real biographies. Sometimes I want to cancel, add, subtract, then I see that life has made a bigger figure out of them than I would have made, and I am always faced with the fact that they are full-blooded, richer and more durable than what I made. The people of reality, with an inaudible page, an insignificant incident, come and break the molds of my ideas about them every time, and I understand that in front of that real, that unique, that big temple, what a tiny replica my inner Taj-Mahal was. At one time or another, everyone has the perfection of an animal, say a horse, or of a great creation, "Anush". It was possible and it was necessary to transfer literature with the same identity, but because people with children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, have also done such things that they should not have done and which they also find immoral after they get older, I have to change the names.
140 years ago, my grandfather Ohanes came and founded our Ahnidzor village. Zorayr Khalapyan said, "Don't you think that Ahnidzor is Ohanadzor with a phonetic change?" Maybe it really is. I want to repeat my grandfather's experience in literature, to found my own village, and I am sure that I will succeed. When I arrived, Ahnidzor was there, Tsmakut was not. Tsmakut is the union of real Ahnidzor and my love for that Ahnidzor. Tsmakut is in being, because I am, Tsmakut will change, grow, become many people. Tsmakut is my love, my attitude, my concern for man. Tsmakut is me. The filmmakers don't know that Tsmakut is Ahnidzor plus my love. They are filming Ahnidzor, but instead of my love, they wanted to portray their love of a creative person, which I don't know if they have or not, judging by their films, they don't have it, and their Tsmakut is not happening.
Rostom, his sister Shushan, the Tevans, Ohan, Aghun, Simon, horses, dogs, cows - all my heroes are permanent residents of all my future works. They are all together, if we imagine a stage: background, chorus. the stage is now given to two or three people, and the people are singing or wailing or just watching, in short, it is always there. Then the main character can go to the stall, and from the stall another one can come forward. They will attend each other's weddings, bury each other, help and console each other. My two uncles, who will be the basis of my future work, died, and I did not go to their funeral, and I still do not go to the village, so as not to see the slopes and paths where I left them empty...
- You will finish the novel "Takh" soon. What are your expectations?
- For the first time, I am faced with the difficult fact that I will present a case in a composition. The collection is different, if they don't like one, they might like the other. The novel is my anxiety and my pride. I know that I have saved pages, wonderfully written passages, but my request to myself and my writing brothers is to create a work with the perfection of the drawbridge. It doesn't seem like a novel, there are many excursions, but the ambition of my inclusions is also great. There are 700 pages. And before I finish, I have both the fear of having sinned against the genre, and the pride that so much material has already been written. Let's see.
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The interview was conducted by Ignat MAMIAN
"Literary newspaper", 23.11.1984.