“Twenty-five years have passed since your first literary appearance. What would you say about your creative path and subject? How do you assess your twenty-five years of literary work?”
“I have written little, and my share of the blame is not very large. The exaggerated response to Ahnidzor, the disputes over the novella and then the screenplay We Are Our Mountains, took so much strength that could have become literary achievement, artistic value. I consider the years in cinema lost: it gave me only bitter disappointment and grave defeats, except perhaps We Are Our Mountains, one of Henrik Malyan’s successful adaptations. I had no intention of publishing the collection The Master; the works were written as literary screenplays, but I published them hoping to ask my viewer-reader’s forgiveness. Disappointments and defeats should have taught me, yet I have not lost faith in a great national cinema. I would like our national image, perhaps through another’s work rather than mine, to become an achievement of our culture and pass in all its radiance and splendour across the screens of a vast country.
“I wrote the essay Ahnidzor in 1960, the film novella The Master in 1980. Both say the same thing. I think I found what I had to say while still a student; the material has not changed over these twenty years, but has increasingly unfolded and grown. We Are Our Mountains essentially repeated Ahnidzor’s meaning. There is a section called The Bear about the ‘brotherhood’ of the local inhabitant and the forest. The inhabitant feels himself master of the country, then discovers that his position before his forest, his bear, his village is different. A shade of estrangement and hostility enters between him and nature. No, my material and message have not changed; they have expanded and deepened. And often, as in Tashkent (Clouds That Have Given Their Rain), it has required a man’s severity to look at the destructive changes between one person and others, between people and the natural world.”
“You mentioned painful changes in nature. How do you envisage a struggle that could bring positive results?”
“It should be the daily work of mind and hand of all of us and each of us, not an alarm sounded by one or two concerned writers or forest wardens. Loss of land, industrial aggression, the collision of nature and humanity, depriving future generations of their inheritance: these are grave questions. They must be examined comprehensively, given the clarity of a constitutional article; amid universal concern and seriousness, the means of solving them must be defined and applied. We must speak either across the whole country and at full voice, or not speak at all. Half-saying is worse than silence: it wears the question down and numbs it.”
“What would you say about the current literary process and writers of your generation? Asking this, I recall a sentence from The Living and the Dead: ‘No bird can migrate to Egypt alone, because it does not know where Egypt is. Only the flock knows where Egypt is.’”
“Many writers of my generation were gifted; one could say the whole generation and its time were gifted: Aghasi Ayvazyan, Mushegh Galshoyan, Vardges Petrosyan, Zorayr Khalapyan, Ruben Hovsepyan, Hovhannes Melkonyan, Perch Zeytuntsyan, Manuk Mnatsakanyan, Norayr Adalyan, Karen Simonyan. This number was a force with which good literature could be created. But we all had retreats and halts, everyone’s course was distorted in one way or another: cinema hindered one, something else another. The Armenian prose we were all to create together has not yet come into being. Many have offered splendid testimonies, such as Aghasi’s Caucasian Esperanto and Tiflis, but the expression of our shared world has not happened; the ‘flock instinct’ that would give us all wings and direction has not arisen. A theorist may object: it has arisen, it has existed. But I am speaking of unrealised possibilities. There has been no full expression of the author’s talent, no success consolidated by another success, no celebration of great achievement. The generation has not yet created its A Modest Girl. Perhaps my demands are excessive; I will not argue. We must work, fill the painful gaps. Mushegh is already gone; little time remains for us, the generation, too.”
“What would you say about the young prose appearing today in the press and separate books? What literary value do you see in these works?”
“I wait, follow, read. I was simply delighted by the uniquely precise epithet, and the right choice of words generally, in Sasunik Torosyan’s essay A Shirt of Fire. I spoke long ago of my great hopes for Vano Siradeghyan and Meruzhan Ter-Ghulanyan. I want to recall that writers created their finest works at thirty to thirty-five: Abovyan wrote Wounds, Tumanyan Anush, Charents Commander Shavarsh at that age. I am even convinced that Narekatsi wrote the Book at that age. I would like young writers to be able, to have the opportunity, to use well this age when nature treats them favourably.”
“What would you say about your characters? Readers know these kind, strong, sometimes seemingly weak and naïve people of Tsmakut. But they would like to know the highest goal you pursue in creating them.”
“It would be untrue to say they are there, I go, describe and return. Literature and life itself awaken my characters within me together. I have often said, ‘I am my time’s chronicler, my characters’ biographer.’ It is not entirely so, but I say it to direct every gaze towards the particular person, to call for respect for each particular human individual. Yes, they are all real people, real biographies. Sometimes I want to abstract, add, subtract, then see that life has created a greater figure from them than I could. I keep encountering the fact that they are more full-blooded, richer and more resilient than my creations. With an inaudible inflection, an insignificant incident, people in reality come each time and shatter the moulds of my ideas about them. I understand what a trivial model my inner Taj Mahal was before that real, unique, great temple. Every one of them has the perfection of an animal, say a horse, or a great work, Anush. They could and should be transferred exactly into literature. But they are people, with children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and lives; they have also done things they should not have done and which, growing older, they too consider immoral. I am compelled to change names.
“A hundred and forty years ago my grandfather Ohanes came and founded our village, Ahnidzor. Zorayr Khalapyan asked whether I thought Ahnidzor was Ohanadzor altered in pronunciation. Perhaps it is. I want to repeat my grandfather’s experience in literature: found my village, and I am certain I will succeed. When I came, Ahnidzor existed; Tsmakut did not. Tsmakut is the union of real Ahnidzor and my love for it. Tsmakut is becoming: while I exist, it will change, grow, become more populous. Tsmakut is my love, my attitude, my anxiety for the human being. Tsmakut is me. Film-makers do not know that Tsmakut is Ahnidzor plus my love. They go and film Ahnidzor, but in place of my love they should have filmed their own love as creators. I do not know whether they have it; judging by their films, they do not. And their Tsmakut does not come into being.
“Rostom, his sister Shushan, the Tevans, Ohan, Aghun, Simon, the horses, dogs and cows—all my characters are permanent inhabitants of all my future works. Together they are a people; imagining a stage, they are background, chorus. For now the foreground belongs to two or three, while the people sing or mourn or simply watch: in short, they are continually there. Later the principal character may join the chorus and someone else emerge from it to the foreground. They must attend one another’s weddings, bury one another, help and comfort one another. Two of my paternal uncles, who will be the basis of a future work, died. I did not go to their funerals, and still do not go to the village, so as not to see empty the slopes and paths where I left them…”
“You will soon finish the novel Takh. What are your expectations?”
“For the first time I face the weighty fact of presenting one work inside one cover. A collection is different: if they dislike one piece, perhaps they will like another. The novel is my anxiety and pride. I know I have salvaged pages, splendidly written passages. But my demand of myself and fellow writers is to create a work with the perfection of a bridge as graceful as a deer’s leap. It almost seems not a novel: there are many excursions, but my ambition of scope is great too. Seven hundred pages exist. Before finishing, I feel both fear of having sinned against the genre and pride that so much material is already written. We shall see.”
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Interview by Ignat MAMYAN.
Grakan Tert, 23 November 1984.