“In the life you have lived, who do you think knows you best?”
“I do not even try. It is not my business, not my task.”
“Through whom have you complemented yourself?”
“Very few people remain now. I used to have that anxiety too, that my friends would go before me: if they went, whom would I have in this world?”
“Who in particular?”
“Gurgen Mahari, Suren Aghababyan, Hamo Sahyan. I had a wonderful diaspora Armenian friend named Suren Bursalyan; he returned to America. After he left, I felt broken. They created an environment for me. A few remain now—Levon Hakhverdyan, Hovik Hakhverdyan—to whom one can cling in this life.”
“What was your first understanding of the world? What did you seek, what did you expect but not attain?”
“Long ago I was one of the timid ones who avoided cruel reality and saw themselves in another world. I relied on literature, found myself in the land of books, and thank God the good ones inhabited my thoughts. My discovery of Hovhannes Tumanyan was there from the beginning.”
“To stride broadly through this world I should have learned languages, grasped and absorbed the symbols of world culture from the beginning, rather than merely local symbols, rather than the symbolism of Soviet ideology, alienated from the world. My incompleteness as a citizen and intellectual resulted from incomplete education and party-mindedness. In any case I would like to be a full member of world literature’s great family; I place the blame on my upbringing.”
“What qualities did you inherit from your parents, and which would you have liked to avoid?”
“No, now that you said that, I remembered my father and mother, their selfless diligence. They were encyclopaedic phenomena.”
“Is it possible that today you consider your literature in some way out of date?”
“Did you apply ‘out of date’ to me? In any case I would not call everything directed at defending those interests out of date; if it is, at least it is honest. My father, my parent, the rural part of my people were declared enemies, were to be suppressed, and are suppressed today. Drought has attacked not the city merchant or all the others but the soil and the peasant. I am, one might say, their mouthpiece. I have been inclined to seek my God among them. It is quite possible that my literature binds me to my parents and the village. I have seen and loved God in them.”
“Is rural naivety present in you?”
“Not naivety; I would call it faith, when you are deceived a hundred times and still do not believe you have been deceived.”
“What is your literature’s strength? What did you want to change in the world, and what changed or did not change?”
“I wanted to write a gospel for the Armenian land.”
“Do you consider yourself a prophet?”
“If I did not, if each person did not consider themselves a prophet, they would take up a pen in vain.”
“Who is more loved, Hrant Matevossian the writer or the man?”
“You separate them needlessly. Nevertheless, people have greeted me solely for my literature.”
“Have you felt alone in that respect?”
“I am always alone.”
“Are there moments when you grow bitter towards the world?”
“I do not grow bitter. If you do, it means you are quite naive. I venture to think I am not naive. The world is what it is, not what I think.”
“Have you had complexes you tried to rid yourself of? Many stress that you find it difficult to express yourself orally.”
“And who expresses themselves easily? Those who throw out bluffs and learned phrases. Those who themselves separate their words from the great chaos, who make mistakes, are obliged to stammer, to go back and forward.”
“What do you regret?”
“My best age for writing was twenty-five to thirty-five. That was when Matevossian should have been provided at least with daily bread and a place to write. Then I would have become the prophet, the writer I ought to have been. But that suffering, that daily concern for bread took the wonderful years away from me.”
“What occupied those ten years?”
“Typesetter, one; proofreader, two; then an editorial employee. Afterwards came the film institute and film courses, which were my best years. In seven months I created what gave me a name and recognition throughout the Soviet Union. If I had had ten years instead of those seven months, I would truly have become a great writer and my achievement would have been greater. My path has been the striving of someone who understood literature, a constant movement towards the sun. I do not consider everything I have written to be literature. I understood literature’s ideal and always strove towards it.”
“What do you feel when you see a young, powerful pen?”
“When I see a powerful pen, the reader in me awakens, the reader who will enjoy it. When I see a weak pen, it is like my death. Let me give a recent impression: rereading ‘Vardanank,’ I saw that Demirchyan turned me, a sixty-five-year-old reader, into a young man.”
“Have you ever been rejected by women?”
“I fell in love very easily, always standing generous, blinded, seeing no flaw. I do not know whether they were themselves or the Leyli of my imagination.”
“Who was your great love?”
“My wife.”
“They say she has a commanding temperament. Can you keep your domains free of your spouse’s rule?”
“What kind of wife would she be if she were not commanding? What kind of wife, if she is to bear children, keep a husband and care for everything, would not be commanding? There is a Zangezur quality here, of course; my wife is a strong-willed woman. A good person.”
“What attracted you to her?”
“You ask difficult questions. Why do people fall in love from six or seven years old? Who knows? She moved her hair like that, tucked it behind her ear, and I fell in love. It turned out she had fallen in love too. I entered the institute late; she had kept a place for me beside her.”
“What wild impulses do you have?”
“I have no wild impulses. Self-control is always there; I do not like mad people.”
“Do you like your appearance?”
“I did not like my appearance. That is why I tried to correct it through literature, to be strong in literature.”
“What would you have liked to be like?”
“I had good natural abilities, you know, a gymnast’s abilities; there was no lack of physical strength either. I would have liked to be one metre sixty-five rather than my one metre seventy-seven. Why? So that my chest would be full, my lungs strong, I would be a healthy working man, could sit and work for eight hours, stand, straighten my back and not be tired.”
“What kind of parent have you been?”
“I have not coerced my children. I have loved them, sometimes thought sleeping more important than waking them and sending them to school.”
“When does your face brighten, when do you feel inspired?”
“At small victories, when I see that what I wrote did not come out lifeless, that it is of some use.”
“In what company do you feel good, with drink accompanying you?”
“Lately I drink quite a lot, whereas in those days I avoided drink. I like good-quality cognac and homemade spirits.”
“What do you cherish most in this world, and fear losing?”
“I cherish the shared future of my children and yours. That is what I am anxious about; I cannot drive that anxiety away.”
“Have you wanted to give up life? Do you love life?”
“If I had been brave, I ought to have given it up long ago, but you would be left unprotected. I fear you would remain a flock of sheep that had lost its shepherd, to be eaten by the wolf. Perhaps this is self-deception, or perhaps I am assuming some role as a person avoiding death…”