...For me, our epic is the pinnacle of the entire Armenian culture. The very branch of Little Mher. It seems that the intellectual power of the people, of the speaker, of the speakers, has not been able to plaster, create, expand, and make the main thing that the mind of a genius once guessed. Our reality today is the unreal reality of the Little Mher. An elusive, uncertain enemy and a real defeat.
Who will be able to embody all these? Who will embody this state of the enemy that avoids our mind, our field of vision, sometimes related to the edges of our mind, but never absorbed by our mind? David was highlighted, David was necessary for our reality of national awakening. real David, real enemy, real victory. With that, the Armenian artistic-philosophical thought departed from the very essence of literature, although Mher's condition was obviously repeated in the fates of individual, even large, personalities, parties and the entire Armenian reality. And "The Trial" should have been written neither here nor then, but later and in Europe. death will come like an unreal enemy, just smiling and inviting you to die in a real garbage dump, but you had a different idea of death. Another team leader is Mher, a titan, brave, tragic and funny. Mine is still on the way. Manuscript "Mesrops", my real audacity as a boy, they dragged me to the point of insulting me, and of course they did...
Unfortunately, I realized late that one cannot be such a documentarian. The fault was a little bit of the environment, literary criticism and pen brothers, who seriously wrote things that had nothing to do with our lives, distant in time and space, often also about things that had already been written once. I also had to take the opposite approach: you should write about every woman as if you were writing about your mother. And every person is already an abstraction, everyone deserves their special treatment. Let's say, there is God in every person, and everyone's God deserves the deepest respect. Look for God by your side.
It is difficult for me to understand those people who write about today while writing about yesterday. How does their mind have the power to devastate today, expel from this day, let's say, me and you, themselves, the people next to them, all of us, notables and ordinary people?
If you want to embody a powerful, tyrannical, domineering idea, embody it from your ministers and thieves of today, do not throw yourself into the Middle Ages, there are things here that did not exist in the Middle Ages, and the Middle Ages do not exist today.
Each person, each one has its own content, and it is your duty as a writer to extract its content from it, to reveal its morality.
The heavy pressure of your time on you, the one and last born, that murderous pressure plus even a single work, say, "The Copper Horseman", and you emphasize two starting points in literature, two principled attitudes towards life: perspective literature of the shepherd and the flock, the leader and the people, the king and the people, God and the country - on the one hand, on the other hand, God is in each of us, there are flowers in all of our souls, "You are the smell", "We are our mountains, you have no place among us", the people cannot be so deprived, the initiative of existence cannot be taken away from the people, you cannot consider the people to be devoid of their own morality and stand at their head as if you were a prophet with your mission. I also say: if it is immoral, why hasn't it been destroyed until now? For a thousand years, a hundred thousand years, he was alone in front of himself, why didn't he eat himself like an evil, a cancer? It means that he kept himself in harmony with the universe. Just yesterday we were living in the land of leaders, the land of sanctification of generals, generals and army, leader and people, idols and commoners, and the necessity was to unite people. to see both Queen Tamar and the Virgin Mary in your mother. It seems that our literature has not been a bad valley for Armenian women-girls, see how humble girls have blossomed: Makako, almost all of Mndzuru's work, "A Sweet Heart", "Tigranuhi", "Caucasian Esperanto"...
Whatever it is, there was literature in opposition to totalitarianism and dictatorship among us, which was able to produce masterpieces in the Soviet reality. Let them not stamp the stigma of totalitarianism only on us and consider the matter closed, totalitarianism is the pain of all countries and times, therefore, it is the eternal material of literature.
I have a feeling of gratitude towards the literature of the neighboring countries, literature that itself was also the developer of today's revolution. The one who ignites the fire of human liberation, freedom, and national dignity. For our youth, especially my generation, Western literature was a light in the darkness. It even had an impact on us more than on their peoples. The people of the country of 300 million were thirsty for a really different word, a different voice, and foreign literature became that voice. Another question, that later you saw that it is not a different voice at all, that it is the same voice of your ancestor, your Charents, Bakunts and others "Snows of Kilimanjaro", "To the Liver Masis", "Find Your Life", "Tigranuhi"... but anyway, thank you.
Now, when I look back, the connection with cosmic thinking, universal, universal, eternal values has not been cut here either. Of course, the voices were sublime. Let's say Paustovsky, let's say Abig Avagyan, that they were writing soft half-tone literature. Yes?
After the silencing of the powerful voices of the right, Charents, Babel, Gorku, the future Bakuntsi, those greats, the real greats, who had entered world literature with strong roots - here, after their rootless destruction, a literature came that was scared, but did not lose its conscience, which was difficult to live among the authors of today's grotesque power, let's say Marquez, let's say "Gulagian" Solzhenitsyn. Literature is freedom. they are not semi-free, they are free or slaves.
However, they were our connection to another edge, "Another sky", the culture is also called by this name. Then, the so-called rule of the idea did not last so long, neither on us nor on the whole society. Especially for my generation, it could have turned into an irreparable tragedy, if the breakthrough, the defeat of the imperial thinking by a really heroic revolution of a joke, which was Khrushchev, did not happen when we were 15-20 years old... Stalin opened the doors of the prisons, tried to ventilate these absorbed souls and spaces, blow a dry wind over all of us and everything. If there is anything valuable in us today, it arose and became stronger from the fresh breath of those days.
Then there were conditions for having good literature at least after 1956. The conditions in which stable values could be created. If it was not created in Armenia or it was created little, the fault lies with our half-literate, half-brave, lazy sons of the motherland. It seems that there was a secret oath that we should not work for the empire. This is a controversial issue, whether it works well or badly for the owners. You have to work well in the lordship, because by working badly, by creating badly, you ruin yourself first. You ruin yourself before building an unreliable bridge. An immoral existence arises from you, which in the conditions of tomorrow's freedom will be just as immoral in front of itself, its country, its children.
There was, after all, more opportunity to create literature than there had been in our entire 2,000-year history because, if we lacked statehood, we still had cultural autonomy. In many places, even the center encouraged the creation of national values in the places. In many cases, we did not even meet the standards set by the center. If I say that our people here, our own, devoured Martiros Saryan, accusing him of collusion. as if he was one of the protégés of the state and "ate" his colleagues, who were more talented than him, as if the Armenian artistic thought had a brighter radiation than him... But if I say that Moscow took over the protection of Saryan, entrusted the protection of Ilya Ehrenburg, as well as the excellent Kalents, believe me it is so. We received Minas badly. If it weren't for the support of the "Center", we would have leveled him with our rule of mediocrity. Look up a little, pass over Baku, go to Central Asia: Aitmatov is Moscow's stooge, look around the entire Union and see that in many cases the owners of the empire, knowing for sure that the collapse will come from the deprivation of the province, from excessive concentration, replaced the autocracies of the authorities, we can say, they cheated with cultural, and not only cultural, autocracies. And for our local figures, a unique time came in 2000 years, when we could create the values that today, from the Diaspora to here, there would be 15 film tapes, a selection of 15-20 volumes of poems and short stories on our shelves. We don't have any, we haven't worked much. Alas, especially since I don't know who our new owners are, the owners of your journalists, the owners of my writers, shoemakers and oil merchants, will never create serious conditions for us, which a serious work like literature deserves. And Mantashov's times are far away.
The state had given you three film opportunities. If you could do seven, you could impose your national image on the world and the Union with seven and seventeen. Those pitiful people who are dragging their existence now have not even justified the bread they ate. Who should I blame for that? the state's or their own? Let them at least be professionals and do it, and if they are decent people, do it. When they sent them to the center to study, the Russians beat their own people, but not those who went from the province? If you had your thirst for nationalism, you would have quenched your thirst yourself, you would have come back hardened, at least a professional...
It has passed...
After all this, as a reader, as a person, I long for pure, unpretentious, idle artistic texts, essays free from public speaking hysteria, these "thoughts", these "analyses". That after such passions, a beautiful landscape would be drawn, a description of a river or a field, so that there would be a return to the course of a classical story.
Am I contradicting myself? Apparently, my years are the dotted line you mentioned. Of course, it is arrogance that I reserve the puntiri for myself, and I expect peaceful battles from others. But by my nature, I'm a dotted line, and I would, of course, expect a peaceful essay from others. For a long time, I push myself towards the course of a peaceful story, and perhaps something breaks in me, my element is destroyed. I know that now you will ask about the avant-garde, the revolutionary times, the culture of super-realistic reality. Let's say Salvador Dali and not Martiros Saryan. Yes, Dali is charming, he has a devilish charm: "I want to be Dali too." But from Khorenatsi to Abovya and Charents, the entire Armenian culture, even my Armenian avant-garde if there is such a thing, with its architecture, painting, poetry, prose composition, so-called applied art, proves one thing. we, our culture has a slightly different nature than the art that reflects decay and presents decay. By juxtaposing your cultural peaks, major realities, Tumanyan, Komitas, Saryan, Khachatryan, Charents, Saroyan, Alan Hovhannes... you dare to say that we have a different title and a different orientation, according to Toramanian, they are calming, soothing, leading to reflection. As children of a destroyed homeland, they create in literature and culture what should have been in reality. Another time, I might say that there is a cuddly, motherly attitude towards reality in our culture.
I see the ability of good prose in someone. It is Levon Khechoyan. The physical data were also good, I liked the body physically. he seems to be a strong and brave boy.
Don't ask me about my influences. I don't want to talk about it. I usually rate for differences and not for similarities. I sit in front of the texts as a student, no matter who's essay I want to be: a 15-year-old girl or a laureate. Let me see what they will teach me. This situation of the teacher is dear to me.
Do you remember, I think it was you who asked me on the phone what work of the 20th century I singled out in Armenian literature? We start the century from post-Tuman times. "Commander Shavarsh," I said. Team captain Shavarsh is in our souls and in front of us today. After "Shavarsh", was the literature created among us, the staged version of which is our country and city today? Shukshin gives an opportunity to remember him again. You say, why Shukshin? I don't know. It was the literature of a united homeland, and it seems that there is a kinship, it has been formed, although it may happen that I feel closer to the Arabs. But in this period of 200 years, something had emerged that was not very close, but not alien either, and even more so, an enemy.
Here, Shukshin's saved images come before my eyes. Brave guys were the same Shukshin, the same Vasili Belov, Bitov, Rasputin, Okujava, Astafev, Astafev again, I will mention other names. from Ukrainians - Tyutyunnik, from Georgians - Dumbadze. Recently, I keep remembering one of Shukshin's short stories: "I believe". The drunken provincial inquisitor confronted the questionable owners against the wall: do you believe in socialism, do you believe in God? He is also a Russian person in his essence: socialism, communism, God, adultery, or none of them are in me.
Did your Armenian writer, in addition to Demirchyan's "Hay" experience, manage to condense his personality so much that today's Yerevan seems to us like a gallery of literature? We were noble... That aside. We completely filled the literary arena with stupid, secondary arguments. It was ugly, it was the speech of the unfree. By helping each other, we should multiply and elevate our literature, cinema, so that finally one could become the speech of all, just as Tumanyan became the speech of the people. But for that we should at least be open and honest....Now I often see both sincerity, emotion, and courage in poets. Hrach Sarukhan, who is yesterday's young man, seems to be stereotyped and bookish to the new ones, the new ones are so new.
My generation, I, are already falling outside the text of the literature being created today, we are already falling into the margins. And after overcoming our personal insults, we must caress for new ones. I seem to be able to notice and be happy with the new signs of "my prose". I demand the same effort from the poets of yesterday, unfortunately already yesterday.
By nature, I was inclined towards prose writing, and even my idols of poetry, Tumanyan, Isahakyan, Charents, I consider the poetry of their poetry to be appreciated in the work. Once they even laughed at me when I said that "Khambapet Shavarsh" is the epitome incarnate for me. Abovyan, again a poet. We don't seem to have real prose, and one involuntarily thinks that at least prose is not an element of Armenian. Yes? But my aspiration has been prose, slow narrative prose. not telling the main thing, not metaphorizing the essential, but all about the main thing. The prose of slow, peaceful oppression, which we do not have. The reader himself will "materialize" the main thing of what you have to say. This is the real prose. Otherwise, our A. A.'s prose. All the paragraphs are perfectly about the main thing, but there is no structure and it is not all about the main thing. You are right, such an unforgivable streak cannot be denied, they are our most lasting success. But Shukshin's "insult" cf. he went to the store holding the child's paw, was injured, came back, and your reader wants to hang with the injured person. Saying without saying, perhaps, requires greater knowledge and culture. Our "Literary newspaper" once started something like a debate and it could not develop, we did not contribute. to fulfill the genre, to satisfy the requirements of the genre. Look back, how many novels do you have in Armenian literature that meet the requirements of the genre? I only remember "Gevorg Marzpetuni". But look at what Derenik Demirchyan, the author of the sparkling "Courageous Nazar" has done in "Vardanank". what he did is that... the French caught and published in an abbreviated, collected version that devotion of my youth years, in other words, they rewrote it. Not to mention my others and others. That's how we put it and drive it, with thoughts and audacity... It's not like that. It is not allowed. You have to write the most necessary words. Close yourself in space, say little, keep quiet at the right time, have a sense of pause. Learn from Tigran Mansuryan, learn from musicians, Aram Khachatryan, learn from artists, the great Saryan, see how he pauses, how blue becomes a pause for red... I don't know, today I long for a pure object moving through nature. That should be the story.
And how beautiful Camus's "Foreigner" is. the movement of an object through space. There is no word about existence, but the strain is existence. And now watch the camera "The Fall". all thoughts - philosophy, every word - analysis... stuck, stuck, no movement, I can't read, I can't cope. the case was going to be about conviction, the case itself is being condemned.
I like Zoryan's prose: "Apple Garden", "War". In general, a very significant part of our intelligentsia was alienated from Armenian culture. yesterday he was a subject of Moscow, today he is another subject, tomorrow he will become another subject. You see him in progress and see his tomorrow's conversion to his mother, which is Armenia, and you see his aggression. There is nothing precious here for him. He will come with fire and sword, he will say Narekatsi and Khachkar, but he has no sanctity here, as if he will come to the "capital" with great ideas, but only with the great appetite of a provincial, and you natives will find yourselves expelled in your own country. I drew the attention of many to the "Province sunset" of Bakuntsi. what a contemporary, what a true movie it would be! The greatest work of our time is the alienation of man from his country. They came in the name of civilization, they destroyed your clay castle in the east, which was you, they drove you out of your country, leave your clothes somewhere at the head of the city and take them away. This is my situation today. Mher again, yes? It might happen that a Jew from Moscow will come up with this topic of alienation, hire me as a consultant and... But "Provincia" was here, wasn't it, already forty years ago, waiting for its opener and expander. where were you, what were you doing, who else will represent your situation in your country?
Ruzan Khachatryan wrote
"Ar", 15.06.1993