Many years ago, it so happened that I had the desire to write a film story about Vahan Teryan, and the authorities of Haykino immediately signed a contract. It's a good thing that that script was not written and filmed, otherwise that icon of our culture would have been desecrated, and thus each of us is a director to some extent, along with the reading of the poet's life and work, unfolds and waves images that are no less than the images that should have been, but fortunately did not happen. In that unwritten film history, there was hard rural work, and the stubborn drive of the ancestors to Europe and light, and the episodes of building the monastery, and "Tolstov" by Mr. Sukias, and the destructive treaty of Brest Litovsky, and the journey of the Turkish diplomat hiding in the same train carriage and perhaps in the same compartment, and Vahan, which was from Tumanyan's life. and the cold steppes of Orenburg and death. In short, it was the tragic life of the great Armenian poet Vahan Teryan and not someone else's.
I do not claim that I will never become Teryan and his time again. The stony indifference of the world to the luck of the Armenian people, the conspiratorial and allied silence of the rulers and governments in front of our tragedy, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the poetic poverty of our efforts, which is similar to Teryan's impotence, turn our eyes every time to Teryan's fateful days, when the battle was more than open and our efforts more than faithful and pure. Perhaps, someday, I will find a like-minded person who shares my pain and love, whose stock of knowledge is richer than my stock and whose nerves are more stable than mine, and together we will caress that movie story "As the first Christians".
At that time, I know, many things in my attitude will be changed, modified and denied, in particular, in the conditions of publicity, it will be possible to see the truth about BrestLitovsk more closely, that the future, now the present, of the Armenian people has been torn and worn out, and not a single episode will be changed and changed. Standing against a white poster, the poet recites:
Sunny my boy, your bride is red
My heart is full of mourning for your mother, my heart for your mother...
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We are all, all of us, orphaned children,
We are children lost forever motherless...
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A foreigner will not understand us.
The cold foreigner will not understand us...
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I say to the spring cloud in the field of light, stay well...
And so, maybe fifteen, maybe twenty full minutes. And the minute of the cinema is really full as gold tending to refined purity. He pronounces, fixes himself on the spot with restrained satisfaction (and that silence is the end of one poem and the beginning of another), pronounces. And only that secret smile betrays that it is in the hall in front of the people that the people and their prophet have found each other.
Whether I will write that film story or another one is unknown, but the episode will not change. I think so, because those poems, those true testimonies from the deepest depths of our noble soul, our fortune, are unique and forever. And Saryan's paintings, Khachatryan's "Tokata", Tumanyan's "Bardzr" woven, Charents' "Shavarsh" bent in our culture, there is no question of creating an equivalent of Teryan's poems, that "Farewell Gazelle", that "Nairi", those poems should only speak for themselves.
Leo Tolstoy has a writing about those who live as bread for people and those who live for themselves at the expense of people. In the "dark" times of Ter Sukias, Tolstoy was a famous writer and authoritative thinker in at least one family of Javakhk, in our times of widespread literacy, I doubt if you see that great man suffering in any heart. He who lived only for himself at the expense of people, splashed and devoured, had fun and spoiled, entered into chrome boots and an oak coffin, chrome boots and especially an oak coffin, and took his well-fed body to the worms, neither his skin nor flesh was needed by anyone in this world, and he, the Kholstomer horse, who gave his living train to people, He also gave up his flesh and bones, skin and blood. the skin went to the tanner, the bone to the cobbler, the blood to the horse guard dog, the meat to the starving mother wolf and wasps.
I don't know any other example in life and literature that would show Teryan's unceasing dedication to life in such a way. his work and experience, his failure and success, the flesh and bones of his poetry were completely absorbed from the Armenian life and literature of his time and later. He didn't have an untranscribed word. He didn't have an unflattering line. He put a language in the mouth of Armenian literature, instinctive vague vibrations that even avoided being recognized by Tumanyan, got a name and meaning from Teryan and were already a stable word product for the one who came after him, the one who came after him could already invite to the Armenian language such writers and thinkers, for whom our language had no place before Teryan's appearance. Does not the Bible have this same phenomenon in mind in its parable about speech. "From the beginning it was..." Alone.
Teryan, yes, gave something to the Armenian language, and the language, which is the basis and foundation of the entire culture, began to assimilate phenomena that Teryan had only sketched before. Is this purely Teryan's merit or his time as well? Neither increasing nor diminishing the significance of his work, let us say that Teryan himself was also the result of the persistent work of many times and generations, but let us also say that after him, Armenian painting began to see and paint differently than before Teryan. After him, Armenian architecture began to be painted and built in a different way than before Teryan. both the music and the folk art itself. Otherwise, they would be old-fashioned and called out of date.
It is an observed phenomenon that emigrants look for and find a homeland as similar as possible to their old homeland in new places and restore the old home in the new village with the same identity. ahead, there was a mountain in the distance, they are looking for a mountain in new places, the village was at the source of the river, here they find a source, the door faces east, faces east again. Our talk now, however, is not about the unconditional similarity of the worlds of Byurak and Javakhk, but about the repetition of two seemingly distant worlds: the world of Javakhk and Teryan's poem. This beautification of the people and nature and that beautification of Teryan's poem are mutually exclusive and find each other. If I were blindfolded around my native land and I saw only a small picture, that I saw a cutely dressed girl measuring herself and dancing in front of a cow and a calf, or I saw a bend in the river in the distance, or a wall of a monastery, or a carpet-sized place of well-kept bread and potato crops, I would say: you brought me Teryan's Javakhk, only Teryan's poetry is so beautiful.
This annual pilgrimage of ours is necessary for both us and the poet. we are his immortality, he needs us, without us, his ring would also die out, just as, say, Aghtamar's ring has died out. and from the great to the small and from the leader to the simple, we all need it, because the goal of man is to relate to something noble and beautiful. Striving towards itself, we aspire to that sublime and supreme.
26.07.1987