In 1969, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Tumanyan and Komitas, the greats of our art, is coming to an end. Apart from being a luxurious holiday, that year will be a year of worries for us. a year of fighting against murderous self-righteousness, irresponsible superficiality, amateurism and civility in art. It will be a year of high demand for high art and, thus, a parade of patriotism, because high art is above all great patriotism.
Literary scholar Levon Hakhverdyan brought his study about Hovhannes Tumanyan, "The World of Tumanyan", to the square of that celebration and struggle. With the juxtapositions and contrasts of drafts, pre-rehearsals, versions, obvious influences, re-creations, Tumanian art masterpieces, the poet's personal life, Armenian and international life, while being a literary study, the book itself, somewhat independent of the will of the literary critic, grows into a painful humanitarian, dreamy longing for the good and a spirited call to patriotism. While being a literary study, Hakhverdyan's book acquires the characteristics of a work of fiction, growing into a deep hatred against us and against the age-old tyranny of mankind, ignorant and violent ambition. It is a regrowth, because such is the reality itself, in this case, Tumanyan's life and work, and Hakhverdyan did not grasp the material, adapting the material to his stature as a literary critic, but went through the ups and downs of the material until the ascent and descent, from the earthy Tumanyan's kneading and burning until he made his last leap, in the pure realms of the divine eternity, until nirvana, the extinction.
I noticed so much that it seems that he is not even a national poet, so Armenian, as if he is a narrow national-biography, familiar as the advice of our grandfathers, objective, with the weight of clay, woven entirely from subject and movement, his literature, which does not have the element of meaning, is a magnificent tower in the Olympic heights of the national, global thought. It is flawless in fine art and also flawless in love of meaning, because it is love of meaning with the strong wings of fine art. ¥Space, object and movement, space, object and movement, let go of adjectives and even Hegelian level judgments - the literary critic concludes by examining Tumanyan's work and proposes it as the most far-reaching weapon of poetic art. An appropriate task, because we are all a bit of a scumbag and have forgotten the unadorned majesty of our monasteries¤.
If it is true that the uncivilized nationalities, large in number, last for a long time in their strength, it is equally absolutely true that the only protectors of small nations against that cosmic cold of assimilation are the great personalities of their national art. They are the fortune of small nations. Tumanyan's literature is the fortune of our people. "A statesman among a stateless nation. A patriotic life for a homeland that had many enemies and few friends. His whole life was a creative and civil feat. Tumanyan put both his life and his genius on the altar of the people." When he was still young, only chance prevented him from going to Western Armenia. During the years of Armenian-Tatar conflicts, he stood in the middle of drawn swords from both sides, then he compiled textbooks for Armenian children, there were no Armenian children's poems, fairy tales, short stories, and conversations, and he wrote children's poems, short stories, and conversations. During the Genocide, he was with his family at the front and with the emigration. The son of Artavazd died in the positions of Van, he turned white and aged in a month among the multitude of orphans. "Hovhannes Tumanyan is in that hell, he is acting, fortunately, he is not going crazy" ¥Leo. "From the past"¤. Thus, "Anoosh", "Illusion", "Farewell of Sirius", "A Drop of Honey", "The Landing", the quartets, those documents of his genius and our national genius, are accidentally saved fragments. He could not save his people, but he endowed the saved half with the power of his masterpieces.
Director and writer Fellini begins his motion picture "Eight and a Half" about the artist with a dream. The artist, suffocating in the immobility of the river, with a tragic effort, leaves down the herd of self-movements emitting heat and corruption, the web of flow lines, the iron weight of bridges, the concrete insensibility of dead Armenian buildings, patiently, approaching the white coolness of the clouds, to the divine unfolding of melodies and to the air, the air, where the moonlight would ring with the honesty of an organ—but behold, a rope is thrown from below and drags him down, a mighty fall from the softness of the clouds to the hardness of the earth. That movie is about Hovhannes Tumanyan. That hundred times, Tumanyan was overthrown by the incomparable Turkish power, by the fat grandeur of the tsarist officials, by the deceit of the Georgian Mensheviks, by the murderous weight of all our enemies and worries.
For Tumanyan, both patriotism, worship of nature, and sighing became an obsession with the difficult ascent of life and creativity. From the word "sigh" to a deep sigh, expressing his knowledge of the Buddha's teaching, from the poetic interpretation of nirvana to the forced injection of personal and national destiny into the airless bottle of Buddhism, from a poem to the unbounded immensity of existence, from the rhetoric of patriotism and belonging to the emigration collapsed under the walls of Etchmiadzin. a month-old liturgist ¥"Rest! My orphans... excitement is futile... futile and futile..."¤, from the youthful longing for the nature of the birthplace to the yearning of the defeated Armenian poet and Armenian, to melt and assimilate with nature. Back, back to childhood and beyond childhood. What a burden of defeats the world put on his shoulders. - Here are the Tumanyans of the literary critic, who at the well-written end of the study become a tragic colossal figure with the majesty of a dormant volcano smoking its last quiet smoke.
Literary critic Levon Hakhverdyan wrote for us the most difficult of monographs. Tumanyan is our childhood, and the words learned in childhood are not etymologically analyzed. Here, Hakhverdyan explained the etymology with an amazing freshness of view and perception. After reading Hakhverdyan's book, Tumanyan's lines, long-familiar lines, resist again, as during the first reading, and you get through them with difficulty.