- What do you think we should talk about today?
– Anything wrong?
- Why, no right step is forgiven?
- Talking about the side, we can talk about the main thing.
- That's how Yeghishe Charents wrote "Yerkir Nair" in the 20s, so times haven't changed at all?
- Of course they haven't changed. In one of Tumanyan's letters there is: because of what happened, no one committed suicide, no one was ashamed of the nation's leaders... In fact, he was governor of Akhaltskha, Akhalkalak, Borchalu, Lori, Pambak, Shamshadin, Gugark for six months. He was a governor with finances, weapons, everything. Until Vehib Pasha's raid, when he was almost captured. At night, on foot, with her girls, getting wet, she crossed the valley from Kirovakan to Shahali, saved the child, and was saved herself.
- Could Hovhannes Tumanyan kill someone? he was a soldier, it was a fight...
- No, he couldn't, he wasn't that poor to kill people.
- Do the poor kill people?
- Yes, the poor are killed because they have reached a dead end of their minds.
- So what, what words should be said to get out of the deadlock and bring results?
- There was going to be a dictatorship, there was going to be a country where a word could be said. The Kirovakan chemical plant, the Alaverdu copper plant, the Spitak sugar factory... The country had to work, and we had to be morally and materially cleansed drop by drop. Even then the word would make sense. It's the same now, and no one can close the borders, can't raise equality, justice, the attractive, pulling, leading image remains the Hollywood propaganda houses, riches, billionaires. Maya, the seed, is stolen. You don't create your image, you don't have your own leader. As the great boy wrote and died, Tigran Hayrapetyan, our mind is scared, it cannot see and describe the reality, it cannot give an answer. The leadership went one way, the people went one way. We are in the fourth part of the epic, from the first to the third, which is actually one part: hero, anti-hero, hero's victory, parade and end, and the end: Mher has no enemy, more powerful and invisible, evasive, small race, various grandsons of Kozbadn...
- Maybe Mher's real enemy was in himself, his fear, his doubt. David won, Mher's power did not prevail...
- On the other hand, humanity cannot live without frustration, it will eat itself. His power will kill him.
- Did you read Viktor Astafev's interview in our newspaper? Do you agree that Soviet literature destroyed drunkenness?
- It was a wonderful speech: constructive, correct, short. Yes, lack of freedom, the oppressive influence of ideology, even the fragility of Khrushchev's freedom. The country and the people could not develop a leader and a political mind of the country.
- Was there such freedom in Latin America that powerful literature was created and powerful writers were born?
- The literature of Russia and the Union was given more importance than its power. More attention, more control and more imprisonment. It came from ancient times, from the Orthodox faith, and under Turkish-Tatar pressure, there was a demand to oppose, unite, and bind all the country's power, which became serfdom. Then, in the Union, the same mission continued. Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev... Old tsars of modern times.
- Is Putin a tsar too?
- Putin also has to be a tsar. If not, the country will come to a stage, what should it do?
- So he is not a dictator, he is a desired owner.
- Both Vazgen and Karen stayed, they were owners. That's what killed it. They understood what to destroy.
- There must be a way out in this situation as well. We created the closed circle. Individuals can, the people cannot have a way out.
- You talk a lot, we talk a lot, both your newspapers and the radio talk endlessly, then...?
- Because we are all very politicized.
- That's not politics, you're defaming, is politics a thing of your mind?
- How, where should we stop, what should we do?
- Don't you pretend to be the animal who wanted to stop the machine gun in his hand when he entered the National Assembly and beheaded those who, in his opinion, were leading the nation on the wrong path? What kind of ambition has occurred to you to solve a problem with a couple of shots, to change the country? Every leader stands up and is ready to rule the country, he wants to speak to the people.
- Why are you silent? You are silent, they stand up, they see their arena open.
- I have respect for speech, I remain silent. I have a debt, I have a responsibility, I am silent. Why are you afraid? Let my brother be afraid, my brother living in the village. He had three cows, each cow supported a family. Before, if there was a cow in the house, the children grew up healthy and beautiful, they did not remain dwarfs, they did not get pneumonia. A cow is now $150. The pain is his, the pain is the unemployed worker. Today, tomorrow will be busy. Our biggest enemy is not having a job, that you will not get a salary on the 15th of the month, even if it is 5000 drams. You wake up in the morning, you have nowhere to go... You have to invent something on which your victory will be unequivocal, instead of embracing reality and fighting against it or for it.
- What is the most important question of the day?
- Did you publish an article about a person? That's what we lack the most.
- Is that a question to be solved?
- I don't know what exactly a Hemingway report gave on the battlefield, but in retrospect, that's all that remained. My last impression ten years ago. With Hakob Hakobyan, taking advantage of the fact that the milpet was familiar to us, we went to see An up close. Milpet also had a friend, Alyosha. On the way to Leninakan, on the right side in the small Armenian valley, where the water was expressed only by the darkness of green. the source was blind, absolutely arid land, damaged over the centuries, remnants of old planters, Alyosha had fenced, built a farm, gathered his family, lived. He had a little daughter-in-law, she knew how to make kit, she supported the family. The hope was not the slopes of Aragats, where there was no grass. The hope was the trains that would carry combi cars, they would stop at the half-station, they would make arrangements, they would dump food from the train, the hope was on the thief. The hope was in communication, railways, the great Soviet Union. The only drawback was that Alyosha had no private property. And he loved his life. While building the dam of the Akhuryan River, an island appeared in between, the attention of the Union was a little lost, and on the border the Turks planted their new, fresh, red brick, high, as a border sign, as a house of faith. It was irrigated, it was irrigated by the rain, the Turk's herd was peacefully grazing in the endless green area. Who will write this, why hasn't it been written?
- We are obsessed with ideas, we want a big country.
- The smallness of the earth? We were part of the Soviet family, we thought we would live next door to democratic Turkey, fraternal with Azerbaijan, then our houses were destroyed...
- Maybe we don't need that house, maybe we are used to living at this-and-that door, in this-and-that state, on the roads.
- If the north did not suggest the idea of our home, it made it possible by creating a favorable environment, that was also the idea of the Armenian marz, in 1970. we entered the Russian army at our request, they did not draft us, then the first republic was the same, the appeal to Vorontsov-Dashkov was the same, the school and the church were the same. First, a dictatorship was needed. We didn't have that courage, we didn't have that brave idea. We didn't have a boy of great will. We did not meet. Not in politics, not in literature. None of the Armenian writers knows how to write a story, none of them is able to construct and assemble a drama.
- That is why, in his opinion, the Armenian poet was a dramatist.
- Tumanyan was really a dramatist, he removed 1000-1200 lines from "Anush" to the final version. He thought like a dramatist, lived like a writer.
- Do you change or edit your writing a lot?
- In the process, but I'm not coming back later. Doing is more valuable than reflecting on what has been written. There is no time.
- Is literature being created now?
- Something is being created. I will not be wrong if I say that the golden age of literature has passed. Basically, in the 60s and 70s. it's over. In 1801 It was the time of your literature. I don't know what kind of revolutionary-party leader can return public attention to literature. Who will do it? Money, wealth, cinema ate literature, creating a lazy reader, an active spectator and a lazy reader. Every reader is already a director, directing line by line, moving forward creating a movie, but the movie viewer, the TV viewer does not need that work, those distinctions, those analyses.
- Why did the writers get lazy?
- If literature does not provide bread, money, you are not involved. Everyone turned to the poem... It's delirious. I hate already calibrated lines. On the contrary, they all write so well. Just wonderful junk.
- Humanity has decreased, technology is glorious, there is no light, no breath in literature, they write well, but what do they write...
- Victor Astafev has a three-page short story, he says, my aunt lost her brothers, husband, relatives - about 80 people, but when the mourning started, it started with Lyoshka. When going to work at night, the people slept in order to do the harvest before the heat in the morning. They went to the grassland on the mountain slopes. The mother left the three-year-old child in the care of the two- and four-year-olds. Mama wanted it very much, they set out to take the child to Mama. And they got tired on the way and fell asleep... They woke up and found that the child was not there. They searched for days with the whole brigade, but did not find them. As you descend from the mountains, there are sand dunes without roots, wide at first, then narrow. There is an impression of the road near the exit. Years later, only the writer tries to understand what happened to the child, and after crossing the whole road, he realizes that the child got stuck on that road and got lost... I had read so much, I got a lump in my throat on that one line. The humanity of literature... You read books with a thousand heroes, a thousand generals, soldiers, none of them gives the pain of losing a child. We did not write it because our literary mind is constantly occupied with historical, national problems. We weren't us...
This interview has no beginning and no end, this conversation pretends to continue indefinitely. Not because I don't know how to ask summary questions and conduct summary interviews. This conversation is endless because of the infinity of things to say. Endless things to say, this part of which I had no right to steal from the reader.
Anahit ADAMIAN
"Republic of Armenia", 25.07.2000