- Why did the writer Hrant Matevosyan become the president of the Union of Writers? Did he have nothing more to say, or did the presence of his writing family make him temporarily put down his pen?
- There was something to say. Even a very long life would not be enough to tell. Half of my many works, one on top of the other, remained on my desk. The great importance of the Writers' Union will be seen by the absence of the Writers' Union. The existence of the Union of Writers is not something in our national, cultural and social life, but its absence will be terrible. This awareness of the importance of the Writers' Union brought me to the Writers' Union. I hope that in the near future, when the Union will fully support its life in the republic, I will be able to pull myself behind my desk and do my job.
– Your day at the Writers' Union. Do you leave the house every morning with displeasure or with love?
– With the horror of cattle being driven to the slaughterhouse. And with a curse. Should others have enjoyed the shen and len days of the Writers' Union and left me this distress, when a new beginning is made, when a poor country does not value speech, when you are not part of the state, when the conditions of unjustified attention, unjustified hostility, unjustified, exaggerated friendship have changed to neglect and indifference?
- Is the president of the Union of Writers Hrant Matevosyan reconciled with the writer Hrant Matevosyan?
- Hrant Matevosyan considers not only his line an inseparable part of his literary life, but also Hamo Sahyan's and those who come and will come. I consider the aspiration of a girl, a boy, a schoolboy, a villager, a city dweller, ultimately, the whole nation, to be a part of my literary life. And I consider their failure to be my failure. Their failure becomes a black spot in the Armenian language, and their success becomes a ray of light. The activities of the Writers' Union president and the Writers' Union leadership should be aimed not only at their own person, but also at creating that wonderful panorama of the entire Armenian literary life, where the valuable rings, the bells are heard, nothing is forgotten, and newcomers have a place to come.
- The Armenian writer is going through difficult times. On the one hand - publishing, on the other - material difficulties. Can the Writers Guild support Union members?
- Somehow manages to stand by and turn a blind eye to the fact that it's not help anyway. It's just that the opportunities are very limited, there are no funds.
- Who is today's best novelist, best poet? Do you see anyone?
- Completing your previous question, I should say that we are living in a time of scandal. This is such a change of eras that the intellectual, the artist, the musician, the writer, stands in front of the society with a completely different attitude, in a truly new and unfamiliar status. The period of ideology that was the period of 200 years and even 2000 years of our national life is ending. We are entering a new period, the period of pragmatism, where the main factor is no longer the capital Ban: Jivani, Abovyan, Tumanyan, Charents, Sevak, Sahyan, Davoyan, Khorenatsi, Narekatsi, Western Armenians, all of us. We are now entering the period of pragmatists, and a tough fight awaits us in the new era. Will the Thing, that is, be able to impose ourselves on the new, unfriendly age? The panorama of that time was for us, that panorama of Pushkin, Abovyan, Tumanyan and many others was aimed at making us. Now are new times, and we must be able to make our voice heard in these new times. Indeed, we are facing a difficult situation, especially the intelligentsia of small nations, particularly the intelligentsia of fine arts.
- Continuing with you, who is today's best poet, novelist? Do you see anyone?
- I see. Khachik Manukyan, Violet Grigoryan. They are able to impose themselves. And their success is not fleeting, it is lasting and convincing, they have no dead words, it is the living reality that grows in them into a living language. It would be a bit much if I say that they are distinguished, big personalities, because they are not so alone, but those demonic gates that stand in front of all of us, those heavy entrance doors that are locked in front of all of us and by clawing, asking, begging, incantation, somehow we open them or we don't... Those gates are now moving back in front of them. This is Violet and Khachik. Gurgen Khanjyan is not an accidental name in prose. It has brought to the market a new, different kind of prose of good quality, and is a stable presence. The other is Levon Khechoyan. I have to say that I have worries for all four of them, but may God give them Demirchian tenacity to permanently beat those closed, enchanted, locked doors. They are the tomorrow of our literature.
- What is literature for you?
- Literature is a religion for me.
– Your favorite literary work, literary character.
- There are many. It may also happen that they are not ours, they belong to other peoples, other literatures: Russians, Americans, Anglo-Saxons. However, sometimes I notice with pride that in my difficult moments heroes and situations stand out from the Armenian literary essay, and I see that my boys of yesterday, my boys who were destroyed yesterday, my boys who appeared yesterday are not among the condemned and the nameless dead today, but there are Tumanyan, Charents, Bakunts, Hamo Sahyan... And if I had to single out one work, it would be Leo Tolstoy's "Haji Murad".
- And the literary character?
- Let's generalize. My favorite literary character is the character of the Armenian woman created jointly by Armenian writers: Hakob Mndzuru, Axel Bakunts and many others. Ever thought of offering such a collection? Apparently, tomorrow we will have the opportunity to compile that collection ourselves with the title "Our Mothers" through our publishing house. This collection will feature my favorite character. I have a couple of lines, a couple of lines: Mushegh Galshoyan, Bakuntsi's "Humble Girl", "Tigranuhi", Hakob Mndzuru's series of mothers, those are the girls...
- Why did you start writing?
- Apparently, the reasons are the same, the same motivations send us to literature: our bodily and spiritual charges are not enough to exist in life in any other way than in literature. I started writing because I was originally a poet.
- What is your table book?
- Today I'm really looking for a table book. I wish I had the Gospel of the Armenian people, that the Armenian writer from the time of Khorenatsi had composed that Gospel, and today I would not get by with the Gospel of the Greeks and Jews. (I don't have that book on my desk). I am often saddened why, in these difficult times for me and the entire nation, that Gospel is not on my table. Our literature is really noble and hard. Our literary mind was noble and did not create my table book in the Armenian language. Rare pages are included in that big book that I am creating in my mind, Tumanyan's "Yegherun" and so on.
- Is it difficult to create your literary work?
- Very difficult. Sadly, the depths of literature seem to have been whispered to me from above, and I know what literature is. I bless those who naively compose and think they have already made literature. As a son of a fully established nation or one of the world's most authoritative writers, I attempt great things and as a rule fail. All my work is here half alive, unfinished on my desk.
- You are a follower of Tumanyan-Bakunts literature. Who is your prose follower?
- I would not say that I am a follower or that anyone in the world is my teacher. But it's wonderful when I read them and others again and I don't have to worry about whether they will fail on the next page or fail now. I wouldn't say I'm a follower. In the same way, one can say whether I am a follower of Chekhov or Tolstoy. You could say I follow my mother. I said that and I realized that my speech has weakened since the time when my ear started to hear my mother's voice, when the ringing of Lorva's dialect left my mind, and it seems that these are also the last connections with life. Here it is. I'm not a follower, I don't like those who look a little bit like me. I love those who are different from me and as such stand before me as teachers and not students. I think a writer should always be inclined towards discipleship. If you are not a student in front of reality and literature, from that second you do not exist as a writer. I love those who teach me something. Unfortunately, Russian literature teaches me much more, foreign literature gives me something.
- Generations of the 70-90s and our future generations will be brought up and brought up by your works. For a true reader, your books will be a table book. Have you ever had Charent's anxiety?
"What does that book say and what does it speak?
Isn't it pointless to waste his valuable time?
- This is a question to which I cannot fully answer. I don't quite agree with your assessment of me. If I make my table Gospel from "Khambapet Shavarsh" of Charents, "Depi Lyarn Masis", lines from which you mentioned, from rare pages of Hamo Sahyan, Razmik Davoyan, I cannot consider myself a table book of today's and tomorrow's generation. Coming to the anxieties, my anxieties have always been and are. I used to put off my best until tomorrow, when I would be smarter. Unfortunately, that's when I was at my smartest when those ideas came. Tolstoy says, "Mind must be caught at its zenith." After the zenith, the decline begins, miss the moment and the threat of death of the essay will hang. And you will never be able to awaken the feelings and vibrations that led you to that idea. I've been a lazy person, I've left my best for tomorrow, and tomorrow is already the graveyard of thoughts.
- "Kyores" from Baku, "Yerkir Nairi" from Charents, and which is the homeland of Matevosyan, is it Tsmakut?
- We have given in a bit easily to that concept, "writer's world". It was identified directly with their birthplaces, Ghars as Charents, Kyores as the homeland of Bakunts. It should be related to the world view of the writer. The writer must be something like God that opens the world, "In the beginning was the Word", the writer must say something and with his word the world opens. World-creating writers are unique in the world: a William Saroyan, a Tumanyan, a Charents...
- There are Teryan, Charents, Bakunts, Sevak definitions of the Armenian language. What is Matthew?
- To the definitions of Teryan, Bakun, Charents, and Sevak, add Pushkin's glorious formula: "It cannot happen that the free one, which is our Russian, does not give birth to its own Mirabeau." Mirabeau was one of the wolves of the French revolution, and Pushkin's prediction was made a hundred years before the great Russian revolution. behold, it will be impossible to hear the tongue and not to prophesy. "From the beginning was the Word." Matevosyan's? Matevosyanan is to realize that absolute truth. Blessed are those who are listeners to the dictates of the tongue rather than grasping at the tongue. All those who are truly great have understood God's word in this way.
You are an unknown Poet, unnoticed until today.
Without words you pour out a song with bright eyes.
I am also lucky to be an amazing reader.
That I read those songs so easily and so deeply.
This is how Pushkin, Tumanyan, and many times Bakunts perceived the divine text, the text prompted from heaven through language. It was a great tragedy that the boy of that great gift, Bakunts, was destroyed in his youth, youth in literature.
- Your prose is very poetic. I wonder if you have tried writing a poem.
- No. I tried to be much more anti-poetic. They are completely different worlds, live by different laws. It is necessary to obey the law of prose. And if you noticed such passages in my works, they were probably called to hide any defect in the work. They were hidden and now you like them. It's not bad, I didn't deceive you badly.
- As a reader and as a writer, which of your works would you single out?
- My favorite work is still to be written, of course. Among my works, "The Beginning" is the story.
- Do you often read your works?
- Never.
- Do you miss your heroes?
- I miss one because it is unfinished, I have to finish his portrait. In the novel "Takh" is Shushan. That work exists for me precisely because it is there and calls to me.
- Minas' paintings "My Parents", "Jajjur", "Women Baking Bread", "Shemin" and your collections "My Run", "Trees". Is the Armenian spirit hidden behind the outwardly visible poverty the strength of these works?
- Those works have warm admirers and indifferent passers-by. Fans are those who are able to become co-authors in their own way, bringing up what the author has left to their own will and ability, and the indifferent are those who do not have this power of co-authorship. A different type of art is created for them: the art of direct speech, open expression. Minas, perhaps also Hrant Matevosyan, believed in that principle of fine art: the speed of immobility, the kinetic of potential, the red of black, the beautiful of ugly... etc., and the reader, if he was a little poet, should make that black red, make that poverty spiritual. Here.
- Young Armik Mnatsakanyan ("Punishment", "My wolf"), young Armen Mnatsakanyan ("Hangover"). Will the reader meet 60-year-old Armen Mnatsakanyan? If so, what is he like?
- I can't say because my works are not so much about me. I have always tried to incarnate through someone else. Of course, there are some things from me, but the original and the picture never repeated each other. Even so, I am not in my plans, my self-portrait is not there, it cannot be.
- Which Armenian poet is your friend in difficult moments of your life?
- Tumanyan, Charents.
- Are you a happy person?
- I am happy to the extent that I have seen the face of the god of literature a couple of times.
- Who are your parents?
- They are my gods. Too late now. My parents were real people of the land, of the village. Thank God that my reputation and my urbanity, my relationship with them did not disturb them so much. They didn't really believe in this life of mine, this reality and didn't give themselves to me, they stayed to their work.
– The happiest moment of your personal life.
- When was my son born?
- What is your family like?
- I love my children, especially my daughter, she got married and left home. I know that my children are good people, and it is not because of their kinship that I am able to deny their shortcomings, and on the contrary, I am not able to crown them because of their kinship. They are good people and dear to me, as well as all good people in general.
- The woman keeps the family, the country, the motherland standing (Aghun in "Autumn Sun", "Trees"). And in your personal life?
- Sometimes I get scared when I see myself without my wife, it would be the end of the world. But... we have to make sure that "Shrjapat" magazine, this confession of mine, does not fall into his hands. Let him not turn away and think that I did not exist, and that he created me.
- Your daughter is engaged in translation. Held as a translator? Do you like his translations?
- He had a beautiful, young, alive, vibrating rhythm, as a young Saroyan. He left, he did not like the work of a translator, he left the work of literature in general, like many other gifted literary people. It's a waste of time. I don't think he will return to literature, maybe in 15-20 years...
- How many grandchildren do you have? Do you love more than your children?
- I have two grandchildren, I love them very much, but they are not my children. My children were mine. I love them very much, they are small, I love the little ones a lot, I love children in general, a little more than mine, because they are a part of my day, they are my life, but it would be a lie if I said that they give me what my children gave me, when my mother and I bathed them, when I, my husband, soothed them, was able to soothe them. That is an irreplaceable feeling.
- Do you have free time? If so, what do you do?
- Unfortunately, I don't have the conditions to really fill the day with proper time. Our Armenian life, our Yerevan life does not give us that opportunity to fill our free time.
- The reader is waiting for the return of the Matevosyan writer. When will it take place?
- Soon, very soon.
- It is already the 10th month that you have been in the Union of Writers. Did you work on a piece of literature during this time?
- My work was interrupted when I came to the Union of Writers. I won't say it was easy to write. Indeed, it is a fortune to throw yourself into a completely different, non-literary life and fill the day with madness, enthusiasm, even stupid things, to be busy and no longer become the drudgery of work behind a desk. That torture has ended, and painfully soon, very soon, I will return to that suffering.
- Children have a special place in all your works. "Metsamor" has undisguised pride and faith in them. Why do you often turn to children for "help"?
- And again, yes. In things to be done, so are the children, the children, the children again. The childhood of peers, then in our daily conflicts, when it is no longer possible to bear the current behavior of your wife, daughter, friend, enemy, you love and forgive him, seeing his childhood, his inner child. The drop of poison that should kill a person in him tomorrow is being dripped in his childhood today with injustice, lack of freedom, violence... and the ray of light that will become us tomorrow is warming and accumulating in his childhood.
Interview: Karine MESROPYAN
"Surrounded" (USA), N 19, 1997