1. Deprived of state patronage and exposed to the "market" element, literature now has the unlimited freedom that many writers dreamed of. They can now write about whatever they want and how they want. There are no ideological and thematic constraints. However, there are no high-value, lasting works of art in the arena, which should give a complete picture of our time. Armenian literature is experiencing a crisis. How do you explain that? How do you imagine the further survival and development of Armenian literature in new conditions?
2. The extreme absolutist understanding of independence essentially isolated us from Russian culture. In your opinion, how does this isolation affect Armenian literature and culture in general and what consequences can it have in the future?
3. What do you think about the relationship between literature and ideology? Should literature be a participant in the political-ideological struggle or an indifferent observer? Shouldn't the writer, in the latter case, give up what we used to call the writer's "civil stance?" Can we say that currently there is a tendency to isolate literature and intellectuals in general from political and social life, to minimize their role in that life?
1. "Odysseus" brought us the concept of "hushkaparik". they charmed the soldiers with a woman's voice. So that the enchanting voice of another does not enter you, you must plug your ears, as Odysseus plugged the ears of his soldiers. We did not dream of "market" relations, we have felt the need for reforms since the time of Khrushchev. We have been supporters of the renovation. In order for there not to be revolutions, there needs to be transformations every day. Now we are in an unmanageable situation. Today we don't speak our words, we don't live in our country, we don't think with our brains, we live in the order set by someone else, we are enchanted by the song of the souvenir. We are following someone else's course, they are taking us on a different path. And not only to us, the writers, but also to the whole society. my children's table book is not me, it is television, mass culture. The people are alienated from their culture. When we were still on a stable platform, the writers warned about this danger. Kaputikyan has a poem about how Komitas' voice is drowned under the "pop" song. The anxiety had long been there.
The silence of many of us may be due to the fact that we can fill the square again with our alarm calls or cries. Let's not saturate this flood of cloudy voices, this polluted atmosphere with our voices, because in the end anger does nothing. it's loud, resounding silence absolutely, and you want to be isolated. It doesn't matter if you throw yourself into the square, nothing will happen. You want to isolate yourself and do your own thing, because the course of life is a little independent of us anyway, until it calms down and you bring your worth to the public.
We are losing the ruling height of professional literary criticism that arose under the conditions of yesterday's statehood, the system is falling apart, we are losing "school" - a scientific level, a mode of thought. The so-called culture is also a fruit of the regime: the story, the novel, the play, the theater, the canvas, the song... they also want a regime, to be established in the regime, just as steel is created in the regime...
National literature is something that will disappear with the nation, so there is nothing to worry about. Now, when we complain about being deprived of state patronage (I can bring a couple of delusions full of complaints to the public), I also ask the question to myself. What should I do so that the case of so-and-so comes to the public, so that it has state patronage, so that it does not depend on charchis and oil thieves? I don't know the answer and I keep quiet. What should Levon Ter-Petrosyan do? In the end, Levon Ter-Petrosyan is called or obliged to do much more important things first. The road from Vanadzor to Alaverdi is closed, as of yesterday, they need pennies, they cannot find them... It is a poor, deprived country, it is not a country, in fact it is not a country, we just have to accept that the country is not a country, because the country must have land, a nation living on it, in order to be formed as a state. We lived because we were a part of the empire, there was an integrated economy, we gave, we received, we worked... Today, we cannot really count on state patronage, because the state is a member of a completely broken family and not a rich member with natural resources, it does not have the opportunities to sponsor culture. Culture is preserved to the extent that every member of the society, if we do not consider those who are getting rich in the current conditions. the culture is in the same miserable state, it shares the miserable state of the nation, there is nothing unusual about it.
Those who doubt the course of literary development should be doubted. The literature is there. The experience of the past is also that cultural giants were born on the numbers 15-23-25. Now, if we complain, our elders will complain, because we had more or less created our tolerable conditions, we created our texts with dedication, at a "high level". The question is not about our well-being, but about our mere existence, but I have to admit. be strong, live, what do they give money for now: daily bread - here is your word of the writer, be endowed with the need for bread, and the people will not leave you. It's hard, but this is it. Our elders can hardly withstand this heavy shock, but here is the youth. During our 1915-25 and the American crises of 1928-32, there was a "great youth", and now we must hope that there is such youth. Yesterday there were a few names, now there are dozens of people who can write, what a good level has been created in newspaper articles, this will definitely become a quality, and maybe even grow into a genre called "New Journalism" in American literature. it is essentially the documentation. these days of ours offer an unprecedented opportunity to copy themselves with the same - rising from the abyss of Lady Macbeth to the ascension of Hamlet, which was Monte Melkonian...
They talked about the crisis of literature back in the 60s, when Mahari was there, when he was young, there were many great writers in the Union's literary square, and Vardges Petrosyan only saw 15 Hrant Matevosyan in Armenian literature. Even then, they said it was a crisis of literature.
We will create literature and it will happen. Literature requires an investment of material resources. Now there are no such means, but the strong ones create literature and will open their way and come to the public. Pity the criticism. Literary criticism should be paid, should be encouraged by the state. The work of artistic and ideological analysis standards, preservation of national and human image, elaboration of values is entrusted to them, it is their bread, we must understand its importance if we want to be called a nation.
Today's literature will really be made by those whose skin and runes are more delicate, who have smelled blood and brutal poverty, who are at the same age as Charents was in 15. Both I and the seniors will continue our work, and the decisive question of history will be whether something will remain of it or not. Let's look at ourselves a little coldly, look from the side a little, let's not lament ourselves, after all, we are seniors.
2. No matter how important we are now, it is very difficult to be alone. Isolation has led to an exodus of people, and it doesn't matter what you want to do.
But could we not be disconnected, could we not be isolated? Putting aside common sense for now, not secession would keep us in the Union if it were possible. Did not keep. It means we should leave. Then let's remember the bitterness and heartbreak of a fraternal embrace, then let's not remember the poverty of the whole country, whole nations and peoples, a whole society of 300 million, they were throwing their natural duty to work, live, live by working on each other, everyone was betraying themselves and each other everywhere. Yes, we should leave each other, give ourselves fresh air, ground ourselves and turn our faces to each other again. Now we are in this conversion, having lost something from the virtues and advantages of being a citizen of a great country, having learned a lesson from losses, having certainly found something, let's say the spirit of initiative and work, we will come together again and... it won't be bad. Let's not consider as a loss what was really worth getting rid of - they, from our presence as a plaintiff and a rebel, and we, from their heavy breathing as a prosecutor. Will the freedom in us and in them reveal and stabilize the man of God, will we treat ourselves as free, won't it reveal and endure this new regime that is unusual for us? But my Tumanyan, their Pushkin, Charents and Astafev, Tolstoy and Saryan, and many others, the strong "freedom regiment" is a guarantee that we will be saved and live our lives as God's people.
Today's politico-economic leadership of the West was marked first by the leadership of the Word, then literature. First the culture loses, then only the country. You feel a little jealous that, here, the society that your predecessors, even you, treated cautiously, has reached heights in literature. Our constraint, our closedness prevented us from relating to the "outside" world, Americans and others (here only those who were dissidents) were awarded the Nobel Prize. We are now repeating their situation of yesterday, we are still far away, but no matter how much a nation is tied to other nations, it always hopes to be separated. your national dignity will not allow you to become an American, even to assimilate into Shakespearean culture, to perish. The return process will generate new Tumanyans, new interpretations of the old Tumanyan.
3. What kind of ideology should the writer correspond to? if it's nationalist, it's not literature, if it's communist, it's not literature, if it's humanist, it's sweet, if it's bourgeois, it's not literature, if it's close, it's not a writer, but a preacher. The writer is required to be simultaneously present in the listed and many more points, I repeat, simultaneous presence in all those positions and in all the people, and touching any one of them only positions the writer in one point, which is already a case and end. The huge mass of dead Soviet literature is a proof for you, and the equally dead anti-Soviet literature as well.
"Literary newspaper", 04.10.1994.