Hrant Matevosyan - Sergey Sarinyan
Hr. Matevosyan. - A line of the story is dearer to me than a page of theory, but I happily came to talk with you, firstly because it is worth having an open conversation about the many concerns of our prose, and secondly, because you would be the interlocutor. Whether your truths are objectionable or unobjectionable, whether you deny or confirm, it doesn't matter, there is something very respectable for me in your reviews and analyses, which I would call respect for the analyzed material, consideration and consideration of all lines and all moods of the work being reviewed. This is a basic requirement presented to a critic, but it seems to me to be the most important requirement, not because it is impossible to write off the assessment of the work being reviewed with a cursory glance, "without turning a page" (currently our literature, the prevailing huge part of that literature can be evaluated even without reading), but it is an important requirement from the point of view of the honor of one's craft.
S. Sarinyan. - Let's leave the criticism aside. If you present a basic requirement to criticism, whether it is possible or not possible to "write out" with a single page, to bring up the assessment of the book under review, then we, the critics, are obliged to remind the writer of a similar "basic requirement" - is it possible to "write out" the assessment of reality with a superficial glance?
Hr. Matevosyan. - Such so-called literature really exists. such is the literature of my so-called young generation. It is unpleasant, of course, to betray the generation "from within" like this, but in this case, he was not at the height of his rank. he promised that he would create good literature in Armenian, a decade and a half has passed, and what was promised is still not there. Why do you think there isn't?
S. Sarinyan. - It is a very complex question, I would say a philosophical question, the explanation of which can be sought within larger historical categories. Who knows, perhaps those theorists who believe that artistic activity takes a production form, which brings with it a universal standard, are right. Maybe that is what transforms the time limit into an artistic equivalent, so to speak. A dramatist puts a play on stage, and if it occupies the audience for two or five years, then he considers his creative goal solved. Perhaps the novelist subjects the consumer of his two values to a similar time unit. I repeat, these are difficult questions, the answer to which you will not find immediately. Let's talk about this time unit, let's try to find our main flaw, the elimination of which would help to increase the time unit of the artistic equivalent.
Hr. Matevosyan. - Eliminating shortcomings and shortcomings is, of course, a respectable task, but it was necessary to endow people practicing the craft of writing with the honor of their own craft, in that case the shortcomings would only be of an individual-personal nature. And that is never to be condemned. This is the capacity of man. A person bends the same sword, but the bend is light because the hand strength is less.
S. Sarinyan. - In short, you raise the question of the professional title of a writer.
Hr. Matevosyan. - I said honor. Suppose one of the old blacksmiths still remains in a distant village. In ancient times, evil was separated from good with the sword forged by that blacksmith. That's how important that blacksmith and the sword he forged was. Now they don't do anything with that sword, but the blacksmith continues to forge his sword, just like in the days when the sword he forged was used to separate evil from good. Shall we not call this the honor of the craft... the honor of the craft, of the work of writing, of the solidarity of writers, of the firm?
S. Sarinyan. - I want our conversation to be more specific. Let me say that a line of exam analysis is more precious to me than a page of abstract theory.
Hr. Matevosyan. - I am saying something very specific. For physicians, there is the famous Hippocratic Oath. Before entering the world of the sick with a surgical knife in hand, the young doctors swear that they will never abuse their right to enter a human body. One such oath would be for people practicing writing: I swear never to cheat my craft, and this means a lifetime of inclusion or an effort to include. Here. My generation of writers was once credited with the non-existent advantage (and we are still of that belief) that our common writing style has become more beautiful compared to the previous generation of writers. Minus three is certainly higher than minus four, but both are beyond zero...
S. Sarinyan. - Apparently, the reason for confusion is that the coefficient of standards is not determined correctly. I personally do not think that the coefficient of useful action of our prose, as they say, has a negative sign in front of it, but I am not inclined to accept that this coefficient is a high number.
Hr. Matevosyan. - Yes, Sero Khanzadyan's "Book of Being", Vigen Khechumyan's "Book of Being", Abig Avagyan's "Southern Fever", Baghish Hovsepyan's "The Sowers...", Aghasi Ayvazyan's, Perch Zeytuntsyan's, Zorayr Khalapyan's entrance into literature, Gurgen Maharu's "Burning Gardens", yes, you can only turn a blind eye to these works and these authors. talked about the negativity of the coefficient, but see what Faulkner says. "Of my contemporaries I would give Wolfe the first place, for we have all failed--Wolfe's failure was the best, because he attempted the hardest thing to say the most." None of us have had the magnificent failure of Thomas Wolfe, we are all successful, but it is success at the expense of the stylization that comes from lifelessness.
S. Sarinyan. - That strict assessment of the artistic prose of the previous decade gives reason for reflection. As a literary historian, I approach the course of the literary movement in a different sense. Artistic value is artistic value, but there is also the general aspiration of a literary movement within which the accumulation of material takes on a prospective meaning. Ultimately, it cannot be claimed that the prose of the sixties did not pose and solve problems, be they aesthetic or ethical. I repeat, the coefficient of the artistic standard is one thing, but the positive development of the historical process, even in quantitative accumulation, is another.
Hr. Matevosyan. - By applying "the principle of general combination" one can be satisfied with all the decades of Armenian literature. You are a literary historian and with your title and ability to see the whole thing together, you would be the first to notice the main flaw common to all of us.
S. Sarinyan. - What do you consider the main flaw of our prose? I'm interested in your opinion as a writer.
Hr. Matevosyan. - The lack of respect for the writing craft. Before serving a purpose and in order to be able to serve that purpose, literature must first think about its health, otherwise that literature that has destroyed itself, robbed itself, impoverished itself, will not be needed not only for itself, but also for the purpose it was supposed to serve. The only guarantee of healthy literature is the inclusion or attempt to include the whole of life, but... we don't include, we don't try... we take something like life, devoid of vital forces and resistances, which does not bend and hook as we will... And here the handwriting of my generation has become beautiful. It even goes beyond the literature of my generation. Even our most vital and down-to-earth novelist could not avoid it. I am referring to Sero Khanzadyan's "Book of Being".
S. Sarinyan. - The given example does not convince me. More concrete examples could be given, which are not mere stylization, but false stylization. Khanzadyan's novel is a valuable literary work, imbued with knowledge of life, and its author had no occasion to color the realistic perception of reality with false stylization.
Hr. Matevosyan. - When it comes to separating the value of art from the mass of reality, rather than the reworking of existing values, one cannot make a difference between stylization and false stylization. You say false stylization as if it could also be true, positive, correct stylization (stylization). If it is styled, it means that what the style was going to be manifested in is pre-resisted.
S. Sarinyan. - I certainly distinguish stylization from false stylization and find that there is also true, positive, correct stylization. When Isahakyan wrote "Sasma Mher", he resorted to literary stylization, which was imposed by the epic landscape of the poem. Moreover, without such stylization, the poem would be false, modernized. Many such examples can be cited from Armenian and world literature. I think that you also distinguish between those two principles of styling and the arrow of your criticism is directed against false styling. As for false stylization, its tendency is inevitable where the smallness of the writer's inner ability collides with the infinite complexity of life. Fake styling originates from dilettantism, imitation, and always tends to dress up in the pretense of innovation. Indeed, we now have a group of writers who are more concerned with "innovation" than literature. But the disease is not new. I will remind you of the names that appeared in the 60s and 70s of the last century: Hakob Hachian, Nshan Mirza, Tiran Papazyan, who released sensational novels on the literary market: "Nights of Bera", "Polso Secrets", "The Sleepwalker of Khas Village", and the aspirants of the literary taste of the average city praised the "Armenian Eugene Sui". Paronyan called those types of writers "literary monkeys", and Leo called them "fine arts beggars".
Hr. Matevosyan. - Your calmness confuses me. I don't know if that composure comes from your knowledge of the experience of history or from not really knowing the source of the stylization, but I will try to anger you against the stylization. So then. In the case of the "disruption of the writer's inner ability and relation to life" there is no striving for stylization, but a "magnificent Woolfian failure" is revealed. As for dilettantism, life is so powerful and revolutionary that even the most gifted and devoted writer appears in the state of dilettantism against it. To speak against the stylization brought about by imitation is to practice nothing. When it comes to styling, your word "aspirational" would lead us in the wrong direction. Your word "originates" is correct. Styling, yes, is the origin. I mean, I'm not talking about fake styling. Styling in the sense that I understand it is not something emotional, not "dressing up", but an intrinsic quality of the material being revealed. Perch Zeytuntsyan is neither a dilettante nor especially an imitator, in my generation Zeytuntsyan is perhaps the most inclusive novelist, but his "Claude Robert Iserly" is a stylization for the simple reason that the taken reality presented itself to the author in a state deprived of vital resistances. In that reality, there was no longer the secondary-necessary, the unnecessary, the irrelevant, which might not have been imported into the novel, but would have been a source of inspiration for the author.
S. Sarinyan. - What danger of "stylization" are we talking about? It has never pissed me off, and it never will, if only because, contrary to what you might think, I don't think it's a major flaw in our prose. How can the exercises of some quasi-experimentalists be given so much importance? But the example and comment you gave has another controversial aspect that I would like to address. Your questioning can give an opportunity for wrong generalization, if you don't distinguish the assessment of a specific issue from the theoretical setting of the phenomenon. Separately, P. One can argue about Zeytuntsyan's novel "Claude Robert Iserle", but, I repeat, in this case, I am interested in the general setting of the question, the choice of topic. It seems to me that you exclude the principle of non-locality of the topic, so to speak. But let's recall the development of Armenian literature even at the beginning of our century. Was it a coincidence, for example, the comprehensive and global scale of the plots that Tumanyan, Isahakyan, Papazyan, Shant resorted to, creating fairy tales, legends, conversations, dramas and prose works, which certainly expand the philosophical horizon of Armenian literature?
Hr. Matevosyan. - Yes, fairy tales, traditions and conversations, yes, dramas and prose works, but never a story about today, but never a novel. The referred works of the mentioned classics and works of that type in general have no purpose and ambition to be kneaded from today's life. the title of those literary forms is not. They can and do get along with the philosophies they originate from or are tributary to. Really a conversation, really a tradition, really a fairy tale, really a drama unfolding in no place and in no time... And when no local Kaj Nazar becomes Agha Nazar and replaces his Esperanto with the "ertam g" of the conspirator, it becomes obvious that the fairy tale was going to remain a fairy tale.
S. Sarinyan. - It seems to me, for example, that Iserli's problem is a global problem and reflects the clash of conscience with the catastrophic events of the 20th century, so his ethical-philosophical starting point can also occupy the Armenian writer. I do not object that if the writer mixed the two philosophical and psychological sediments with the experience of the historical fate of the Armenian people, that is, broke the global and the universal in the national psychology, perhaps there would not be the gap that exists between the conventionality of the form and the artistic solution of the intention. But that is another matter.
Hr. Matevosyan. - Take Claude Robert Iserly, the overthrown emperor, specifically Hiroshima and "stirring the philosophical and psychological sediments of the country with the experience of the historical fate of the Armenian people." The psychological-philosophical sediments of the work written about Claude Robert Iserly should be sprinkled with the experience of Iserly's fate, as Zeytuntsyan rightly did, and our psychological-philosophical sediments, in turn, should be expanded in the spheres of our lives, should be sprinkled with the experience of our destiny. I don't understand how the universal and the global are broken in the national psychology, and I also don't understand why the purely national is not global and universal and what hidden folds of a nation are incomprehensible to other nations and nationalities, but if Zeytuntsyan had structured his work in such a way that the criticism considered the universal broken in the national psychology, it would still be "the rupture that exists between the conventionality of form and between the artistic resolution of intention'. I don't see such a break in that case. Moreover. Armenian literature has no other book with such steady realization of intention. In this sense, "Iserli" is perfection, and strange as it may seem, the "rupture" is revealed in this very perfection. The author's will flies through airless space and lands exactly where the author intended.
S. Sarinyan. - The formula "Life and Literature" has been and will remain the eternal guide of literature. But the writer's role in that relationship is different than literary mediocrities often imagine. Knowledge of life resolves literary mediocrity into direct relation. He never penetrates that mediated philosophical space called the great life.
Hr. Matevosyan. - A documentarian should have the fear of coming face to face with a vital fact, a prototype, a pre-life. What great life are you talking about?
S. Sarinyan. - By a great life, I understand the philosophical knowledge of that life, the deep and, if you like, the scientific knowledge of the history of the development of man and society. This is what is missing from our release...
Hr. Matevosyan. - It is impossible to blame the author of "Claude Robert Iserly" for the poverty of scientific knowledge about society and man, even on the contrary, it is a parade of knowledge, which turns into stylization. The author constantly brings what he knows. The author knows everything. The author only doesn't know what he doesn't know and what he was trying to master, overcome, recognize. In the past ten years, Zeytuntsyan and about a dozen novelists more or less endowed with the ability to tell could retell about a hundred biographies, a hundred more or less acute situations, tragedies, comedies, a hundred facts of life, a readable story from this wealth of life, that would already be literature and even good literature.
S. Sarinyan. - The fact of life is the material body of the literary work and the subject movement of the artistic image is anchored on it. But it is the outward manifestation of the movement of life, the apparent, the visible. Meanwhile, that movement also has the essential-invisible, historical connection, internal logic, causality, philosophical meaning, which can be understood only with the knowledge of social sciences. This is what is overlooked in the creative work of our novelists.
Hr. Matevosyan. - It was necessary to have the honor of the writing craft to describe "a real sea, a real fish and a real old man", and in that case you hardly had a chance to demand the "essential-invisible", because the fact of life is not only the material body of the literary work, but also its spiritual charge carrier.
S. Sarinyan. - That is the second side of the question. I don't deny its importance, and there is certainly truth in your question, but I don't want to open a conversation about it. What is important for me is the scientific knowledge of society and life.
Hr. Matevosyan. - That is a very general truth. Its existence and its absence can explain the reasons for both success and failure, but that would be the same as saying nothing. Fine art is a process of recognition of material, fact, object, life. I say again, it is a process of recognition, not a beautiful realization of what is already familiar, already studied.
S. Sarinyan. - But what does recognition process mean? The process of cognition is the knowledge of the law and regularity of movement, the knowledge of multiple causal connections of the object, from which the inner energy of the work of art is generated. You read the short story or the novel, sometimes you even read it with pleasure, if the writer has the gift of storytelling. But when you try to account for what sediments it finally left in you, the answer faces bewilderment. That sky consumes itself at once, as if written for a moment. Why is it so? it is clear that the given book does not have the internal magnitude of energy, that is, the epistemic, psychological and emotional wealth, which should probably be obtained from a high philosophical combination of phenomena. The writer's talent is measured by the richness of that energy, which determines the time unit of the two artistic equivalents. I confirm again and again that this energy can be created only and exclusively with the depth of intuition, with the extent of intellectual ability, that is, with a broad knowledge of human, society, natural sciences.
Hr. Matevosyan. - Again you say a very general truth. Thus, the death of a certain Karapet can be explained by the mortality of a person in general. Accuse always and all your critics writers of ignorance of the sciences of the world, and you will always be right, because the world is so constantly changing that we, with some knowledge we have, always come up against it absolutely unarmed, absolutely bare-handed. But if I explain the difficulty of the matter with the revolution of the world, you will call me to be more armed, to enrich my knowledge about nature and the world. I will get richer and be unarmed again. I will remain unarmed, because I will not need the existentialism, Buddhism, or biochemistry I know against my Haji Murad. against my Haji Murad I need the ism which is hidden in that material and which will be revealed with the mastery of the material. With that elaboration of the material, I will eventually end up in "Aquiism" or "Buddhism," but it will not be the Buddhism I knew beforehand. If the author does not follow the logic of the material, but seizes on the material, then you are right to accuse the author of being intentional. I say again. the shortcoming of our today's literature is the hunger for material, life, fact, arbitrary attitude to material, life, fact.
S. Sarinyan. - One of the Russian critics compares the writer's intellectual ability to an antenna, with the help of which he catches unknown waves from the atmosphere of life, the infinity of the world, the universe, perceives the seismic movements of the inner world of man. I must say that the power of the antenna on the tower of our literature is still weak, and there are writers who simply create without an antenna. They do not see with the mind but with the eye, they do not reflect but describe.
Hr. Matevosyan. - You, all your critics together, can't "degenerate" the most kind-hearted of our writers and the one who has a positive attitude towards your critics, and direct the whole group of writers endowed with the gift of storytelling to literature that is only narrative, only descriptive, only copying life. in the mind', as you say, and the detailed description of what is seen would grow into the high art of what is seen in the mind, because in the hands of people endowed with the capacity to unadulterate fact, matter with their prejudices, the material reveals its inner possibilities of being artistic.
S. Sarinyan. - You seem to attach some absolute importance to the material's own task, so to speak. It reminds me of the judgment of the hero of your "Hangover" novel. "Does the sculptor take clay and solve a task with the clay, or does he solve his task with the clay material?" I do not rule out the imposition of the material's own task, but it does not lead to such an absolute as if the metal from which the plane is made already already carries within itself the ability to fly. It is clear that the metal that became the plane fulfilled the task of the constructor. The fact of life has a similar subordination to the writer, and in this relation the writer's task is to invent a meaning that implies more than "a detailed description of what the eye sees." What is essential is not the description of the phenomenon, but the knowledge of it as a course of history, the dialectics of its existence, the disclosure of its philosophical and psychological-emotional immanence.
Hr. Matevosyan. - That "discovery of the immanent" will not take place if the description of what is seen with the eye is not complete, if the fact and facts are given so little importance, if the whole life with all its important and secondary components is not involved in the story, and on the contrary, the "discovery of the immanent" loved by your critics will take place, if the life, the fact, the material are taken in full, it will take place even if the writer has no idea about the "immanent" and does not aim to reveal "the immanent". It will happen even against the writer. The metal, of course, already carries within itself the ability to fly, and this ability to fly was revealed, if not against the will of the alchemists, then independently of the will of the alchemists, who challenged the metal to become gold, the metal was so inclined to reveal its ability to fly. The history of alchemy, the growth of chemistry, is nothing but the history of the development of respect for matter, the history of accounting for the will of matter, of following that will.
S. Sarinyan. - I repeat, I do not rule out the imposition of the material's own task, but in order to fulfill that task, the writer must be armed with a deep knowledge of its internal laws. The fact that Anna throws herself under the train against Tolstoy's will once again confirms that the writer correctly guessed the objective-historical course of the psychological movement of his character, that is, as a realist-researcher, he discovered the law of movement of "matter's own task". I end my conversation with the same conviction that the title of writer first of all requires high education, intellectual wealth, scientific knowledge of society and human history. Is it a known fact? I don't object. But let's face this truth first.
Hr. Matevosyan. - I don't mind, let's be mature, learn architecture as much as Corbusier, the birth of stars as Hambardzumyan, be able to listen to our inner selves as much as a yogi, be sensitive to all whispers and movements like a calf that has left the barn for the first time... Let's be mature, especially if behind your call is not the deeply wrong notion that writers realize their art in such and such a way. or whatever thought and if your call is not out of a desire to equip those implementers of your imagination with "scientific knowledge". But how to explain the fact that the autobiographical novel of an author is good, at least tolerable (Armenian literature is full of such novels), and the autobiographical novel is bad, very bad (Armenian literature is more than full of them)? I certainly have my own explanation, but citing the success of those autobiographies, here's what I'd like to emphasize at the end of our conversation: it is necessary to approach all biographies, all facts, all materials with the same respect with which you approach your biography, your father, your mother, your homeland.
"Literary newspaper", 09.05.1974.