— There are rumours that you will not put yourself forward as a candidate. Is that true?
— I am not inclined to stand. I am inclined to leave.
— Have you been asked to do so, or have you decided yourself?
— My problems as a writer in relation to time, the problems of my fate as a writer, are so much my own that I will not submit to anyone’s request. There has been no outside intervention.
— Has the Writers’ Union become dear to you over these years?
— I am deeply aware of the need for the Union. Whether it feels like home to me is a purely inward matter, about which I may choose not to speak.
— You said that you recognise the need for the Union. Do you envisage its existence with this structure?
— I consider this form of the Union the only necessary one, finally arrived at through the efforts and suffering of generations.
— What has been your greatest achievement as chairman of the Union?
— If there have been achievements, I regard them as natural, not as something attributable to me. Whatever happened was what ought to have happened. My duties as chairman required me to do certain things, and it is unseemly to draw attention to that.
— So you have made no special effort?
— No, I have made efforts too, and have failed many times. All of it has taken a great deal from me, from my inner world; much has been lost as a result.
— What has been lost?
— The greatest loss is that I have not written what I was meant to write; I have left it unfinished.
— But even before that, if you did write, the reader did not see what you had written.
— Granted, but this lack of freedom prolonged the silence of my earlier years, contributed to the pause, deepened the crisis.
— The main candidates for chairman of the Writers’ Union of Armenia are already known. Do you see worthy people among them? If you do not wish to name names, please just say yes or no.
— The effort this position calls for is so natural, so far from contrived, that I see many worthy people.
— Among the candidates being discussed as well?
— Yes, among them too. I do not regard being elected chairman of the Union as something extraordinary; it is within many people’s abilities.
— These days the congress is the sole topic of conversation in literary circles and those around them. Is it really such an event that it is being discussed so much?
— The Writers’ Union congress is not an event, just as the previous ones were not. One or two were exceptions: the founding congress in 1934 and the one during the Thaw. Those can be considered events.
— Then why so much talk?
— Well, they have nothing to do, so they talk.
— If they have nothing to do, let them write.
— If they expect that new leadership will bring changes significant enough to become an event in literary life, let them talk.
— And do you believe there will be changes?
— Whether I believe or do not believe is an inward matter of my own.
— Why do you keep concealing things? Will you speak later?
— It would be inappropriate for me to say that this was a place where I had such-and-such opportunities to develop something, or to prevent it, to frustrate it… No, I leave everything to their ambitions. If they can do it, let them.
— Will there be any surprises in your speech at the congress?
— Why should there be? I am a man of literature; literature is my bread. Its successes are dear to me, and all the efforts made within this family bring me closer to it. So my attitude towards the person of literature and their world will be one of love alone.
Hayastani Hanrapetutyun, May 2001.