(Shaky but steady progress)
It was easy for me to say. "Hamo Sahyan was the right person, he fought at the time of his fight, he played and embarrassed himself at the time of the game, his moment of confession that he gave a face to the true literature was long enough, and he left at the time of departure". and added with a fair conscience, "And she was beautiful in all her moments, perhaps the most delightful of ours, for she never entered the halls not reserved for her, and thus brought herself no surprises." I could say. among the worthy ones, to pull that worthy one aside from the mass of the guilty of this collapse and to justify himself: "he is invincible, we are invincible".
But because the collapse is our own collapse, which it seems we are no longer able to cope with, we enter into a debt claim with our seniors and those who have passed, and, equal to us, we enter into a debt claim first with the most worthy ones. "Why did you make me out of this material and why did you create me in this world?" King Artavazd complained to the ancestor, Mher, the other viper, was strengthened by the power of the ancestor or burdened by the curse.
But how should I structure my speech so that I can avoid that inevitable "although"? "despite the unspeakably difficult conditions, nevertheless...", "despite a great national weakness of the Armenian man, he still managed to relate to the community of free people of the world that calls himself the community of poets", "although his time had so few living moments that it can be called timelessness, and his space revealed living vibrations so rarely that it can be called a desert, but still..." "Although" really shouldn't be skipped because...
Because in the end, the reader doesn't care how many traps, let's say Faustus, he has deceived before filling his house with happy chirping, how many fires he has soared over. The treasury doesn't care about how such and such an emerald has come under false pretenses. It is not the case of the above-mentioned free community, but a whole body of interested guards was leading, let's say, another S to that same free community, and Sahyan presented himself alone. You are present, you are present, you are not present, you are not present, it is so, you are there or you are not.
The word free was used a lot. let's remember that Free is synonymous with God and the Word. Word and God are synonymous, Free is synonymous with both. So, Literature-Freedom. Freedom from the animal shackles of indolence. The thing here was the word, it was the thing from the beginning. you made a sound, you separated yourself from the silent mass of indolence. To hold on to something means to push a person back into the shackles of lifelessness. The thing is also the work for us. To seize something means to absolve a crippled country. I said, and here a wide gate opened on the arena of self-judgment and self-judgment. rush even with the whole army and destroy and destroy this whole crippled work and thing: your country was not a country, your idols were not idols, your rituals were rituals and your song was not a song.
But Sahyan was, Sahyan was.
Sahyan of freedom struggle against violence? - No. Freedom is withheld from the boys of its struggle, and they are never allowed to be free. Kudos to them, but they are only one moment in the rise of our human course, a very important moment of revolt, denial, rebellion, and yet there are others who embody a more lasting ray of rise. Sahyan has that tendency of duration.
He knew that and because of that or because of it, he adopted the behavior of a non-fighter. - No. Born in 1914, a child of his people, a witness of riots and migrations, colonization and inquisitions and wars, he considered his and our mere existence a victory and joy.
So, Sahyan of tolerance and reconciliation? - No. He was not brave enough to fall to the end and recognize the fall and rise to the end and recognize the ascension, and even more so to preach. The son of a defeated and ramified country, the problems of war and peace, victory and defeat, decline and rise presented themselves to him with some other attitude, perhaps dignity, perhaps someone who does not betray something, in his words, plastered the exit of mourning with his own hands. But is this a merit for the poet? If this world of self-restraint is a world beyond which is Wind and capriciousness, yes, it is a merit.
His character as an Armenian writer, his moral attitude, the morality of his attitude is plastered, of course, first of all by what he did, but also, which is very important, also by what he did not do, first of all by what he saw and noticed, but also by what he did not notice, by his contempt for Semi-Habet, but also, which is very important, by his inner, his own Wind's pressure, by his refusal to reveal the Doomsday... The word, first of all our national Word, is as much a history of the past as it is a prophecy of the future, a prophecy is as much a prediction as it is an invitation, it is the creation, title, commemoration of a seemingly spontaneous existence. Nothing unexpected, nothing happens. It happens what we wait for, but also what we call for. His strong emphasis on saying a big yes to the Armenian people and the Armenian homeland is a direct indication of his anxiety for the homeland. Freeborn Sahyan? - No. His entrance was not the entrance of a "genius young man", nor were the updates of his course evidence of a great charge.
Master Sahya, who over the years became a "genius boy" by appropriating and appropriating the heritage of the world and his country? - Never. As soon as he found what poetry is and what poetry should do, the lines died under the pen. That is probably because he thought poetry was his and not poetry itself. - That's how poetry becomes something spontaneous, yes? - A phenomenon in itself, a text provided by God, from which some manage to save pages. - And did Sahyan succeed? - It has been successful and often.
He was a peasant, a naturalist, a conservative, an oriental, an ascetic - he was a charming intellectual, a westerner, very modern. But he was neither extremely modern, nor a westerner, nor an intellectual, nor a squire, nor an oriental, nor a peasant. From nature to writing - from writing to nature, from altruism to nationalism and from nationalism to altruism, from today to the past and from the past to the present, Sahyan's journey from poet to peasant and from peasant to poet was a lasting, endless journey. Karanum is the death of a finally found destination, it is the death of the poet.
I was his reader back in those distant school years, and he must have assumed that he had a reader, a reciter, a teacher even in the evening classes. Then I was his open-mouthed listener when the couple of the editor and the writer of "Silent Bell House" demonstrated their triumphant parade of the book's publication in front of my students - how they surprised the superior at an inopportune time and indecently without a tie, how the lady turned the positive neutrality of the superior into sympathy for the book and the guests, etc. Then I was his friend of wine and bread, one can say close, if of course he allowed himself to weaken or become bold enough to say: "I saw Hamo Sahyan coming out of the shell, he was shiny or rusty." I hosted and was hosted, I stood at the patient's bedside and in my hour of distress, I noticed him as the first person standing on top of his head. Then I was the undertaker of his procession, now the visitor of his grave.
I was his undertaker, bread partner, interlocutor, listener, because I was his reader, I asked him for strength. Now I am a pilgrim to his place of pilgrimage, because I remain his reader. He will give me what I want, he will strengthen me, it will become a place of pilgrimage, if he doesn't, I will leave him, let him enjoy his nameless grave in peace. the native land has called many and chosen few. He was not by my side even for a moment during my downfalls and despairs. It will be so, because at some point in their process before we leave them, they must have abandoned themselves, betrayed themselves and us. It is so, because in one moment is eternity compressed, in one person there are no generations, one person is all the moments of all people.
I feel the need for his power, their power - "today and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow". The thirst for that power, as necessary as vital air and water, makes me an idolater in a way. I, a citizen of the Republic of Armenia, expect the overflowing of a milky spring, and from springs that have never flowed, never existed. Is this my weakness, should I blame myself for my weakness? Does any French, Russian, Turkish, Georgian, Arab look back this much in their process, do they look back in general, does their literature become a refuge for their peoples and kings like this, does it become a refuge? If not, then is literature a game, if yes, has today brought them happiness or suffocation? What, yesterday, we were sending us and the people to this hell of today and we were telling our weak wall of the soskan seer, were we going to be seers - were we seers? If we had a king and a kingdom, would we open our mouths with a different mission? The Russians here (the Persians here, the Turks here, the Arabs here) were a king and a kingdom - is the poet's word different? I have nothing to do with them, should I go and find someone like me? Did we fall from the sky to the wrong place, the wrong time, or are we the God's mistake that we exist?
I want to be convinced that now it is not the honor of my person and my work that speaks in me, but the realization of the fundamental meaning of words.
It was from the beginning. But isn't this a party trap for the simple-minded - to place my poor god as if he were at the beginning of creation and to give authority to all self-righteous black and white with me, as if I commemorated and if they eat me, my crows, if I soar, with my angels. Or, nevertheless, is this an ambitious and very human impulse - from the beginning, the thing was to give the energy of creation to our human speech.
I don't know.
I only know that I should not have seen this savage attack on a person, this test of a person and a human being, this betrayal of the world and a person - even more so, the world of Sahyan has come to a severe problem, that the person who entered the arena at his invitation is being ravaged.
Another time I will have to express something like this. "The arrow of this savagery and hostile armies, which calls itself civilization, points precisely to that which deserves our anxieties and protection - the native home." That countryman, that same house is being insulted, and in the same flesh and body, yesterday's host, from whose forehead Sahyan deciphered the script of honesty and nobility, is turning into a malicious passer-by. What happened to this, what is happening, whose fault is it, the fault of our poets, is it Sahyan's fault, is it our ancestors' fault that we are so powerless in the face of this destruction, that we were born defective and our defectives are now perishing? If poverty is a sin, yes, if poverty is first of all a poverty of the mind, yes, the teachers of our minds are the culprits of this panic retreat.
Only the idle ones would be filled with other voices like this, only the weak of mind would go with a strong foot like this, only the poor in spirit would give themselves to other gods like this, only the tyrants would break the veil like this, destroying the ship and themselves, only the godless people would go to such self-capture. Before the messengers of God or the devil, what a capacious basin is the poor people in spirit, what a free arena is the square of need for those who join a mercenary army!
Bringing the outside, uncertain, in all cases, non-polar experience of the predecessors and contemporaries into a panorama, Sahyan registered a civil right in the code of social-political thought for a self-willed, enlightened, independent person.
That person is pre-creatively self-sufficient, independent, perfect, he does not need your love, light and closeness of your ideas at all. if he still has any demands on you - the demand that you leave him, that you leave him out of your snares as an apostle, that you free him from the mercy of your master's love, because your proximity embitters, defames, distorts and destroys him, as evidenced by this three-hundred-million hostel. And if an attitude towards him is requested from you - respect before his perfection.
Sahyan became the Armenian man of our tough and irritable intersection of times and spaces, and his speech became an anthem for our march and his work became our image exactly like our flag. And because we often march without a flag and are more often guided by other people's icons, Sahyan's work is essential.
May, 1994
Hamo Sahyan. The poet, the thinker, the man,
"Van Arya" publishing house, Yerevan, 2001.