We need literary competition, writing competition, open competition, competition in front of all of us, against and for the sake of all of us, readers and writers, for the sake of the artistic thought of the republic. Needless to say, artistic thought means thought in general, absence of artistic thought means absence of thought in general; Marx considered artistically deficient people to be deficient in general, Lenin mentioned his profession as a writer. And it is unnecessary to emphasize that the artistic thought of this republic is lagging behind, this people is lagging behind in the region that seems to be its unique calling. Great philosophers, generals, figures are good writers. not only are they good writers, but they are great philosopher-figure-soldiers by virtue of being good writers.
If Manfredi Napoléon, printed in fifty thousand copies on a thousand pages, is sold in an hour without ever appearing in a bookstore, and the excellent García Márquez confuses at best, leaves the reader indifferent at worst, if half (that is, the words from me, the melody from you, the fame from the people to both of us, half) the poet still shakes the halls and not insignificant officials "Charents of our days" "I" is honored, then we have to emphasize again that our taste lags behind - the taste of that poet, and that hall, and that official, and in general all of us, who make up the great mejlis-square of this republic, lags behind.
The vocation and goal of all of us, after eating bread, is to be Mozart or to give birth and to feed, humanity is not called for anything else. We all eat bread in one way or another, but to what extent we are ready or are we ready to be a hall or a Mozart for the Mozart among us, that is a bit doubtful. If our call to be a national culture, which is the only form of culture, is confused and connected with the redevelopment of nationalism, which this land has never had, it means that we are waiting in vain for the existence of our other Saryans, Charents and Komitas, more specifically, it means that the artistic mind of the republic has yet to assimilate many and many alphabetic truths, it has not assimilated, it has not made it the daily bread of all of us.
We need daily presence of world literature in our house, we should feel its breath every moment. Let's have a conscience and say that it is primarily necessary for those who do not read Russian or read poorly - they should not be deprived, we keep them deprived and poor. but who are they - they are our tomorrow, and our mere memory and experience of yesterday tells us that our literates of tomorrow will be as illiterate as we are today. Second. we, the so-called connoisseurs, need the daily presence of that literature, because reading Russian or another language does not mean feeling rich and powerful in the world of Armenian. From another linguistic world, the work will still have to be transferred, with losses and inventions, to the native world, to become a cultural fact in that world and thus become an arsenal and arena for the Armenian writer. They, those greats of world literature, come to define standards in national literatures, measure and be measured as well. they are a stimulus for aesthetic thought. After the introduction of Kierkegaard, Camus, Kafka and many, many others, only the Russian aesthetic thought began to see its Dostoevsky in a different light; we are alive and our great ancestors are waiting for their investigators. under the eyes of those investigators, our great forefather said: "even though we are a small valley, we also had people and stories worthy of writing."
In short, you should think about bringing. let those who will take from here, who need our culture, think about giving, we should think about having world literature in Armenian. In a word, we need a monthly periodical, a daily presence of world literature, which does not exist, which is reminded here by the irregular shots of the hawk and does not count for an unknown amount of time. Otherwise, we give birth to Minas and we don't know if it is good or bad, until a Kamensky comes and says it is good. We are giving birth to Mansuryan and we still don't know whether it is good that we gave birth. indifference: we build bad buildings, put up bad statues and don't know whether they are good or bad.
We tell a lot of stories and we never get a true assessment of what we do, we are afraid of things that are a little crooked, a little not so. And it is very important for each of us - if, say, we had written Aitmatov's last novel, would it be printed here or not, would the Armenian aesthetic thought be able to appropriate it?
We regularly ask, demand, beg. it is not one, but two: a literary-critical magazine and one of world-Soviet literature. Their existence would create an atmosphere of artistic thinking where one could expect true literary values and their correct interpretation.