The family of Armenian writers bids farewell to its brother, who has laboured, grown tired and gone out. It bids farewell with deep gratitude and thanks, for Henrik Malyan became not only the son of Armenian culture and literature, throbbing with his people’s anxieties and hopes, but also its parent, its renewer, the one who brought that culture into public view in new splendour and attire.
Even in the most tragic, most unforeseen, most innocent losses, we ask the merciless question: what did the departed leave upon my land? Triangle, We and Our Mountains, Nahapet, A Piece of Sky, and other films and works. Although they are not a complete picture of genocide and rebirth, disintegration and resistance, together they are the fullest possible picture of the Armenian’s moral grandeur. Films that without Henrik Malyan would not have been hours of faith, love and trust in the lives of the Armenian people and many, many people around the world; hours that without Malyan would have been hours of doubt and distrust. And, finally, sufficiently firm evidence of what is called national culture, before which disdain gave way to goodwill, resignation to the nonexistence of Armenian national cinema turned into expectation: what would Henrik Malyan film?
Our decades of stagnation and gentle pressure were saved from absolute cultural barrenness largely through his personal effort. Yes, he could be subjected to pressure without submitting, agree without agreeing, say yes while saying no — no to the disregard of social, national and ideological pressure. He could be “up above” without belonging “up above”, ultimately becoming a figure not unwelcome to those above and welcome to those of us below. Fate had squeezed his one and only life into times of spiritual barrenness and cruelly drove him towards, at best, an unnoticed, nameless existence. Yet he emerged victorious, emerged from that silent struggle having corrected his own fate, affirming the thought that one can and must create under every regime. He became the beloved name Henrik Malyan, and it is names that turn a geographical place into a Homeland with a capital letter.
The collaboration of writer and director has occurred many times, and almost as often has grown into irreconcilable opposition: open, lofty masterpieces have been unable to lift the inept to their heavens, while the inept have brought masterpieces down. Malyan did not beg for glory and a name from the splendid monuments of our literature; he gave value and a name to works that would have been less visible without his pointing them out. That is why, on behalf of Armenian writers, we say with gratitude: he became not only the son of Armenian writing, of the Armenian word, but also its parent.
His final, desperate effort remained unfinished: the story of Komitas, of the great Armenian awakening and destruction. The picture of the longing of those driven from their native land also remained a mere wish, a longing that becomes bodily pain and drives a person mad. Those pictures were not to come into being, and did not. Genocide is hell, a many-headed monster that will not let you approach, whose poisonous flames drive mad and destroy every Armenian, all the more an artist, even from afar. The failure to realise those works is also evidence of the body’s instinctive, wise refusal to follow the daring soul. Henrik’s body refused, retreated, stayed behind — but never as a lesson to those of us still living and to generations upon generations.