It is 12 February 2000, my birthday. In earlier days, what I have to say on the occasion of my celebration would have had an entirely different tone and emphasis, had this day not fallen in the aftermath of 27 October 1999.
After the hell of 27 October — we still cannot find the word for it… My nation showed its worst face. In Tumanyan’s words, each of us lacks the willingness to tolerate, to love, to forgive… I would truly like to have a party of those who tolerate, who endure, who forgive… I would like to be a wealthy Jew: to throw a tonne of gold into the square, just like that, so that everyone around the feeding trough would quieten down, calm down and return to their work.
The bad prevailed. The bad prevailed. The good could not make the difference that would have kept us from entering the new era defeated. Bad in every respect, in the economy. Apart from morality, in everything: the economy, thought, trade; your engineer is defeated, your cow is beaten by the Western cow, your pig by the Western pig, each individual here by the individual in the West… How much time will it take for us to catch up, to emerge from this defeated condition and join the splendid procession of the world’s peoples? God knows when. For now, the slave lives within us, hoping for help; hoping for help in thinking, we look to the West…
I hope our time and our country will have enough pride, that the people will not leave their own time and their own country a deserted wasteland. I hope factories will send up smoke again, sirens will sound again, and the people will find a way out of all this…
…Our literature has been something rather different from that of other countries. Beginning with Abovyan, our literature stood in for statehood. Then, during the years of Soviet rule, it was both the foreign and the domestic policy of our authorities — our national autonomy. It was something on a par with the Church: just as our Church had stood in for statehood for a thousand years, from Abovyan onwards our literature was the Armenian state. In effect, our statehood took refuge in Armenian literature. Many may be inclined to think that it did not reach the heights of the world’s other literatures, that it did not take part in the literary march. But you cannot lay the blame on it, for that is our fate, from Mesrop Mashtots and Khorenatsi down to, let us say, your humble servant… Work shying away from the human being, a machine fleeing the worker’s hands: a wedge was driven between us and ourselves; it was a failing of the times. And that was what I noticed with hurt at twenty-two or twenty-three. It wounded my possessive pride as a local man: why should we not have the right to kill our own bear? Here we are, and here is our bear. From that came We and Our Mountains — not a bad piece of work…