The first book of novelist Hrant Matevossian, "We Are, Our Mountains", was published in 1962. Critics and readers immediately noticed that he had something to say to people he could tell. The writer's further books appeared without haste, with long pauses, which were translated into many languages of the peoples of the USSR, and were published abroad. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Hrant Matevossian's vivid, original prose is a whole world, alive, moving, maximally material, seen through the eyes of our contemporary and inhabited by our contemporaries.
But who is he, Hrant Matevossian's hero? Our conversation started from this question.
- He is the person we call ordinary, who in the past did not appear in historical chronicles and annals, where only the lives and deeds of famous people were recorded. Ordinary mortals were only mentioned when the number of those who died on the battlefield was mentioned. I wanted to be the chronicler of our days and write about the fate of those who are counted only as a human unit in general statistics, but are individuals. Because I am convinced that everyone, if we carefully examine his life and feelings, gives the writer rich material to think about our time, - says Hrant Ignati Matevosyan.
To meet Matevosyan's heroes, you have to go up to the mountain village of Tsmakut. And for that you have to get off at the bridged station in a narrow gorge. the rocks had given way just enough to accommodate the railroad; the station was suspended on stilts over the river.
People's lives here are difficult and a lot of effort has to be made to create a home and a family hearth. We see how difficult everything is for Aghun and Simon from the novel "Mother goes to marry her son". It is true that Aghun is a sable-tongued person. "Everything in this house was created by work, it was born like a child is born, with pain, blood, and suffering, and nothing was given easily, nothing was like a chicken laying an egg..." And the same can be said about Tsmakut's whole life: difficult, yet beautiful.
- When and how did you start writing your story about Tsmakut?
- If we translate the word Tsmakut into Russian, it will mean "in the forests", in the depths. In 1960-1961, along with the novel "We Are Our Mountains" about the shepherds of Antaramej, I also wrote a novel, the prototypes of which were the residents of my native Ahnidzor, but so that my fellow villagers would not recognize them, I named the village Tsmakut. That novel didn't work. I realized that only ready-made prototypes do not solve a problem. But the idea of "relocating" our fellow villagers to Tsmakut remained. It made it possible to deal freely with the material, to combine in Tsmakut everything I knew about Ahnidzor and heard and knew about other places. My fellow villagers, of course, know themselves. But most interestingly, they recognize not only the stories that actually happened. It's gratifying because it means the fictional situations fit the logic of my characters' personalities.
My compatriots consider me a mediator between them and the wider world. And I see that my small village is a part of the big world. Same problems there as everywhere else. I am convinced that by "not leaving" Tsmakut, you can answer the most painful questions in the world...
One such issue is war. Forty-eight residents of Tsmakout did not return from the war. There are no graves in the cemetery where their grandfathers and great-grandfathers are buried. "forty-eight young men did not return from the battlefield, forty-eight reapers, shepherds, teachers, farmers - a whole shrill choir." this is from the story "Then in the winter" about the first post-war winter, widows and orphans. In the novel "Tashkend", the writer's thoughts go forward about the biggest moral losses that the village suffered due to the war.
- The war reaped the generation of our fathers, the golden generation of great workers, and deprived us of our childhood... Is it normal that a ten-year-old boy wears his father's boots and considers himself to be old, or when he hates old men because they are alive and his father is not?
What war is probably only those who have experienced it not on the front line, but deep in the rear, will be able to understand. I remember once Saroyan (one of my favorite writers, meetings with him are always a gift for me) asked me: "What did you eat during the war?" And there was no way he could understand that we only ate potatoes. “Potatoes? And with what?" At that time I showed that I was holding potatoes in both hands. "Let's say this is cheese and this is bread, but actually they're both potatoes." He laughed and I never knew if he understood or not. Now there is a risk of war again in the world. And it forces us to talk again and again about the disasters that war has brought, to look for ways to protect humanity. And there, not the last role can be played by the writer's word.
- What do you value most in a literary work, what kind of relationship do you have with your heroes?
- They say that after the construction of the Eiffel Tower, only sixteen kilograms of construction debris and remains were collected from the construction site. This is what the miracle of design thinking and technical calculation means.
Some works of art are "designed" in such a way that nothing can be added or subtracted: the subject is completely exhausted, and it is clear that there can be no other artistic solution. It's fascinating. But the works that convey infinity, the eternity of the world and life are more attractive to me. They leave room for imagination, finished look, coexistence. It's like you're going through a forest path and you come out to a big and beautiful field, you go further and you meet new fields, big, small, new each time. When I write, the material submits to me. I can't force my hero into any of my places, and it happens that my hero moves away from me, giving way to those with greater moral power. I regretted so much that in the story "Old Mountains Under the Open Sky" - it was written before "Tashkend" - Pastor Ohan died. His name is often mentioned in the novel. And it is no coincidence that the two Tevans need their older friend very much. I feel so much...
- To what extent is the autobiographical beginning present in your stories?
– Probably as much as with other writers. About me, I can say that I feel uncomfortable to fantasize too much, to leave familiar people and places. It is clear that only one's own memory is too narrow a scope for a writer. In the age of advanced communications, thought-provoking information comes from everywhere. Even a message about a fact or phenomenon that happened thousands of kilometers away can trigger a whole range of emotions, forcing you to look anew at everything that was known and familiar to you for a long time... What is fixed in memory is interpreted very differently in a work of art. I heard a long time ago about the old man who said at his wife's funeral that he would die in twenty days and he really did. In order to emphasize the fleeting, fleeting, but opposite character, it was said about it in the novel "We are, our mountains". I wrote as I heard. But that old man has been living in me for twenty years, and in the novel I'm writing now, that story gets an unexpected moral and psychological development.
Often an episode can trigger a flood of memories. Once my father, who is a modest and quiet man, asked me. "If it's not difficult for you, tell about my fear in one of your books. For forty days I worked for wheat in someone else's village, loaded the wheat on our horse and returned home. It was so hard. I was afraid that they would rob, take away the horse and return home empty-handed..."
It was probably the fall of '47. I remembered how we jumped on my father's sack when he came home, hoping that he had brought gifts... In the sack of wheat there was only one green, khaki nut... I now understand what kind of gift he could have thought of, if he still remembers his fear on the way home. And that green nut, the only thing that stuck in my memory, triggered a flood of images.
It will be a big part of the novel, the children go down the slope like ants to the spring to carry water... The thin, weary father sits by the wooden trough, his dirty, lousy clothes are thrown in the yard. His mother pours hot water on his broad shoulders and rubs him with ashes. And then he takes out the piece of scented soap that he has kept from the children since before the war and soaps his father's shoulders. And that soap that she kept from the little girl (attracted by the fragrance, the little girl wanted to eat the soap for sure) is the most eloquent evidence that she loves her husband...
The writer remembers another episode from his childhood. about his own fear. In early spring, a ten-year-old child took a cow to a pasture with other children. In search of the first greens of spring, they climbed the steep slopes. The cows were covered with old furs to protect them from the cold wind. They spent the night by the fire. “The older children talked about the women, discussing them one by one, house by house, and I waited with bated breath for them to arrive at our house. But, giving my mother's name and remembering one of the neighbors, one of them said: "Oh, they are clean"... I remember that anxiety and fear of hearing bad things about my mother all my life." And suddenly, interrupting the memories, he says:
- I want to write ten short stories. The search for the beginning, the relentless unraveling of the knot, the internal moral content in the depth of the external events... That's why I love the story...
- Can you imagine your readers? What letters do they write to you?
- First of all, they are intelligent and sensitive readers who love literature and have infinite faith. When I read their letters, I feel that the most cherished hopes are being cherished. And I am ashamed and feel a pang of conscience for my light-heartedness and shortcomings. It happens that, giving in to the urges of the magazine, you publish the unfinished work and suddenly you receive a letter from which you understand that the reader understands more from your writing than you wanted to say. They are co-authors, and I think it takes a real talent to be such a reader.
What do they respond to the most? Armenian readers to popular characters, the fate of the nation, judgments about the future. The pro-Union reader, who was brought up with moral issues through the books of Russian writers, pays attention to that aspect in my books.
Hrant Matevossian is a passionate lover of cinema. At one time, he even studied in advanced screenwriting courses, intending to seriously pursue cinematography. By the way, the movie "The Lord" based on his novel was recently shot in Armenia. The film is about a forester who fights for the preservation of nature, for the preservation of the ancient civilization, which was created by the centuries-old work of the people.
- I consider Henrik Malyan's "We Are Our Mountains" to be the most successful of the four or five films made with my works, although I did not see material for cinema in my novel. I'm generally bad at movies. But in the end, I came to the conclusion that good directors write the script of their films themselves, and writers should deal with literature. And rejoice in the success of others, enjoying themselves as spectators. Reliving a good movie is a long-lasting pleasure. I consider Balayan's "Flight in a Dream and Flatness", "The Kiss" based on Chekhov's story, Turgenev's "Biryuk" to be among the best films of recent times... And everyone praises "The Lord" so much that I am afraid that they will make you believe that it was a good film...
- Who do you consider to be your teacher in literature? Who among contemporaries is closer to you?
- The first serious book I read was probably Sholokhov's "Peaceful Don", then I fell in love with Charents and Bakuntsi. They stayed with me that way. Charents as an example of poetic mastery and thought. Bakunts fascinates with its knowledge of people's life. Hovhannes Tumanyan is with me from the very first lines I read, like a river flows and imperceptibly irrigates the land. Love and admiration for the Armenian word and the Armenian language grew from that foundation. I think it was Tumanyan who prepared me for the perception of real literature. Everything he touched became a fact, a part of the spirituality of Armenian culture, including translations from Pushkin. He is a supreme example of morality as an individual. His mission as a peacemaker is worth it, when he went with a white flag across Northern Armenia to Azerbaijani villages to prevent bloody clashes... Our Ahnidzor is close to Dsegh, and my compatriots remember him. At one time I wanted to write a book about Tumanyan. My intention did not work. But in many of my works, the people of Tsmakout remember different episodes of his life, the lines of his poems. There will be a large section about Tumanyan in the novel I am writing now. I want the image of a wonderful poet, patriot, and citizen to be formed from those individual parts.
Among the contemporaries, I like Yuri Kazakov, Vasiliy Shukshin, Vasiliy Belov, Andrei Bitov, I like Americans: Hemingway, Faulkner, Saroyan... Literary preferences change over the years. If before literature attracted the author's ability to convey the beauty of the world, now it attracts the mind, the accuracy of the expression of the thought, the precision. I don't stop re-reading Tolstoy: "Haji Murad", "Kholstomer", "Death of Ivan Ilyich".
I remembered our conversation about literature during a long-ago meeting in Yerevan. Speaking about his favorite writers Pushkin, Gogol, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Matevosyan emphasized their attitude towards people: only empathy helps the writer to fully understand his hero, to penetrate into his psychology. And combining everything that I heard now, I realized that, in fact, this is what remained the main thing for him.
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The conversation was led by M. ISKOLDSKAIAN
"Soviet culture"
(“Soviet Culture”, Moscow), 10/18/1984