Armenian writer, winner of the State Prize Hrant Matevossian is well known to those who value literature. The writer explores different solutions. The novel "The Lord", for example, tells about the fate of forester Rostom Sargsyan, who stands up against the cynicism and indifference of those who destroy faith, love, and hope. In the novel "The Hangover" the writer presents the city life. Different stories, different destinies. But all of them are united by the wonderful talent of Hrant Matevossian, his perception of the world, which is based on the feeling of a person as a son of nature, a son of his country...
- Being born far from civilization, in a village forgotten by God, how did you become a writer? When did you first feel your hand?
- Perhaps at the age of 12-13. Once we, my children, were sent to the field to collect greens for pickles and dinner. Life was hard, we didn't see meat for months, so all the herbs that could be eaten were used. The children of the village returned home with large bundles of all kinds of grass, and one clever person managed to catch a wild chicken... Everyone returned with a full hand, but I had nothing in my hand. While my peers were looking for greens, I climbed from hill to hill to see what was on the other side of the mountains. From below, my peers saw me, my little boy, climb to the top of the high hills, and that was enough for my childish ambition.
...at the age of 14 I appeared in the city. Do you remember Tumanyan's story about how the father wanted to make his son human? They reached the city on foot, and all the way the son was turning back to his village, his home. So was I, looking back the whole time. Nostalgia didn't leave me, it pulled me home all the time. That longing ennobled, illuminated in my memory everything related to the house: my mother no longer seemed like a peasant woman, but a mother of God who nursed me, my father was the image of a peaceful reaper who took me under his reliable wing, protecting me with a shield from all kinds of evil and injustice in the world. That longing and desire to get to the basics, to tell everyone so that my feelings would be shared by many, all of that formed a desire to write in me.
One more memory. the wife of our village teacher died. She was not my friend, she was a foreign woman, a foreign mother, moreover, she was not from our village, she was a bride. Our class was taken to a funeral so that there would be many people at the funeral. All the children were standing on one side, and suddenly, in that silence, I started crying uncontrollably. I don't know what happened, I was related to the mystery of death, I was put in the place of that teacher, or his deceased wife and orphaned children, but I remember that afterwards they brought me back to consciousness for a long time, they sprinkled me with water and even slapped me a few times to make me come to my senses. Why did I feel someone else's grief as my own? Perhaps there was already a poet in me at that time.
- There are countless poetic temperaments in the world, but very few become writers. Perhaps some conditions are needed for certain qualities of the soul to become writing skills.
- In our house, there was a real cult of paper, ink, books, everything that is associated with the word. That cult was passed on to us by my mother. He believed that if he did not succeed, at least the children could get out of the darkness through the book.
At that time, parents were allowed to attend classes, they were even specially invited. Until now, I remember stuttering and stuttering when I read the untalented texts of Russian untalented authors of the textbook with no less untalented Armenian translation. I remember how I was assigned to recite at the school matinee.
Homer sang to Achilles,
Rostam Zali to Firdous...
As soon as I got to the eulogy addressed to Stalin, I was ashamed, blushed and kept silent. It's good, the manager of the club Vardush came to help. flew forward, spread his wings and continued. Such poems could have been cut off from literature if it weren't for my mother. She also knew how to tell a story very well, she not only told stories, but also played whole plays... I sometimes clearly feel my mother's tone in my writings, even the rhythm of her speech, and if I deviate from it, then I didn't write something correctly.
- Hrant, you write a lot about the people of the village. Tell me, do they read your books in your native village?
- They read, even tell each other. It happens that they get upset. After the "Ter" novel, they were upset with me for a long time. they had seen an allusion to themselves where I had not suspected it, others had remembered the secret stories I had only guessed and hinted at in the novel. The safe text suddenly "uncovered" secret minor and major sins that no one knew about before.
- What do you think, can a person living a prosperous life create?
- Of course, if the soul is deep. Even more so, if he received a good education and good upbringing. Weren't Tolstoy and Tumanyan prosperous people, even in our opinion? That is why their literature is complete, not born with the inferiority of a half-starved author, as happens now.
- But it is customary to think that writers have a secure life...
- What do you say, writers live unbearably? If they were well-off, they wouldn't touch random topics, they wouldn't engage in literary forgery, writing empty scripts and plays...
- Now both writers and readers are obsessed with memoirs. How do you feel about it?
- Just as true literature is the work of a select few, not all memories are, in my opinion, literature. When they belong to the pen of a true artist, there are wonderful surprises not only in the memories, but also in the inner world of the authors. Andrey Bitov once said that in his opinion, Pushkin, who was preparing to write about Peter, unexpectedly turned into a tsar for him too, the vocabulary changed. began to speak in a royal tone. Fate played a bad joke in his personal life as well: both the poet and the tsar on their deathbed, as is known, uttered: "High, high." As Bitov writes, Pushkin died as a tsar. And I think that the poet submitted himself to the tsar, deeply recognized and understood his personality and accepted him in his heart.
But Pushkin was a genius. Documentary prose is, as a rule, written by mediocre writers, and most are doomed to failure. Real personalities cannot be adequately written about because once they have already existed. Man is created once by God and, in fact, does not need to be repeated a second time in literature or other forms of art. Neither people nor things are repeated.
- So it is not so good that after the death of the writer, his fate becomes the material of the work.
- That's right. Only for this reason, a completely different character appears before us in our memories. And then... The artist, after all, is in the vortex of life and at the same time far from it. It is the instinct of creative self-preservation. The artist has a special feeling of helplessness, the feeling that he is unnecessary, neglected. Maybe because man is lonely by nature. Although I don't see anything wrong with either loneliness or collectivism. Everyone chooses his own way of life. Of course, we are all alone in our birth, death, and even the closest person hardly wants to share my death with me. However, we reach out to each other for help, and when we lose our loved ones, we lose a part of ourselves and suddenly realize that each of us is made up of many close and dear people.
- From time to time, do you go to the village to work or just to relax from the city?
- It is difficult to say. You see in what conditions I work and rest. The neighbor's child on the other side of the wall has been learning to play for hours, the noise of the street, constant rallies, the participants of which I am powerless to help with anything, even a wise word.
- But everything is not so hopeless...
- In ancient times, when a wolf attacked a herd, it was thrown to the most scabby goat. Sometimes the beast, not satisfied with the easy gain, entered into a fight with the shepherd and could even bite him. They found it to be the bite of a rabid wolf, so death was inevitable. If a person did not die on the fortieth night, then the crisis had passed and he had a long life ahead of him. And on the fortieth night, the whole village gathered around the shepherd's hearth. All night long, people sang, played zurna and duduk, sang, danced, told interesting stories, ate, drank... They did not let the shepherd sleep all night, because they were afraid that he would not wake up. In the morning he was alive and well, they dressed him, filled the cart with food and wine, gave the dog a helper and sent him to the waiting herd. Our people today, like the shepherd on the fortieth night, are waiting for the dawn. And you and I, like the shepherd's guests, talk about different topics, hoping that the dawn will come anyway.
The conversation was led by R. THE ARMENIAN
"Trud" ("DSRTP", TSRSCHO), 05.09.1990.