Yerevan is my city: familiar as my own skin, intimate, painfully mine. Yerevan is my city. I love it most when the loveliest flowers in the world open—the dark lilacs. Then the poplars bloom, all in one night, and the next day the city is wrapped in their half-real, half-unreal haze; last of all, the oleasters flower. Why am I writing all this? What has it to do with what follows? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything. In my student years I did not love him. To someone raised on asphalt he was complex and difficult: the deep pleasure of demanding literature was easily exchanged for an everyday detective story, swift-moving poetry and other worldly writing. Teryan said of Tumanyan that he loved him dearly, but his passion was not his own. I was no Teryan, yet certainly “his passion was not my passion”. The lilacs were still flowering in my courtyard. Then a time comes when the readily accessible page can no longer be read. The oleasters were flowering, and I understood: yes, I had grown up on asphalt, I had set foot in the village at a ceremonial march, yet “A Clear Day”, “Metsamor”, “The Green Field”, “Old Mountains beneath the Open Sky”, “The Trees”… were written by me. No less. No more. Literature is neither urban nor rural: either it exists or it does not. This literature exists within me, within the best half of my generation; in our best selves, this is who we are. This is how we keep ourselves and our mountains standing. And even if we are all packhorses to one degree or another, even if our running is often our duty, in Ahnidzor we have our world, our autumn sun, our hangover; to hell with Tashkent, and…
‘Your first arrival at the Writers’ Union?’
‘I was a typesetter at a printing house. Among the many, very varied materials that came in, the pieces for Grakan Tert stood out for me without any particular effort: I did the typesetting for the literary material. Apparently I was a good typesetter; I corrected errors as I worked. The proofreaders and editorial staff first brought me to Grakan Tert. I was twenty to twenty-two. More precisely, probably twenty. I began working for the newspaper, then for the magazine. People dear to me were here: Hamo Sahyan, Vahagn Davtyan, A. Aristakesyan, H. Felekyan, the others… It was my world. Essentially, the Writers’ Union’s contribution to my life as a writer is difficult to assess. One should be afraid of getting it wrong. Looking back, it seems a considerable hindrance; but without the Union, I do not know what my writing life would have been—whether it would have been the life of a professional writer or of someone who turned to literature from time to time. The Union’s presence is difficult to assess because the very thought of its absence is terrifying.’
‘Can Hovhannes Tumanyan’s Vernatun be considered a “Writers’ Union”?’
‘With the emergence of Tumanyan’s Vernatun, the panorama of Armenian literature opened and unfolded, with its past, present and future. That is the precise answer. Vernatun brought Abovyan and Sayat-Nova to life, saw and embraced Khorenatsi’s times, recognised Narekatsi’s worth, welcomed Teryan and drew a wide readership around itself. Vernatun opened horizons for literature. In effect, it was thanks to Vernatun that literature acquired civic standing within the nation and society.’
‘How do you envisage the Writers’ Union of Armenia today, in these new times so fundamentally different from the old? What is its mission now?’
‘I am not so naïve as to connect Let There Be Light, the Requiems, Hamo Sahyan’s poetry… directly with the Union’s activities, as though the Union existed and therefore masterpieces were created. What terrifies me is its nonexistence. When I was a free man, more or less independent, one of the republic’s well-known people, a member of parliament, and so on and so on—even then, even for me as a free man, the Union’s absence brought a feeling of weightlessness and vertigo. That was my feeling, and the feeling of that boy, that girl who has been called and has set out towards the Word with a capital W, but has no address or haven, seemingly nowhere to go. The Union may be a lighthouse, it may be a deceptive mirage—I do not know myself. But the child whose calling is not to become a shopkeeper, whose calling is to enter literature, will be certain of having a ministry of their own, somewhere to go, a road leading to a definite place.’
‘Does that mean the Union will now voluntarily take on the role of a nursemaid—a mission to lead people somewhere, care for them, educate and cherish them?’
‘Whether we like it or not, yes. The role of enriching society, encouraging it, demanding and establishing civic standing for Miss Poetry and Mr Prose in the eyes of the state and the people. Literature is a form of production, as important in its way as one industrial sector or another. Any government concerned with the strength of the nation and with its own strength is obliged to create a more or less favourable environment for that production. It will be done here; the state will do it through the Writers’ Union.’
‘In your view, what should the relationship between writer and society be? What is the writer’s place in society’s life?’
‘Beyond and above the duty to reflect reality, to investigate and reveal life, the writer’s role is to give society a spiritual life, to create the figures that will lead it. The world is led by such figures; the world’s nations make their journeys with the figures they have created.’
‘“You must be a crusader, a prophet and a martyr”…’
‘Yes. “Ascend the pyre and the cross not as a slave, but as a hero.” It sounds lofty; for us, humiliated in the present, it sounds lofty. But we must remember whose sons we are: Khorenatsi’s, Abovyan’s, Tumanyan’s. Whole epochs have been named after us: the age of Khorenatsi, the age of Narekatsi… We must not forget this.’
‘Paruyr Sevak used to say: enough hiding behind Narekatsi, Tumanyan and Charents. Time will come and ask: what have you done?’
‘True. If there is a reproach in what you say, I accept it.’
‘There is anxiety in what I say.’
‘Anxiety and reproach—I accept them. Both Tumanyan and Charents faced their time more openly, more proudly, more bravely, more wisely than we face ours.’
‘And more defencelessly.’
‘No, with greater knowledge and a broader vision for perceiving, encompassing and transforming reality. Whether they managed to change anything is another question.’
‘Do you agree that they belonged more to the future—to us—than to their own time?’
‘No. They belonged to their own time. And insofar as their time is our time, they belonged to us too. They were what they were. And the writers of those generations—from the generation of the 1870s to that of the 1920s and 1930s—were braver and better informed, more active and more forward-looking than ours, who were more reserved, more inclined to retreat. Ours renounced the spirit of commanding initiative and handed the country’s leadership to the slaves of totalitarianism. Is that blameworthy or not?’
‘Power was not surrendered voluntarily; it was taken by force.’
‘That is not so. People had cherished statehood, the salvation of the nation. Statehood acquired a more or less tolerable form, and naturally the country’s leadership was entrusted to the authorities. The writer was allotted the role of decorating the text. Just as medieval illuminators were allowed only to embellish the main biblical texts, we were given the role of illuminators, decorators of the margins of the dominant ideology. That was our allotted place for seventy years. Yet from the very first days literature found itself and, through new content, managed to make the margin into the main text. This is how Charents emerged, how the other monumental works were born that gave their time a name. Instead of depicting socialist reality through socialist realism, we nevertheless found reality and gave a picture of the time.’
‘Was that picture always real and truthful?’
‘Nations, peoples and epochs are led by the images writers create. Every writer has a duty to create a figure that will lead their nation. And if Armenian society today follows that image, does not sing its own song or speak its own words, that is the weakness of Armenian literature. Literature, with its diminished role, has created an incomplete image, and the people now follow an image that is not their own, one forged and shaped by the American. It is not what they themselves revere, not their own idol, not their own discovery, not something made to their own measure. That is our literature’s weakness.’
‘How do you see the relationship between writer and party? What is your view of a writer’s party allegiance?’
‘A writer can set armies of angels and devils in motion without belonging to either army. I am a Dashnak, a Hunchak, a Ramkavar, a member of the Armenian National Movement—and I am not a Dashnak, not a Hunchak, not a Ramkavar or a member of the Armenian National Movement. Because if, for example, I am a Dashnak, the other parties remain outside me, although they have the same and equally full right to national and social life. So I am all of them, but I am not obliged to confine myself within any one of them.’
‘But can a writer be a party member?’
‘Why not? Of course. And glory to the party that can contain those giants of all-embracing thought and feeling. If a party is broad enough to encompass the writer’s nonpartisan universality, that speaks only to the party’s quality.’
‘The writer and statehood; the writer’s influence on state policy; the writer’s role in relations between state and people.’
‘The vision of statehood found shelter and protection within us; it put its trust in us. Armenian statehood is the Armenian writer’s child. The vigilant Arsacids and Bagratids were remembered, stirred and kindled within the Armenian writer, and were reborn as the new Armenian statehood.’
‘How can the writer influence state policy today? By becoming an intermediary between the people and the state?’
‘By demanding intellectual and spiritual discipline from statesmen, with the courage of Tumanyan and Charents. Clinton says of Churchill: “To create the anti-fascist front, he summoned the full power of Shakespearean English.” That is what I would have given my political leaders.’
‘Or perhaps the writer should be in opposition, directing policy from the position of a critic?’
‘Directly—when necessary, that too.’
‘How would you describe the new generation of Armenian writers?’
‘There are people sufficiently sensitive to life, open and receptive to new art and new times; I place my hopes in them. Both as an elder and as chairman of the Writers’ Union of Armenia, my concern must be to think of them, seeing in them the immortality of yesterday’s literature and my own.’
‘In the 1980s many artists complained that their work did not reach society. During perestroika that opportunity was provided, but it turned out there was almost nothing to publish. What should be done today so that tomorrow there will be no “misunderstood geniuses”?’
‘Our situation is difficult not so much because of yesterday’s murderous literary policy as because one era has ended and another begun. The previous era might be called the age of literature—in other words, of ideologies. We have now entered a period in which the book is destined for a difficult existence. Add to this the particular difficulties of the disintegrated USSR, and nevertheless let us hope that the book and the writer have their own secure place, that there is some constant that brings books into being and keeps them alive.’
‘What, then, is the role of criticism? Do you not think criticism is in crisis when it comes to negotiating the change of eras you describe?’
‘Criticism has been given a major place from the beginning. Today, perhaps, is the time to concentrate literary forces in that field. Criticism must be the first to come to terms with the new era. We may even have no good literature; having good criticism is essential. Sos and Varditer has no value beyond the ethnographic; Nalbandyan’s Critique has unmistakable value. Criticism today must travel some distance ahead of literature, although the interdependence of these phenomena leaves little room for one to fall far behind or advance far ahead of the other.’
‘The Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow is now almost inaccessible. Is it possible to create a similar educational system in Armenia? If so, through cooperation between which institutions?’
‘Creating such a system is a necessity. Perhaps at the university. But the right thing is to maintain contact with the outside world: the young must go abroad, see the world, search, make mistakes, find things. We must not lose those connections. The way forward is to create such links and such a system both here and abroad.’
‘Armenia and you in the year 2000?’
‘“I dream of a radiant river,
Marble houses upon its banks—
Lovely girls wander all around,
Telling one another of my life”…’
There are my homeland and myself…
Yerevan is his city. He is a difficult man, and because the pain of this country, its anxiety, its hope, its past, present and future are always with him, being with him is difficult; being without him is impossible.
One era is giving way to another in literature, and literature today is trying to find its new standing, the new password that will open the doors of the future.
And beneath the world’s thousand-year-old sky a man will awaken, perhaps at night, perhaps early in the morning, and the chill of the blank page will become a stone of temptation. The blank paper will seem defenceless and weak against the world’s brute force; the blank paper will become a bulwark and a foothold, so that in this city the lilacs may flower first, then the poplars in a single night, and at the end of spring the oleasters. Beneath the world’s thousand-year-old sky this man is condemned to be the genius of his people, because without him they will lose their way, their scent, their colour, their memory, their history that cannot fit within their borders, their defeats, their baseness, their fury to win, their passion for fighting, their love of loving… Today that man is Hrant Matevosyan, a man who gives his time a name.
Anahit ADAMYAN
Hayastani Hanrapetutyun, 8 June 1996.