Culture’s Responsibility for the World’s Fate Is Immense

Meeting at Yerevan State University, 28 September 1984

H. Matevosyan: “...I can speak for five minutes, I can speak for the rest of my life and still never find answers to the questions that trouble me...”
But briefly, my immediate impression, a photographic impression: below the aircraft’s left wing I could see the land of Talin—probably Talin’s, I don’t know. My mind was still on the Kazbek mountains; I thought I would see the country in sequence, then suddenly I saw we were passing Aragats, and the land—ravaged, poo-oor, lost beneath a web of roads, ravaged by civilisation, by history, by chemistry, what do I know—ravaged for centuries, poor land. I am understating it... If you call me its photographer, its chronicler, I will be grateful again...
Tell me where to begin, and I will...
I will begin where I should have begun.
My thanks to those who gave me that opportunity: William Saroyan and I were sitting in the same car, on our way to Garni and Geghard. He said, “Hrant Matevosyan, when you began writing, what desire did you begin with?” I did not understand what he meant. He said, “When I began writing, I thought I would turn the world.” It was autumn, and under the impression of actual tourists I thought “turn” meant going around the world. I did not know he meant overturning it, changing the whole course of life. Then I began to understand, saw that a free citizen of a free country was expressing his opinions: a free citizen really can speak of overturning the world, turning its course. My desires were not so aggressive...
My father and I were mowing hay in the mountains. Afterwards we were tired. It truly was a good age. We were like friends. He was about fifty, I was twenty-three, only twenty-three. An age for friendship. We were coming down from the mountains tired. At the time they were turning the collective farm into a state farm. Well, the collective farmers’ possessions had to be trimmed a little... They trimmed them so much, and people grew so disgusted with owning anything, that now they are asked to keep livestock and will not. They say, why keep it so that... You keep it and we’ll eat...
The impressions were still fresh, the sweetness of private ownership still in their mouths: when you have a horse and love your horse, have a cow, a calf... They had only just been deprived of all that and wept over the losses. He had taken his horse away, had been forced to take it away and give it to another village for a few kopecks. Then, when she was about to foal, the horse came back. He says, when the horse came and stood at the door, my father, who was rather rough, not a man given to sentiment, he says, wept in my mother’s presence... Said, I won’t give my horse away again... But he had lost the horse... I said, I’ll write and they’ll let people keep horses again. He looked at me doubtfully: who are you to change the charter, change the model collective-farm charter and give me a horse?..
In fact, my most aggressive desire, my sharpest desire in all the time I have written, was that: to have my father’s horse returned. It became the framework and foundation of what I thought an ordinary essay, and people more timid than I made the essay famous, piling everything they themselves thought around it... It was the famous essay Ahnidzor, which became a fire over my head and at the same time pushed me into the so-called foreground of literature... I should have been in the third, safer, unnoticed rank of writers... And could have provided easily and quietly for my family—clothes for my wife, keeping the children nicely, this and that... Things would have been a little better... Anyway. What happened happened; I have not regretted it...
Tell me where to begin, and I will. I have not begun yet.
I was born in a cowshed. The times were poor, and I was born in a cowshed, in a cowshed I was born... It is in one of my novellas. They gave the upper part of the shed to us—my father, my mother, the newborn Hrant Matevosyan—and the lower part to the buffaloes. Perhaps that is where I took my buffalo from. Perhaps one day I will write about the buffalo. I don’t know...
Then my mother kept running away; she did not want to adapt to the new life here, because she thought life was a little brighter in that faraway urban village, Sanahin. She did not want to accept the poor life of this remote village; she kept running away... And my poor father each time, holding that ugly child, yes... If I were to say I was beautiful as a child... There was a Yepraksya at the Writers’ Union. Mad... But a very good woman. She said, I was very beautiful as a baby; they swapped me in the cradle...
Perhaps I was beautiful as a baby, perhaps ugly, I don’t know, but holding that ugly bundle my poor father went to all the neighbouring women with breasts... Yes, women with babies, and they fed me. That is where I come from; together they were my mother...
The war reduced the number of men, and the people of the village community became remarkably close. My impression was that everyone was everyone’s father and everyone was everyone’s mother. Such a beautiful community had formed, had arisen; there was an atmosphere of love. Either I was a poet, or I am still a poet and believe that such a community existed. At any rate, they gave me the possibility of thinking it was truly a community bound by love... I try to present myself as that community’s chronicler... I can recall chance incidents from my life and say what I love in literature. In the end, in short, I am their child, the child of those poor parents, of those deprived, orphaned and widowed women...
Later I witnessed many stories, sat at many lavish tables, but always gathered what was inwardly close to me...
My father-in-law, my wife’s father, told me about a beautiful human being from their village, Gerasim Atajanyan, about a heroic life. Gerasim had been an ordinary foreman at the copper mines, knowing a little French from his contact with the French, knowing French, blind in one eye, an eye lost, and therefore not conscripted... But when after the Batum conference Armenia was allotted ten thousand square kilometres, when the people were being squeezed from all sides into this little cage—we now have thirty thousand kilometres—the people of Zangezur resisted, and in Kapan they resisted under Gerasim Atajanyan’s leadership. Without famous commanders we even managed to fight battles in a place or two; at any rate, the Kapan district is now within Armenia’s territory. Then he retreated, went to Paris, then severed his ties, knowing there was no road back here for him. But his child fell ill with the illness we all, rather fond of foreign words, call nostalgia, fell ill with a nostalgic illness, homesickness, which can be cured—or not cured—only in the homeland’s mountains. For three years running, when the child was growing up, at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, this man had to cross the border secretly and bring the child to the Zangezur mountains for treatment. On his last return he was shot on the Araks; the child grew up, came back here and now lives in Lusakert. Gerasim Atajanyan preserved a homeland and has now bequeathed it to me. I say, I am the heir of those poor people, those heroes, that hard life. I want to tell their story. I want to be their writer. I want to record their voices. And of course in literature too I had to choose, consider my own, what was about them or approximately about them. And of course more than splendid books, the Bible and encyclopaedias, I had to see Luke’s account of Simon, Simon coming from the fields and wishing someone would wash his feet and that he could sleep now, even beneath his load, his heavy burden... But they took the load from his shoulders and put the cross on his back: you’re a good bearer, a good porter; it would be good for you to carry Christ’s cross to Golgotha, because our princely shoulders are not for crosses, and Christ himself is a thin lad, cannot carry it. Here is Simon’s back, very convenient for bearing someone else’s cross. In the Gospel I noticed Luke’s Simon...
In the wonderful Aksel Bakunts’s short story Tigranuhi... Who has read it? Who knows it? Great literature. In Tigranuhi, Vasil—his portrayal is parodic and a little stylised—is supposed to have kept a diary, and Aksel Bakunts found Vasil’s diary...
Edvard Isabekyan: “A terrible thing...”
Hrant Matevosyan: “Eh?.. Yes. Great literature. Vasil’s uneducated diary, full of spelling mistakes, is about Tigranuhi. She is a little girl and was to become a young woman; once something like a faint smile appeared in her eyes, a girl’s joy appeared within her... Her brother, her elder brother—she is an orphan, isn’t she, her brother was supposed to be like a father to her, but he is not a father; after all no one replaces a father or mother: a brother is a brother, a brother’s wife is a brother’s wife—well, her brother bought her shoes, probably from the cooperative or wherever, yes, cooperatives in Armenia date from thirty-six too, bought shoes from the cooperative shop for her, who worked as a hired servant in a neighbour’s house and gleaned ears of grain in the fields. He was to give those shoes to the little orphan. And the first womanly, girlish joy appears in her eyes and instantly vanishes, because her brother’s wife takes them from her and puts them in a chest. This is the Tigranuhi I noticed.”
I can name The Modest Girl, cite The Modest Girl. It exists! Once something like a faint love blended, blended, gleamed within that girl when backstage—they had built a village stage—he took her hand, said, “My modest one,” she said, “Let go,” and her voice trembled. These are Aksel’s indications.
These are the works I love.
To say that what I write has never been done in literature, in older literature, would not be quite right. But the attitude is still not what mine should be... This new literature of compassion is an entirely new phenomenon in world literature. Now you will mention poor Yevgeny in The Bronze Horseman, Pushkin’s attitude, or Akaky Akakievich in The Overcoat. You will be right to mention them. But still, look: he looked down from a prince’s height, and there is a lordly attitude towards that poor man, whom one can only pity. But can he be received in princely halls as an equal brother, can one sit with him as an equal? No. You will say, you have come too close, move away a little, as one of our Central Committee secretaries used to say, let us be close, but when you came too close he said, you’ve gone too far, move away a little. There was something like that.The Death of Ivan Ilyich*—wonderful, magnificent; in that masterpiece of world literature there was Gerasim, in a white shirt, it says: a white shirt, clean beautiful teeth, always
amiable** and he smiled always willingly***...
And he cleaned up Ivan Ilyich’s filth, and Ivan Ilyich feels his feet are at ease and his heart is at ease too when his feet are on Gerasim’s shoulders. For hours this man lays his feet on Gerasim’s shoulders and dozes. Bakhtin makes the wonderful point that Gerasim is “not illuminated from within.” Indeed, he is not illuminated within. What remains is “a white shirt, beautiful clean teeth”****.
And Gerasim is always ready to help. If you want to know precisely, that is Tolstoy’s immense problem: he knows there should not be such an attitude, our attitude towards the peasantry, yet could not sever that bond... He can accept begging, can give, could give a rouble and ask for fifty kopecks back, but destroy this life, destroy his and his companions’ lives, break the bonds and say, here, come, you are Scythians, you are savages, you are revolutionaries, come, pull down our palaces, because this is not life, this world of contradictions, this society of lordly exploitation and, what do I know, your meek exploitation is not right! That he does not do. He severed the bonds with difficulty. Or else could not sever them. It was a new attitude.
Now I seem to be speaking from a familiar script; I have written a little about this, but may God give you the strength to get up and immediately improvise your speech. Charents has a magnificent work, Elegy Written in Venice. Against Isahakyan. It is fitting to say, precisely against him. Indeed, that is how it should be. Perhaps it is Isahakyan as he perceives him. But no, God forgive me. A very good work, but... There he emphasises something: simply the old lordly attitude. Deepening, stressing, heightening it, he says, he wanted his own Arpachay, his own friendship, his own beauty, while
The other fields—bare and dry,
And in those fields—the old man, a beast of burden.
I emphasise: the old man as a beast of burden.
On him a rotten, muddy shirt,
His soul forever mute, scorched dry.
I ask, is his soul really mute or not? Mute or not?
The representative of wonderful, magnificent French culture—he, Saint-Exupéry, was to become the symbol of this attitude of ours in the twentieth century. Saint-Exupéry, when Jews being expelled are packed into freight wagons—this country is very familiar with that—people packed into cattle wagons and transported, all on top of one another, one’s head on another’s belly, asleep, children here and there, night, what do I know, picture them all... Saint-Exupéry says: in the end they will endure, will go, will live; my pain is not for them, my pain is for the Mozart killed within them. My pain is for the Mozart killed within the human being.
In that people, in those people whose child I consider myself, I want to reveal the Mozart, bring him out here... If I live long and write a great, great deal and can make that attitude a little more humane, then it is worthwhile. Of course I am nobody. At any moment even the most famous writer—not here, in America—can be taken by the ear and made to disappear. That is not the point.
Others begin politics, begin wars. But the atmosphere in which the makers of that politics and the starters of wars live, that atmosphere is ultimately created by writers. Indeed, culture’s responsibility for the world’s fate is immense. Now say, what does your scarcely existent tribe amount to, what is the culture brought by that barely existent little tribe, that it could change anything in the world? Still, I consider responsibility for this hectare of ours to belong to our culture here, our art, our people here, to us... May God grant that we break through the borders and our voice be heard in the Union, abroad, I don’t know where else... Our contribution to world culture—that is the task. But still, these thirty thousand square kilometres, which is not little, and we are not such a small people either—the world’s twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth people—within our cultural bounds, within these bounds of ours, if we can make that territory and atmosphere, morality, the atmosphere of respect for the human being a little more humane, I will feel fully satisfied...
Tell me what else to talk about, and I will.
Tell me, and I will speak...
It would be better if you asked aloud and I answered.
What does it say?
Levon Mkrtchyan: “Write your questions in Armenian.”
Hrant Matevosyan: “Why shouldn’t they know I know Russian?”
It asks, “Do you use biblical motifs in your literature?”
Consciously, no. But when you suddenly see that what you have witnessed matches what is there... Another time someone even said this: it seemed I was deliberately taking those things from the Bible. But it is not so. It is simply that the Bible’s atmosphere, the background to the events in its books and the background to the life I have lived are the same. It was the same life, which simply changed before our eyes in the sixties; until then we had lived the same, the very same life. In Aksel’s words, the years were merely different leaves on the same tree. That is why I say Tolstoy’s situation was not difficult: he truly lived and wrote in one and the same time, whereas I was born in one time and have moved into another... Into an utterly different time... The revolution did not happen in seventeen, the revolution happened during the war. Here, in this country, the revolution was the revolution of Zhiguli cars, not a revolutionary revolution. A different world has truly come into being, and I understand almost nothing of it. If you understand...
“How many factions are there in the Writers’ Union?”
“There are two factions in the Writers’ Union: one is me, the other is everyone else...”
“What do you think of the opinions expressed today about your work?”
“If I tell you now and you accuse me of coyness, you will be wrong. I don’t hear it. When people speak about me, I truly don’t hear, I go deaf, don’t hear. As much as any—imagine a handsome corpse—any corpse can hear praise of itself, so much can I. I go absolutely deaf... Truly, I don’t hear.”
Levon Mkrtchyan: “But it is pleasant all the same, isn’t it?”
Hrant Matevosyan: “That is why they open the window for the dead, to let a good breeze blow. Believe me, I cannot.”
“What do you think of the Russian translations of your work?”
“I do not consider it my business, now any more than at the beginning. Ultimately it is a matter for Russian culture. Let them consider how far their language is muddied or brightened, opened up. It is a task for Russian criticism. And we should ask ourselves the same question when such foolish, disgusting translations are made, filling Armenian literature with disgusting translations even of great authors. When we translate and publish Louis Aragon, or Márquez, or some random thirty-two African poets all at once with that quality, we pollute our minds and our pages, our precious pages.”
I rather like, forgive me, that the translation of my work has, one might say, come into its own, is an accomplished translation. Though when I encounter small errors I feel hurt again.
Still I say it is not my question, it is theirs. That is all. I have overcome the initial wide-eyed wonder: here I am, I’ve reached Moscow, I’m going to the Kremlin, this is the Tsar Bell, this is the Tsar Cannon, here someone in Russia recognised me... That attitude has been overcome; that provincial awe has truly been overcome. I have simply been lucky. My translator is not a bad translator... A good translator. As a translation, as language, I think it can be considered accomplished, because I too know what translation is: they bring all the words here, bring all the thoughts here, but the text does not breathe. Anahit Bayandur’s text breathes. Errors or no errors, it is language that, you see, has thought, that exists. Now others want her to translate them too, hoping perhaps the translation will happen, will succeed... They think it depends only on the translator... I think so too: let her translate and let it succeed...
“Do you not think Matevosyan is not a village writer?”
“When that controversy was started, the question, the term, should have been clarified from the beginning. The Russians cautiously put the word ‘village writer’***** in quotation marks. We had long had that word, to put it in Western Armenian terms. I did not recall them by chance: from the time of Srvandztyan, Gegham of Mush and others the word has existed, this word ‘village writer,’ the person representing village and province. And there was a Constantinopolitan attitude towards the village writers, the unenlightened. Sometimes there was sympathy and compassion too: here he is, describing the provinces and their poor, remote things...”
If the questions had been put correctly from the start, such overtones would not have arisen and you would not now think writing about villages backward... At any rate, I think that if the question is put well, very well, everything is clear. To say it simply at once: if my literature turns out to be very good literature, then ‘city writer,’ ‘village writer’ and such things should not be inferred. That is not the essence of it. Once the essence is found, those questions do not arise: is it about the city, about the village... Though now the situation of those who truly write about villages is very difficult, because something else comes in, speculative in its own way: that background, that environment in which those people live and work, is also vanishing. That disappearing background becomes a kind of relic. Those people, that cow, that khachkar, that flower, the environment where people live, are vanishing too. They must be saved. It brings in a speculative question... And apparently that must be removed, because we are the last to know that vanishing world, that vanishing village world... I do not regard Vasily Belov’s book Lad as accidental; in it he deprived himself of purely artistic aims. The writer turned to purely ethnographic research and created that book, something we had in Hakob Mndzuri, though not in so pure a form. Still, what Mndzuri brought means a great deal to us and should have meant a great deal to you... Unfortunately we are not wise enough to promote such literature. Nor is the audience healthy enough to be a fully developed audience. I envy the Russian audience... I do not mean this hall, but the vast reading public, from the Carpathians, from Yerevan to I don’t know where... It is that wonderful people I mean...
“Do your characters have real-life models?”
“Always. Without models it is impossible. Have I answered?”
“Which contemporary writers are closest to you in spirit?”******
“The most contemporary writer for me, truthfully, remains Tolstoy. No, I am not saying it to cause a sensation. Once I very much liked authors who leave something with a question mark, or leave a question, a problem, unexplained. But now, when I feel defeated, also by the complexities of this immense world, I like authors who stand like God at life’s source and say, let there be light, and there is light; who say, this is evil, this is good... That is it. Now I like Tumanyan, like Tolstoy. I like the great ones. Authors from whom I smell the devil and the destroyer—though God forgive me, such a thing cannot be—I truly beware of, fear. But that reputation, let me put both in quotation marks, of ‘destroyer and devil’ and ‘revolutionary’ is won by those who truly lack that god’s, Tolstoy’s god’s, power to stand at life’s source and say, let there be light, and have light appear... It is entirely a lack of strength, not their orientation. A devilish orientation or whatever... That is how it is.”
I have answered that too...
Levon Mkrtchyan: “So which is better, existentialism or a child?”
“That is from my novella, Lev Nikitich. If you can give birth to existentialism, that is better; if you cannot give birth to existentialism, then it is better to have a child, I think. That is wonderful. But to stay there, in between, is terrible.”*******
We will lose a child, a wonderful parent, and gain no existentialist.
“You are my dearest, most beloved writer... Who is your favourite writer? What would you say about Bulgakov, Shukshin, Aitmatov?”********
“There really is something like that: in world literature I like my contemporaries, the lads of my generation.”
...Where to begin? With Vysotsky, whom I came to love through my daughter and whom I consider a titanic figure.
Of the lads of my generation, Shukshin remains the finest symbol for me. Not only because he managed to catch, to possess that fleeing, fleeting, how shall I put it, elusive thing called the national spirit, which may or may not exist. More than anyone, Shukshin managed to approach unknown, unfamiliar material. No one knows where we are going. But that deceptive, elusive thing that drives our personality towards an unknown goal—Shukshin managed to come closest to it. And increasingly I see that in Shukshin we lost a titanic human being. I regret that he worked in cinema, which took so much strength from him; I regret his untimely death... Through him, one might say, our literature made an immense contribution to world literature.
Have I answered creditably?
From the audience: “Speak about Aitmatov.”
Hrant Matevosyan: “We spoke of subtle things. Of Shukshin’s, how shall I say, impressionism, of catching the uncatchable, the fleeting, the fugitive... To speak of Aitmatov after that—Aitmatov is coarse. Compared precisely with that ‘catching the uncatchable,’ he is a little more conventionally literary. He constructs a form, knows how to squeeze out two tears, knows how to set a beginning, set a climax, always kills someone and can fill his constructed form beautifully. At first I was inwardly opposed to that whole thing, but now I am not the one to prescribe literature: he has given his prescription and creates his literature, which has the world’s largest audience. But it cannot be considered first-rank literature beside that same Bulgakov, Shukshin, Faulkner, Andrei Bitov; it is not that. He should be seen behind their backs, as there are second-rank figures in the Politburo, aren’t there?..”
I wanted to complain about him to William Saroyan, wanted to gossip about Chinghiz Aitmatov. I said his work was too perfect, too round, too understandable, too closed, too finished; I don’t know, I was searching for something he would understand and said, his work is like an egg, it is an egg. He said, “I’ll tell you something: an egg is lovely.” It truly is lovely. His latest work, The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years*********, has, at any rate, a science-fiction strand. He mastered that, managed the other strand too, described everyday life wonderfully, and behind it has a man of the people, the figure of the old Kazakh. At any rate he managed to bring his problems, his specifically Central Asian problems, into the open and confront others with the need to answer. My impression when I read it: enough now, I said, that is enough, there will be no more confrontation in the world. Their leaders will read it, ours will read it, will gather to recognise that no one may gamble with the world’s fate for their own selfish interest. More precisely, the hero there is fear: they fear each other, ours fear theirs, theirs fear ours, and in between they may tear the earth apart and each take their share, carry it to one side... I thought Chinghiz’s books could inspire such romanticism, such faith. I thought they would read it and his work would help improve this international atmosphere... Still, it must never be forgotten: whoever a writer may be, the most inept writer of the smallest people, whether they have two readers or two million, they must not forget, and our common purpose must be to influence our leaders and theirs so they do not tear the earth to pieces, so ours say, there are people there too, and theirs say, there are people here too... That is it.
Levon Mkrtchyan: “There is a question: ‘Has there been any staggering event in your life?’”
Hrant Matevosyan: “There has been one, but truthfully it cannot be called an event, because it has been continuing for twenty-five years: my marriage.”
“What do you think of Armenian cinema today?”
“A very poor opinion. A very, very poor opinion, a very painful one. A very poor opinion. I think it was to be the most powerful weapon in our hands for our national unity, our national wholeness, but no such weapon exists today... It does not even exist as a knife. Not even as a kitchen knife. It is sad that it is so. We have no other weapon. No diplomacy. What do we lack? International rights. Under the Batum treaty the Turks allowed us one division; we do not even have that division. We have cinema and the right to translate and be translated. And to lose that wonderful weapon... It is a very painful loss. If you do not believe me, look at Georgian cinema. What our whole country thinks of Georgia and what it thinks of us. Cinema is a weapon in their hands, not in ours. That is what I am saying.”
“What do you think of the films Autumn Sun and The Master, based on your works?”
“It would be better if you expressed an opinion. My attitude is a little subjective, because I thought through such things I was putting a weapon in the people’s hands, and that weapon did not materialise... That is how I look at it. Now if you say they are no good, perhaps my attitude truly is too negative, personally too unfavourable. They may have some value in themselves, who knows, what can I say; I don’t like them.”
I like Federico Fellini, Andrei Tarkovsky; I like Tarkovsky’s early period, Rublev. I like our Roma Balayan, who has made three wonderful films at the Ukrainian studio.
Of what our own filmmakers have done I like a couple of Henrik Malyan’s works. Not mine. I am much stricter about my own than others are.
That is it.
“What is your opinion of the production of Neutral Zone?”
“If you are the ones speaking about my work, I will truly be very pleased. I have witnesses here who know I did not watch the production of Neutral Zone on television. Did not watch it. And this has been going on a long time. It has become a sickness in me altogether. They staged The Station on television; I managed not to watch it.”
I swear, Henrik Malyan is my witness, I saw We Are Our Mountains five years later. People told me about it, quoted it; I said, perhaps it is good, but it took five years before I could reconcile myself to that fact. I find reconciliation difficult.
Besides, that lad has died; one cannot say anything about him.
“Do you consider Tashkent a transition in your thinking through language? Will the book version remain close to the magazine version?”
“Tashkent had a small misfortune: it should have been printed, appeared within its frame, with the stories beside it. Then there would have been no misunderstandings around Tashkent. Though I think even as it is... It is the only work that, if you all stood up and cursed it, I would have to defend. I truly love that work. A good work. There are many truths and many tragedies in it, variations of the same tragedy, tragedies that destroy each other. It is not eclecticism; that is, it is a sound work. There is a little dullness at the end. I too shied away, did not know how to close it. I shouldn’t touch it, should I?”
Levon Mkrtchyan: “Don’t touch the beginning either.”
Hrant Matevosyan: “I’ve answered this, answered this, and this too...”
Levon Mkrtchyan: “Here, fresh questions, fresh.”
Hrant Matevosyan: “This question is about Paruyr Sevak: ‘You have addressed this question in the all-Union press, but once more, if possible. What do you think of Paruyr Sevak’s poem The Unceasing Belfry and of his poetry in general?’”
First, the loss. We lost one of the republic’s unique people. If he were here, I would go to him in a difficult moment. The thinking he brought, the freedom he brought, the straightness of his stride, his strength... We feel the absence of that figure—fearless, brave, endlessly dissatisfied with himself and with us—that rebel’s absence... It is a pity to lose him like that. The same goes for his poetry. I think he was the child of a people that had lost all its capacities, who knew that only through literature could new gains be made and lost things recovered. He truly tried to shake up this old and wonderful language, this culture, so that with the culture the people’s thinking would be shaken up too, so the people would not be so helpless and toothless before the world as they are now.
I have given my opinion; did you hear? What have I said about him in the all-Union press? I said one can write about the genocide; I said I personally cannot, because every time I address that question I become physically ill. What else? Perhaps I also said Tumanyan could not: a witness to the genocide, having lost his son, lost his brothers, sent his daughters to the genocide’s front, into typhus, among those fighting typhus—Tumanyan could not. He wrote one Requiem. I do not consider Musa Dagh a success.
Then he asked, “And Paruyr Sevak’s The Unceasing Belfry?” I said Sevak’s success in his work is not The Unceasing Belfry; his successes are the other works. But there is a shared national symbol: we say Masis and all howl and weep; we say genocide, say in fifteen they tormented us, killed us, slaughtered us, and howl and weep. It is purely our symbol, understandable to no one else. You must create that symbol anew. We will put this literature before a French reader—what will happen?
Vardanank is our national pride, yet back then, as a young man, I broke into a sweat when I saw the French had made one volume out of two, and I don’t know how many copies sold or what response it received. We cannot rely purely on our own symbols. I, the author, must create my alphabet anew, an alphabet of pain, an alphabet of heroism, not say ‘Andranik’ and have a ready-made hero, not say ‘Turk’ and suppose it is already the word for evil. The world is not ready for that. The Turk has so many friends in the world, plenty of friends. They have diplomats, spend the people’s money in Europe, hold parties with women. The Turk has so many friends in Europe, yet you say ‘Turk-villain.’ No, the Turk is not a villain. Not at all. You are the pitiable one before him. The Turk’s villainy must also be demonstrated, made symbolic. You must construct the ‘Turk-villain,’ recreate General Andranik anew; that is, as in normal literature, recreate your alphabet, your symbolism. Then use it for your splendid exchange, your commerce in literature. Have those figures been created? One figure truly has been created, for which we truly are ready: the use of the folk motif. In all the other cases something is omitted. If this question has been raised here, let me say at once: if you put the genocide up for discussion, you must approach it deeply and in essence, starting with the activities of the Aksakov society, examining the problems of pan-Slavism and alongside them raising the problem of pan-Turkism, pan-Turkism born of pan-Slavism, raising and examining the history of international diplomacy, bringing all that into the open... Which neither he nor I have done, nor any Armenian chronicler or historian, nor an enormous group of historians. No one has done it. That problem has not been solved.
...As I said about Tolstoy a little earlier: he stands at the source of light. I feel the need for that creator of titanic strength. Let him stand at the source and truly illuminate evil in black, good in luminous colours, illuminate that genocide for the creator, for me, Hrant Matevosyan. I see that he truly is the master. I cannot stand at that height and illuminate it so that your soul is not polluted—because it is polluted whenever incomplete questions remain, rather than a picture of some completed thing, events and relationships—so that your soul is not polluted but comes out brightened. In Tumanyan’s Anush and all his work there is not one fortunate Armenian character; all are persecuted, all are victims. Yet you come away brightened because the work is fully accomplished, because you bring away the joy of art, bring away Tumanyan... Let us stand like Tumanyan behind the problem of the genocide. I lack the strength. I think Paruyr lacks it too. That is my answer.
Levon Mkrtchyan: “Hrant, there is a very difficult question here.”
Hrant Matevosyan: “I am in the same situation as a little earlier: ‘Your opinion on the outcome of the Karpov–Kasparov match.’”
Again I have questions. I don’t know. I heard talk that a whole hall of grandmasters sits there. One is named ‘knight.’ Say, when certain moves are to be made, this ‘knight’ goes out. Their protégé makes a knight move.
When such things reach me, truthfully, I want Kasparov to win. That is it. First because people will keep addressing him as a hero, a champion, and it will be pleasant to hear that voice. Then, truthfully, my attitude towards those cut off from Armenian culture, those who had lost the language, used to be different, utterly different. Entirely different. It is different now too, of course. If we were dealing with a whole, intact people, then it would be beautiful. But Saroyan’s example changed me completely. I was speaking at Saroyan’s anniversary evening and was still uncertain, both here and there. I said, welcome to Armenian culture, but he is a whole country, he really is an Armenian writer, isn’t he? Then. Another is Michael Arlen the Younger’s journey Passage to Ararat. He wrote a powerful book: the renouncing son of a renouncing father, shall we say? We had a Kouyoumdjian, what Kouyoumdjian? He wrote The Green Hat. From Constantinople, a fugitive... Let us not blame these fugitives: it is not easy to be in an Armenian’s skin endlessly, to be in Avetis Aleksanyan’s situation. He too left like that, left to seek his human destiny. There is Michael Arlen the Younger’s book of his journey to Ararat, which I read; you read an extract in Soviet Armenia magazine too, William Saroyan’s example, Carzou’s example. What else? There is that cycle of Marietta Shaginyan’s; later she said, I’ll die soon, and you’ll see what an Armenian you’ve lost, you who don’t consider me Armenian.
That too is a condition of national existence. May God grant that the republic and we be strong enough to take those conditions for ourselves. That is for us too. That we can turn misfortune into strength for ourselves.
Now this seventy-five-per-cent—why seventy-five-per-cent, seventy-five is not little—this seventy-five-per-cent Armenian Kasparov, it would be good if he won. I very much want him to win, and I will feel very bad if he loses...
“We love you very much, and you?..”
“There was a very good Ukrainian writer. There is now a fatal age for writers. After Camus it somehow became a fashion: they die at forty-seven. Our Mushegh, Paruyr, Minas, Shukshin... That Tiutiunnyk, I think, did not indulge in graphomania: on the day he received his prize he went and hanged himself. Sometimes I too want to hang myself, but your love keeps me here.”
“Your creative credo?”
“Your creative credo... I don’t quite understand. I don’t know what to answer.”
Well, all right, Levon, you begin and I will continue.
Levon Mkrtchyan: “You yourself are your credo.”
Hrant Matevosyan: “No. In this question too my answer is Saroyan again. Truthfully, Zori Balayan drew it from what he said... Good for him, it is worthwhile...”
He said, we must take the fear out of these children’s eyes. Wonderful. I too think we must be able to remove this hostility and misunderstanding between people. If I can lessen a little the Turks’ attitude towards us, their suspicion of us, I will be very satisfied.
If I can instil in them a little sense of justice, that one cannot be an occupier and feel at ease in this world, I will feel immensely happy. Some sense of justice in those who take pleasure in being occupiers, and a little respect for us, also for their own soldier, and I will feel immensely good... There. I have answered!
“They say Yerevan is a poor dormitory. Who is a Yerevan citizen?”
“This time when we went to Moscow there was a very beautiful, clean place there. The Kremlin, yes, look at it: beautiful, green, clean, quiet... If you want to escape this world’s noise, go to the Kremlin. You go inside: quiet, clean... As luck would have it, they took us and lodged us there. After those four days of communism I came back and saw, what noise, what dust, what is this... Everyone is hostile, everyone thinks, I’ve come here, then I’ll go to their village. But there isn’t, there isn’t, there is no village for the city to be cleared. For now the impression is unpleasant, ugly. Apparently the only remedy is to buy a car, get in and drive here and there... I can’t even do that...”
“What state is Armenian literature in today?”
“Be patient, hold out until the next congress of Armenia’s writers, until you hear Vardges Petrosyan’s report and see what state Armenian literature is in today. What can I say now? You should not believe me; my attitude cannot be the right one. Working on paper, that is, this writer’s condition... I apologise for it, but it has refined my palate; very little satisfies me. I even like only a quarter of Tolstoy. I like The Death of Ivan Ilyich, but Father Sergius—I notice, I see, perhaps many of you do not, but I see—it is a draft; he did not write it clean, did not finish it. Do not judge literature by my refined state. I have my beloved writer from whom I expect two poems a year, and thank God he gives abundantly. That is Hamo Sahyan. Some find him dull, some say he is still around, but all the same he writes three or four poems every year. I have Razmik Davoyan, who always writes three superfluous stanzas out of ten. Then you say three were superfluous and he takes offence. Next time he writes them again. At any rate, he exists.”
Vahagn Davtyan, through culture, through work and work, polishing the bounds of human character, has remarkably reached emotional intensity. He creates wonderful poetry.
Whom shall I name?
I rather like Hovhannes Grigoryan. Perhaps that was not something to say here, was it, for that reason... I see talent in Hovhannes Grigoryan. But recently he wrote a repulsive article; I don’t know what that business was. One such fact is enough to make you distrust the personality behind it...
Whom else shall I speak about? Tell me!
Hovhannes Melkonyan is talented, and one should always expect good things from him. Say, three out of four works may be very good.
Hope in Zorayr Khalapyan should not yet be considered lost, though recently he has switched to machine production. But he is the author of Where Were You, Man of God? and The Dying and Rising One: he should not give us surprises.
Mushegh died for nothing. It was a mistake to die. It was a betrayal.
Whom else shall I name? Tell me, and I will.
That is enough.
Vazgen Gabrielyan: “Aghasi...”
Hrant Matevosyan: “I thought I heard Vazgen’s voice, Gabrielyan’s. That is your story. You know.”
They say that when they organised a formal evening and drew up the list of honoured guests, they always discovered at the last moment that they had forgotten Gabriel Sundukyan’s name and brought it to the top. But when drawing up the list they always forgot.
This Aghasi is in Sundukyan’s position. Always. Perhaps he writes best of all, but we always forget him.
He keeps himself to one side too.
A magnificent stylist, magnificent. He handles style beautifully. He has a wonderful story, Tiflis, two wonderful works about conscience and a couple of very bad ones too. In short, he exists as well. Our situation is not as tragic as it may seem.
But perhaps our dissatisfaction comes from more being demanded of us again than of the literature of another people living a normal national life. Much is demanded of us, demanded of Shiraz, already dead, of Paruyr, already gone...
That is the difficulty of our situation...
The people have nothing else; they look only to their writers.
Say it briefly, please... And what lovely handwriting. A girl. Now I’ll say, you’re a girl, thirty-three years old, unmarried...
What is this? Say it briefly.
Levon Mkrtchyan: “Yes, she is eighteen; you were wrong, yes.”
It says, “It seems to me there is much in common in your works—in revealing the psychological state of American writers,” and so on and so on.
Am I understanding you correctly or not?
Hrant Matevosyan: “I am not the reader, the book addict I might seem to be. My eye has sharpened, and I immediately see what I need. Fellini was asked what he thought of Joyce now. The precursor, the beginning, the founder of modern Western literature... He says, it would be very uneducational, a bad lesson, if I said I had not read Joyce, because others who love Fellini would say there is no need to read Joyce. My advice: whatever he does, an interview, something about him, read it. His name should simply be given among the great writers, as a great writer, as one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. He is a man who works with a camera instead of a pen, and is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, among Faulkner, Sholokhov, Saroyan, the greatest writers.”
Antonioni came here. From the height of our expertise, our provincial literature, we were to speak about the subtleties of today’s Italian cinema that we knew; finally someone thought to ask Antonioni about Fellini. You should have seen that fellow craftsman’s pride in his fellow craftsman, in a man of the same trade, the pride of an Italian filmgoer, an Italian, in an Italian titan... He smiled broadly and said, since he exists, why speak of anyone else?
I am not that expert, truthfully. If I say I still have not read a single novel to the end, believe me, it is so. I read from the end, from the middle, like that, a piece... But I consider myself fortunate in this sense: at the age of keenest perception four Saroyan stories came into my hands. One was called Black Tatars, another Seventy Thousand Assyrians, The Armenian and the Armenian, and a story or two more. Then a few pieces in Yerevan newspaper, or wherever. I saw this was precisely what was to be my father, my beginning, what was to come and help me. Because Bakunts had already truly been absorbed within me, the rehabilitated Bakunts, Mahari’s wonderful, sparkling pen... But that was not influence, no, I cannot say that. They opened that light. Then, twenty-five years later, I saw Bakunts had not left me, Bakunts was within me. I remember nothing from Mahari. I remember a wonderful, tormented person who wrote, and it was interesting, every page interesting. I will say that. But Saroyan also opened the door to American literature. I have read Faulkner, only recently at that, but I was prepared for him. There was Hemingway, Saroyan, a little Caldwell... In the end there was no need to absorb it all, to drink the whole sea to say what every drop tasted like. I do not know who prepared me to receive that literature, but I was already ready to receive it.
I am grateful for that wonderful opportunity given to me. Grateful too for great Russian literature, and immensely grateful for the rubbish I read in those wonderful youthful years. It... ate my life. I don’t know what all that was for: The Underground Regional Committee Is at Work, The White Birch, Far from Moscow. All of it thunderously won Stalin Prizes, our people thunderously translated and printed it, and I thunderously read it... Nothing has remained within me... There. That is it!
Have I said it?..

Transcribed by Yuri KHACHATRYAN

* The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
** ...a white shirt, clean beautiful teeth, always amiable.
*** ...always ready to help.
**** ...a white shirt, beautiful, clean teeth, and that is all.
***** Village writer.
****** “Do your characters have real-life models?”
“Always. Without models it is impossible.”
“Which contemporary writers are closest to you in spirit?”
******* “So which is better, existentialism or a child?”
“That is from my novella, Lev Nikitich. If you can give birth to existentialism, that is better; if you cannot give birth to existentialism, then it is better to have a child, I think. That is wonderful. But to stay there, in between, is terrible.”
******** “You are my dearest, most beloved writer... Who is your favourite writer? What would you say about Bulgakov, Shukshin, Aitmatov?”
********* The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years.