We have suffered an irreplaceable loss. One of the most steadfast inhabitants of our spiritual homeland, Pion Hakobyan, has departed from the realm of our literary and scholarly thought, from the bounds of that homeland, from the highest reaches of our conscience and morality. In his absence, we shall already be a little more careless and less conscientious in our work than we were during his lifetime. Our sense of honour before our national past will be a little weaker and more diminished, less passionate and less alive than when this man, both a labourer and a resolute fighter, was with us.
His was a soul of faith. He saw himself as a soldier in the ranks, inspired by Abovyan and ancestors more distant still. Under the breath of that faithful soul, that conscientious gatherer, the homeland’s past was bound to rise as a living present, to rejoice, exult and stand proud. For him there was no past: bygone times and those who have gone become a dead past only before powerless eyes and feeble minds. The diligent work of a labourer rooted in his lineage had enriched his mind and strengthened his vision, enabling him, in a strictly scholarly and research-based field such as philology, to transform his homeland’s past into a living today—as though it were not yesterday but today that we would say: ‘Against whom are you raising your sword?’
All that remains is to hope that we, the living, those still alive, can be what Pion Hakobyan was and do our work as he did his. To hope, because that kind of person and scholar is more than necessary among us today, because we are made of the same flesh and blood, and our homeland is the same.