On the occasion of the 80th birthday
He seemed to be someone gifted with some prose writing skills, afraid of mixed tenses and mixing tenses, sits in a place neither too far nor too close to life, hidden behind glasses so that his gaze will not be noticed suddenly, looks at life, finds some incidents not too painful and not too recent, on which some stories could be woven and, without love or hate, composes his stories Armenian Pope about the king, Machkalents Davit, war, urban development and Tsova cow. It even seemed that he was not from life, or at least he was looking at life, but he was an observer, observing life. He watches and makes up his stories, which are purely closed stories, not arguments against life and for life.
However, he was constantly at the intersections of theoretical disputes and vital conflicts between literature and life, and his works are not impartial testimonies of the chronicle, but are plastered with his unmixed hatred and soft love. And the fact that these works seem to be the impartial testimony of an observer from the side, it only speaks of one thing, that Stepan Zoryan was a powerful master of epic prose. If Armenian prose prose, as such, finds edges of contact with the world level, then it is almost only through Zoryan's work. Until Zoryan, with minor exceptions, the concept of action-character was suffocated in the warm darkness of adjectives, adjectives, and poeticizations and could not break the connections, which today, after Zoryan and with the existence of the level he created, is entangled in a slightly more complicated trap - stylization. That stylization seems beautiful and it seems to be a new level of awakening of our prose wordcraft, but in reality it is a souvenir song and to be seduced by it is the exact death of epic prose.
Everyone and everything can take away the glory from Zoryan's prose, but only for a couple of days, the crown is returned to its rightful owner, Stepan Zoryan - "Sea", "War", "Hanes", "Winter Night", "Grandfather King", "Ghachagan", "Engineer's Mother", "Fence", "Railway", "History of a Life", "Book of Memories", "Apple Orchard" to the author. Fame also needs food, and the bird of fame will follow that tireless ploughman of native literature for a long time.
He brought to literature not the occupation of his farming countrymen (everyone in his place), but their farming conscience and serious attitude to their work. Each time he sat down in front of the white paper with the same seriousness as the peasants plow - not to cheat in order not to be cheated, to give all you have and get all you have, if only not to cheat in order not to learn to cheat. And the words never betrayed him, every word came to sit in its right place and thus stopped being a word, became a person, an object, a movement - true literature, which could not be broken or bent by the supposedly modern currents and subtle undercurrents of the times. Current, subcurrent, time, is your modern writer self, loyalty is your writerly self, loyalty to the spirit of time. Zorian was always true to himself and was always very up-to-date, even when he was considered a "companion".
His Martin Aper is the author himself, his Machkalent David is the author himself, King Varazdat is an honest and foolish native of Garakilis, his princes are angry and surprised just like his grandfathers, his Pavstos is a Garakilis bansark, just like in our epic, Sasna princes Sanasar-Baghdasar are shepherds-farmers from Sassoon. Mher, David.
Zoryan populated our literature with a large army of people like him - taciturn, hardworking, honest, concerned, cultured people. they were his loves, and with a great multitude of men corrupting the world which God made; they were his hatred.
Zoryan lived long enough, but he did not see the death of any of his works. They, with little loss, accompanied their creator throughout his beautiful life, and when his weary body bowed to the ground, they continued their struggle to posterity. Fifty-sixty years is a good trial period for prose. In the sixties of this century, he believed in literature and created the portraits of his predecessors, great and small grateful people of our culture, with the book "Memories". He created Zoryan with his deep respect and gentle love. Only a person who believes in our future reality and the power of his literature could talk about the predecessors like that.
Three years ago Zoryan died, and we suddenly noticed that they are not there, Isahakyan, Demirchyan, Shirvanzade, Tumanyan, Teryan died... They lived among Zoryan.