The description of the writer Hrant Matevosyan is not for everyone. He is appreciated by almost everyone, understood by few. Everyone eats from his literature, each with his own spoonful. There are no differences between writer-Hrant and citizen-Hrant, one respects and understands the other. It is not easy to give either in literature or in life. Stingy in ratings. Stays away from noisy environments. But this is how many times he quietly appears in the right center of people's political hearing and vision. The people hardly recognized him under the cloak of the MP. seeks to understand the quietly manifested role of President Levon Ter-Petrosyan's proxy.
This interview may help the Armenian people to mark a sketch in the description of their favorite writer. If it didn't help, read his work one more time.
Today is Navasardi 1. Every day is Navasard 1. Earth and Heaven are divided. The falcons do not let blood falcons have their share of the sky. Snakes do not leave mountains to their brother snakes. It's sad, it's a tragedy. It's wonderful when the world is for everyone, when the spaces are open before your feet. For my people, that bliss was a realization hard to come by. We were born into a kind of Islam, a kind of Christianity called communism. The world belonged to a great idea, but like all great ideas, this too faced reality and drew its own boundaries, which were also not stable. My generation was born and condemned to live in those borders. Many of us perished on the way to cross those borders, few of us endured and tried to understand what was happening to us.
Glory to those Armenians who were given to holy distrust from the beginning. The first awakeners, the first awakeners, who appeared to many in ridiculous outfits, with their holy bodies, with their behavior, in many cases making their families miserable, had to fill the gap that separated reality from the truth. Here they became a bridge from one time to another. They also took us across that bridge to the truth that said: "The homelands of the finished borders are not the borders of the finished homelands."
Courage, aggression in a Frenchman is born with every birth. Every day if a Frenchman is not born a Frenchman, France will not live another day. If every Armenian is not born every day, Armenia will not exist.
- Literature itself is a disagreement with regimes, authorities, people and the world. But you are the trusted person of the RA president in the pre-election campaign. What did the proxy say, who and whom does he trust? Do you feel suitable for this job?
- I voted for Levon Ter-Petrosyan at the latest. At the very beginning, I was a supporter of Vladimir Movsisyan, but the communists easily betrayed him. I was trying to figure out what was going on. By my nature, I am a traditional person, a person against revolutions. Revolutions are explosions, they have destructive power, they are losses. What happened in Armenia was a revolution, but it was not a revolution. There was no internal bleeding. Then I saw that the newly created state machine intelligently and accurately takes in what is needed and throws out what is not needed. I am Levon Ter-Petrosyan's trusted person because he is the president of Armenia. Literature, indeed, even in countries where social justice flourishes, is an opposition. That's the truth. It is also true that for the first time in our history, Vardan Mamikonian is born from our own body and not from a mythical tribe. The prince of Armenia is born from our own environment, we should happily reconcile with this situation. We must once and for all give up our mentality that yesterday he was among us, he was a successful or unsuccessful scientist, he was getting so much money, but today he has become a prince over me. Now it becomes clear why the princes of the past said that they are not from the Armenian world, they came from the mythical world of Chenats. The Arshakunis said they came from Bactria and were born kings. Today's rulers, what, should they cover their origins with the fog of myths? Don't they say we are one of you? With that. That is why I am Levon Ter-Petrosyan's confidant. It's ours.
- Master, but the opposition was formed from us, right?
- The opposition is necessary. If we don't have an opposition, the quality of the nation will fall. They are one, indivisible part of our national body. And let them really, sometimes, bite the heel of the president, bark, talk, say, go to confrontation. The authorities should not be allowed to doze off, to sleep, not to let small cracks become gaps, small problems to grow into problems. National energy, strength, everything should be addressed, the authorities to the people, the people to the authorities. As they hit rusted metal with a hammer, they shed the rust. We have to hit. To be Levon Ter-Petrosyan's proxy does not mean to constantly caress, to cover up the shortcomings, to hide the control and deception of his environment. The president does not need such a proxy. Back-to-back, side-to-side, we still belong to each other. The house belongs to all of us. We are all national wealth. The government is my government, I am its people. By constantly beating each other wisely, that's how we will move forward. Armenia will be formed from those blows.
The president must be terrified of silence. Do you remember the last line of Boris Godunov: ТСТстО опжВТсЧрцЧцпц - the crowd is silent. It's scary when the crowd goes silent.
- There is a widespread opinion that a nation without a state cannot have a large, wide-ranging literature. Today, do you feel the breath of the nation state and the army behind you and your literature?
- It so happened that with Hakob Hakobyan and Grigor Shahinyan we went down to the border of Ani at night. I had been there many times before. At that time, I had the Russian military behind me, I was under the dome of the defenders of universal peace, universal power, atomic protection, the dominion of a powerful country, in the protection shell of a citizen of a Soviet country. At that time, to me, the writer, military uniforms, parades, the king, writers about the war could seem funny. Parenthetically, it's really funny, because it was a very fascinating place with the subject of war and the army, and many weaklings were thrown there. The army, with all its passing, its dullness, the rest of it, could seem ridiculous.
So, being the first time, naked, naked, without a single gun, I found myself at the crossroads of my people's tragedy, under the ruins of Ani, unarmed, defenseless. It was a moment of horror. Then, here, the first brave men, the first boys, the first victims had to re-assimilate me, re-harden me. Do you remember, three years ago they left us exposed to reality? as a result we were called aggressors, it was the best moment of my life when there were no more illusions. I am grateful to my boys, my brave, my crazy. In these new times, there was a re-reading, we looked at the literary heritage of the past with a new perspective. Yesterday, Derenik Demirchyan's "Vardanank" may have seemed like a weak work, but now I see that it was a heroization, it was patriotism, it was to come. And the same, today, we are being forced to look at reality from a different perspective. In other words, born a spy of this homeland, a soldier of this homeland, a king of this homeland, a farmer of this homeland.
- Swords collide at political intersections, the fate of the nation flies from lips like an easy-to-pronounce word, the borders of the motherland are adjusted, wonderful men die, and literature... Don't you feel that literature lags behind life?
- No, let's judge correctly. Does literature lag behind life or is this all the script of literature? The new reality will get its face, will be adjusted, will be digested by literature. Then... then another scenario will arise for the future.
- A large part of the writers, being the author of this scenario, are afraid of the reality they have predicted.
- Maybe you are right. That duality exists. Because that lost world, nevertheless, seemed to indicate the edges of salvation. Looks like things were up. I say rudely: there was a kolkhoz, it seemed to be good. There was construction, there was social security... But it was a scam. Ever since I started smoking, I've been looking for cigarettes, ever since I became the owner of a family, I've been in queues for bread and meat. Whatever you want to say, the wreckage collapsed. That public order was not something to be saved, it was not something to be rebuilt. Many writers can be deceived by a path not taken that seems to lead somewhere else. It would lead nowhere. What they assumed was going to come out the same way. There was no other way.
- During the last month, you traveled around Armenia, visited almost all military units. You were also in the liberated areas. An Armenian writer stuck in the swamp of humanism and a desolate space, destroyed houses and papak gardens, mines stored in the ground... the absent presence of the defeated enemy and the victorious Armenian soldier. How did you feel?
- I had friends and relatives among Azerbaijanis. A bitter sense of loss arose within me and the joy of finding something greater. Regret and delight, the two strangely together. After three generations, only we will shake hands, and that is, if we are talented guys, if we really understand each other, if he respects and understands my great human drive to have a Motherland.
I also had moments of frustration. Yesterday, seven or eight years ago, I was going to make a speech in the square and say, dear countrymen, we just need a little work. This Karabakh issue is a matter to be resolved in two hours, and with two years of work we will reach the civilized nations of the world.
Two hours became ten years, two years' work became the work of decades. Thank God that our nation got a job and not a living condition with interest. Work in the army, on land. Every son will build a house, plant a garden, dig defensive positions, drive a tank and a tractor. What kind of people were we before this movement: a slow-moving, parasitic, consuming kash and khinkali people that was getting destroyed, that was dying on grass?
- You are the president of the Writers' Union of Armenia. When you took that position, excuse me, the job, the Union was in tatters, many of the writers out of touch with the world, many of them poor and depressed complainers. Didn't the urgent question arise in you: "How can I reign over the ruins?"
- I don't know why that answer wasn't printed... When they asked questions about the president in the first days, I said something like that, even though the president took over a ruined country, he will not refer to the past with a curse, so as not to be under the curse of the past.
As Artavazd came under the curse of his father. You are born a lord, and a lord is a creator. Every king inherits ruins. You will build the country.
By accident or by mistake, by misunderstanding or by Bolsheviks, this union of writers was created. This is something like property, we must stand up for ourselves in these difficult times, we must keep the fire of literature burning.
- The army feels the need for moral support. Writers need to communicate with the army in order to become masculine.
- Even when I was a child, I had a little grandfather's character. I didn't have a pocket, but I wanted to have something full in my pocket to give to this or that. We will raise funds from the desic-den and we will travel from circle to circle with writers. I want that child to be among us, and we to be among that child. We need to be inspired, they need to be educated.
- Soon we will nationally celebrate the fifth anniversary of Armenia's independence. What is independence? Independence of the state and the individual. are they different things?
- Only a citizen of an independent state can be independent. Sometimes we make a poetic mistake and consider Loris-Melikov's tall height to be Armenian height and are proud of it. It's a scam, though. He was the son of the empire, the czar's official, he is not my son. My pride, my pride of an independent man will rise only in the conditions of my independent state. The existence of those who are conciliatory and hateful against this state is the gift of independence. They have a homeland, that's why the languages are open. The voice of that same hater, the brother living in America, is not like that.
- Did you serve in the Soviet army?
- I did not serve. There was a reduction in troops that year.
- What would you like to see the national army look like?
- The national army should be an inseparable component of our life, our everyday life, it will be the responsibility of all of us, the object of all of our care. In California, which is a state the size of a state, there is something like this. A doctor, lawyer, philologist, historian who graduated from the university is obliged to serve in the police for two years. The surgeon, who will later operate on Clinton, will become a millionaire, has to wear a policeman's uniform and regulate street traffic. 70-year-old Derenik Demirchyan went on duty at night in a Soviet army uniform. It should not seem funny. it's pride.
- In literary press conferences and interviews, you often expressed extraordinary thoughts that were unacceptable to the people at that time. For example, you stubbornly didn't want to see the topic of ekhern in literature. Didn't you want to bring the nation closer to its pain and defeat... Is it possible to raise a nation fighting with pain and defeat?
- I will try to explain the etymology once and for all. Maybe I cowardly, when answering that question, I didn't call things by their names. Apparently, I was confused by the many pages that were about Ekhren, but were not about Ekhern. The battle had become a subject of speculation, a field of apicars. Big topics need big pens. Great writers have the right to touch the people's pain, to enter the hell of human psychology, the peaks of Macbeth's fall and Hamlet's rise, they have the right to cover everything. The reality brought by Dostoevsky, when he discovers the ugliness in a person, is not terrible, because the ugliness is seen in its entirety. That is the ability of talent. Tumanyan's "Anoush" is not about anything lucky, it is about the destruction of human destinies. Nevertheless, they come out of "Anoush" enlightened, because there was a great discovery, you came in contact with the birth of art. When dealing with the writings of true writers about the Genocide, you must be present at birth. That tragic material will grow again in another birth. In most cases it was a double death. My argument was against it, against double death.
- Today, five-six of the members of the Union of Writers are prominent statesmen. Do they continue to feel like members of the Writers Guild?
- I cannot speak directly on their behalf, but I will say on my behalf. literature, the President of the Writers' Union should be proud that at the fateful moment of the Motherland, the Country, and Time, those brave, those brave, those sensitive people came out of the depths of literature, from the midst of literature. It's no accident at all. Let me also say that literature is an inherent characteristic of every normal person.
- An army of grumbling intellectuals is raging about the barrenness of the spiritual life.
- No, that's not the reality. In a global sense, indeed, time closes, an era closes, an era opens. Time is also a Motherland, like a mountain, a mountain, a field. time is closing, homelands are disappearing. The frustrations are understandable. The time for pragmatism has arrived. That's how barren it can seem. A little, a little patience, and we will again find ourselves in the process of flowering of spiritual life.
- Does the writer have the right to riot from his state? Let's say, the attitude of the authorities towards him is changing.
- The fact is that statesmen have the right to fight in their region, the army in their region, and the writer has the right to earn his living. Not to request, but to take away, to force. Thank God, if we can be both the prince who ordered Khorenatsi to write Armenian history, and be the Khorenatsi who wrote Armenian history.
Let us carry both within us. It will be wonderful.
Literature should be the writer's bread, or if his work is not only literature, we will lose in the great global competition. Defeat in the cultural sphere leads to national defeat. And so, at least in the first period, the writer needs helpers.
- Master, your word to the Armenian soldier.
- Only the Armenian soldier could impose Armenia-Motherland, Armenian literature, Armenian language, Armenian music on the President of Armenia, Catholicos of Armenia, Prime Minister of Armenia. Everything, whatever the nation is, the Armenian soldier will impose. The retreat of the Armenian soldier, a step back from his proud national heights, will be the loss of the whole, whose name is Homeland. In the posture of a soldier, the Motherland should be expressed with pride for its nationality, its history, its ancestors, martyrs, everything.
You should read in an Armenian soldier. "I am Armenian, yes!"
Vrezh ISRAYELYAN spoke
"Republic of Armenia", 09.07.1996.