Not everyone can grasp the character of the writer Hrant Matevossian. Almost everyone values him; few understand him. Everyone draws nourishment from his literature, each according to the size of their spoon. There is no disagreement between Hrant the writer and Hrant the citizen: each respects and understands the other. Neither in literature nor in life does he yield easily. He is sparing in his judgments. He keeps away from noisy surroundings. Yet time and again he quietly appears at the very centre of the people’s political hearing and sight. Beneath the deputy’s cloak, the people scarcely recognised him; they try to understand his silently expressed role as President Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s authorised representative.
Perhaps this interview will help Armenians discern another outline in the character of their beloved writer. If it does not, read his work once more.
Today is the first of Navasard. Every day is the first of Navasard. Earth and Heaven are divided. Falcons leave their kindred falcons no share of sky. Snakes leave their brother snakes no share of mountains. It is painful, a tragedy. How wonderful when the world belongs to everyone, when spaces lie open before your feet. For my people that bliss was an awareness difficult to attain. We had been born within a kind of Islam, a Christianity of its own sort, called communism. The world belonged to the great idea, but like all great ideas, this too came up against reality and drew its borders, which were not stable either. Within those borders my generation was born and lived condemned. Many of us perished on the way beyond them; a few endured and tried to understand what was happening to us.
Glory to those sons of Armenia who from the beginning were devoted to sacred mistrust. The first wakeful ones, the first to awaken, appearing to many in ridiculous attire, had to fill the chasm separating reality from truth with their sacred bodies, their conduct, often consigning their families to misery. They became a bridge from one time to another. They led us over that bridge towards the truth that said: “Homelands of completed borders are not borders of completed homelands.”
Courage, aggression in the Frenchman are born with every newborn. If the Frenchman is not born French every day, France will not live another day. If every Armenian is not born Armenian every day, Armenia will not exist.
— Literature in itself is disagreement with regimes, authorities, people and the world. Yet you are the Armenian president’s authorised representative in the election campaign. What does an “authorised representative” mean; who trusts whom? Do you feel suited to this task?
— I was the last to give my vote to Levon Ter-Petrosyan. At the very beginning I supported Vladimir Movsisyan, but the communists readily betrayed him. I tried to understand what was happening. By nature I am a man who preserves tradition, opposed to revolutions. Revolutions are explosions, destructive forces, losses. What happened in Armenia was a revolution, but was not a revolution: there was no internal bloodshed. Then I saw the newly created state machinery wisely, precisely taking in what was needed and throwing out what was not. I am Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s authorised representative because he is Armenia’s president. Literatures really are oppositions, even in countries flowering with social justice. That is a truth. It is also a truth that for the first time in our history Vardan Mamikonyan arises from our own flesh, not from a mythical tribe. Armenia’s ruler arises from our own surroundings; we must gladly reconcile ourselves to that. We must give up once and for all our mindset that yesterday he was among us, a successful or unsuccessful scholar earning so much money, but today has become a ruler over me. Now it becomes clear why rulers of the past said they were not from the Armenian world but had come from the mythical land of the Chen. The Arshakunis said they had come from Bactria, had been kings by birth. Should today’s rulers have covered their origins with the mist of myths? Not said, we are from among you? That is all. That is precisely why I am Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s authorised representative. He is ours.
— Master, but surely the opposition has arisen from among us too.
— Opposition is necessary. Without opposition the nation’s quality will fall. It is one inseparable part of our national body. And let it truly sometimes bite the president’s heel, bark, speak, say its piece, go into confrontation. Let it not allow the authorities to doze or sleep, small cracks to become chasms, small issues to grow into problems. All the national energy and strength must be brought into play: the authorities towards the people, the people towards the authorities. As one strikes rusty metal with a hammer, knocking off the rust. We must strike. Being Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s authorised representative does not mean constantly stroking him, concealing shortcomings, covering up the evasions and deceit of his entourage. The president does not need such a representative. With or against, for or against, we nevertheless belong to one another. The house belongs to us all. We are all national wealth. The authority is my authority; I am its people. Constantly and wisely beating one another, that is how we shall move forward. Armenia will be forged and shaped by those blows.
The president must dread silence. Do you remember the final line of Boris Godunov: “The people are silent”—the crowd is silent. It is terrible when the crowd is silent.
— There is a widespread view that a nation without a state cannot have a great, broad-breathed literature. Do you today feel the breath of a national state and army behind yourself and your literature?
— It happened that with Hakob Hakobyan and Grigor Shahinyan we went down at night to the border at Ani. I had been there many times before. Then the Russian serviceman stood behind me. I was beneath the dome of the defenders of universal peace, universal strength, nuclear protection, a mighty country’s dominion, within the protective shell of a Soviet citizen. At that time, to me as a writer, military uniforms, retinues, the king, writers about war could seem ridiculous. In parentheses let me say: truly ridiculous, because the theme of war and the army was a very seductive place, and many weak people rushed into it. The army with all its doings, its dullness and everything else could seem ridiculous.
So, for the first time, naked, stark naked, without even one pistol, I found myself at the crossroads of my people’s tragedy, beneath Ani’s ruins, unarmed and defenceless. It was a moment of terror. Then the first daring ones, the first lads, the first sacrifices had to recast and reforge me. Do you remember, three years ago they left us naked before reality; as a result they called us aggressors. That was the finest moment of my life, when there were no illusions any longer. I am grateful to my lads, my brave ones, my mad ones. In these new times a rereading occurred; we looked anew at the literary heritage of the past. Yesterday Derenik Demirchyan’s Vardanank might have seemed a weak work to me, but now I see that it was the making of heroes, patriotism, the future. And the same is imposed on us today: to look differently at reality. That is, to be born this homeland’s intelligence agent, its soldier, its king, its labourer.
— At political crossroads swords clash, the nation’s fate flies from lip to lip like an easily uttered word, the homeland’s borders are defined, splendid lads die, while literature... Do you not feel literature is falling behind life?
— No, let us judge correctly. Is literature falling behind life, or is all this literature’s script? The new reality will acquire its face, be defined, be digested by literature. Then... then another script will emerge, for the future.
— A substantial number of writers, although authors of this script, fear the reality they themselves foretold.
— Perhaps you are right. That duality exists. Because that lost world nevertheless seemed to point towards possibilities of salvation. There seemed to be things there. To put it crudely, there was the collective farm; it seemed good. There was construction, social security... But it was an illusion. Ever since I started smoking I have searched for tobacco; ever since I had a family I have stood in bread and meat queues. Say what you will: what was bound to collapse collapsed. That social order was not something that could be saved or restructured. Many writers may be deceived by the road they did not take, which seemingly would have led elsewhere. It would have led nowhere. The one they imagined would have come out on this same road. There was no other road.
— Over the past month you travelled throughout Armenia, visited almost every military unit, also the liberated territories. An Armenian writer bogged down in the swamp of humanism, and an empty expanse, ruined houses and parched orchards, mines hidden in the soil... The absent presence of a defeated enemy and a victorious Armenian soldier. What did you feel?
— I had friends, people close to me, among the Azerbaijanis. A bitter, sorrowful sense of loss arose within me, and joy at finding something greater. Regret and joy, strangely together. Only three generations from now shall we reach out our hands to one another, and even then only if we are talented lads, truly understand one another, if he respects and understands my great human impulse to have a Homeland.
I also had moments of disappointment. Yesterday, seven or eight years ago, I was preparing to speak in the square and say: dear compatriots, we need only a little work. This Karabakh question can be resolved in two hours, and with two years’ work we shall catch up with the world’s civilised nations.
The two hours became ten years; the two years’ work became the task of decades. Thank God our nation was allotted work rather than a life on interest. Work in the army, on the soil. Every son must build a house, establish an orchard, dig defensive positions, drive a tank and a tractor. What kind of people were we before this movement? A slow-moving, parasitic people eating khash and khinkali, disappearing, dying on our feet.
— You are chairman of the Writers’ Union of Armenia. When you accepted that office—forgive me, that task—the Union was in ruins, many writers offended by the world, many poor and dispirited complainants. Did Artavazd’s question not arise within you: “How shall I reign over ruins?”
— I do not know why that answer was not printed... When they asked questions about the president in the first days, I said something like this: even if the president took on a ruined country, he will not curse the past, so as not to fall under the past’s curse.
As Artavazd fell under his father’s curse. You were born a master, and a master is a creator. Every king inherits ruins. You are to build the country.
By chance or mistake, misunderstanding or Bolshevik means, this writers’ union was created. It is something like property; we must take responsibility for it in these difficult times, keep literature’s fire burning.
— The army feels the need for moral support. Writers need contact with the army to strengthen their spirit, to grow in manliness.
— Even as a child I had something of a grandfather’s character. I had no pocket, but wanted it full of things to give to this person and that. We shall find resources here and there and travel with writers from regiment to regiment. I want those children among us and us among those children. We need inspiration; they need education.
— Soon we shall celebrate the fifth anniversary of Armenia’s independence as a nation. What is independence? The independence of a state and of an individual—are they different things?
— Only a citizen of an independent state can be independent. Sometimes we err poetically and regard Loris-Melikov’s great stature as an Armenian’s stature, taking pride in it. That, nevertheless, is a deception. He was the empire’s son, the tsar’s official; he is not my son. My pride, my pride as an independent person, will rise only within my independent state. Even the existence of those who threaten this state and speak foully is a gift of independence. They have a homeland; that is why their tongues are free. That same foul speaker’s brother living in America does not have such a voice.
— Did you serve in the Soviet army?
— I did not. There was a reduction of troops that year.
— What would you like the national army to be?
— The national army must be an inseparable component of our life, our everyday existence, the duty of us all, the object of everyone’s care. In California, a state the size of a country, there is this: a doctor, lawyer, philologist or historian who has graduated from university must serve in the police for two years. That surgeon who will later operate on Clinton, become a millionaire, must put on a police uniform and direct street traffic. Seventy-year-old Derenik Demirchyan went out on night duty in a Soviet soldier’s uniform. It must not seem ridiculous; it is a source of pride.
— In literary discussions and interviews you often expressed extraordinary thoughts, unacceptable to the people at the time. For example, you persistently did not wish to see the theme of genocide in literature. Did you not want to bring the nation closer to its pain and defeat?.. Can a fighting nation be raised through pain and defeat?
— Let me try to clarify once and for all. Perhaps, answering that question, I cowardly failed to call things by their names. Apparently I was frightened off by the numerous pages about the genocide that were not about the genocide. Genocide had become a theme for exploitation, a field for the incapable. Great themes need great pens. Great pens have the right to touch a people’s pain, enter the hell of human psychology, the extremities of Macbeth’s descent and Hamlet’s ascent; they have the right to encompass everything. The reality Dostoevsky brings, when it reveals a monster within a person, is not terrifying because the monster appears within a whole. That is talent’s capacity. Tumanyan’s Anush is not about something fortunate, but about the destruction of human destinies. Nevertheless, one emerges from Anush illuminated, because there has been a great revelation; you have encountered the birth of art. When engaging with genuine writers’ works about the genocide, you must be present at a birth. That tragic material will grow into another birth. In many cases it was a double death. My argument was against that, against double death.
— Today five or six members of the Writers’ Union are prominent statesmen. Do they continue to feel themselves members of the Union?
— I cannot speak directly on their behalf, but I shall say on my own: literature, the chairman of the Writers’ Union, should be proud that at the fateful moment of Homeland, Country, Time, precisely from literature’s depths, from within literature, came those brave, daring, sensitive people. That is not accidental at all. Let me also say that literature is an innate quality of every normal person.
— An army of complaining intellectuals proclaims the barrenness of spiritual life.
— No, that is not the reality. In a worldwide sense, a time is indeed closing, an era closing, an era opening. Time too is a Homeland, like a hill, a mountain, a field; a time closes, homelands become alien. The dissatisfaction is understandable. The pragmatists’ time has arrived. To that extent it may seem barren. Let us be patient a little, a little longer, and we shall again find ourselves within the flowering of spiritual life.
— Does a writer have the right to take offence at their state? Say the authorities’ attitude towards them changes.
— The fact is that statesmen in their sphere, the army in its sphere and the writer in theirs have the right to struggle, to wrest their bread. Not to petition, but to wrest, to insist. Thank God if we can be both the prince who commissioned Khorenatsi to write the History of Armenia and the Khorenatsi who wrote it.
Let us carry both within us. It would be wonderful.
Literature must be the writer’s bread. Unless literature alone is their occupation, we shall lose in the great worldwide competition. Defeat in the cultural sphere leads to a defeat for the whole nation. Therefore, at least in the initial period, the writer needs helpers.
— Master, your words to the Armenian soldier.
— Only the Armenian soldier would compel Armenia’s president, its Catholicos, its prime minister to accept Armenia-the-Homeland, Armenian literature, the Armenian language, Armenian music. Everything that constitutes the nation, the Armenian soldier will uphold. The Armenian soldier’s retreat, one step back from his proud national heights, will be the loss of the whole whose name is Homeland. In the soldier’s stance the Homeland must be expressed through pride in his national belonging, his history, his ancestors, martyrs, everything.
In the Armenian soldier you must read: “Yes, I am Armenian.”
Interview by Vrezh ISRAELYAN
Hayastani Hanrapetutyun, 7 September 1996.