They are our memory; he was our shared memory.
That is how it is. A Hovhannes Tumanyan comes, and across the distance of the ages the nation recognises its Narekatsi. A Martiros Saryan comes, and the nation remembers Roslin and painting. A Viktor Ambartsumian comes, and our eyes turn to the heavens, and within the poor little hut of our mortal existence—our mind and body—we open up times and spaces.
It is they, these great figures, who shape our lives. It is they, the truly great, who bestow homelands upon us. We are inhabitants of their world. In the homelands they open up, we live with the noble, upright human stature that they themselves have given us.
Viktor Ambartsumian gave science an Armenian character and compelled the world to recognise this image of us: the image of an Armenian full of ability and daring aspiration.
He brought us into a relationship with the twentieth century, and our hope today for the twenty-first is nourished once again by his living presence of yesterday in world science.
Without the great, it is hard; without hope, impossible. Let us hope that we can make a path of the magnificent arc of that great star’s luminous ascent—Viktor Ambartsumian.
In their towering presence, the ceilings of homelands become the heavens. In their immense absence, those heavens must not descend: that is our direct duty as inhabitants of their world.