Conversations with Hrant Matevosyan

I consider myself one of the exceptionally lucky ones who had the good fortune not only to be a contemporary of Hrant Matevosyan, but also to enjoy the closeness and trust of a great writer and a great man. Beneath his simple, approachable appearance at first glance, there was hidden a vast spiritual world, where a false and immoral person could never enter. Many may claim that they knew Hrant Matevosyan the man, but I am sure that they knew as much as only the eye can see or the ear can hear. Like all adults, like a child, he was defenseless against the tricks of life. It was straight, full of love. It was all love. All kindness. How he loved life, people, the world and especially his little corner of the world, Lori. How he loved the word, the harmonious play of words! He had a cult of words. Even when writing an ordinary note, he chose each word, the place of the word, the emphasis with attention, fear, and suffering. Each word should be sounded with its own voice. Afraid of dead words. In recent years, the work of a journalist has revealed a phenomenon to me. There are people who speak fluently, pleasantly, but when you turn that word into writing, there is nothing underneath, because there is nothing to say, there is no fear of the word. The whole thing is an unnecessary repetition of beaten thoughts and unnecessary words. Hrant Matevosyan's speech was different: when you put it in writing, it turned out that not a single unnecessary word was said. You can neither reduce nor add.
It was extravagant. He lavishly gave everything: the warmth of his soul, his energy, his precious life time, his pocket money. During the cold and difficult years, the one who applied to him never left empty-handed. He gave even to those who did not hesitate to slander after receiving. One day, when I came to him, I felt that the mood was high. He immediately stood out because he was often moody. "I put on a new suit," he smiled, "I saw ten dollars in my pocket." I'll give it to someone."
He was modest and humble to the point of surprise, which is characteristic of the great, as arrogance is characteristic of the incompetent. Now that he is gone, we will feel his need, we will see his vacant place. His speech, what he had to say, was direct, about his village, his country, his nation, without unnecessary convulsions, without contortions, without foreign arrogance. He was satisfied and proud of the inheritance he received from his ancestors, and he took to the world stage and raised the level of what he inherited from his grandfathers and great-grandfathers. He was Armenian to the last cell, I realized, and at the same time, a full-blooded citizen of the world. He never changed his costume in order to join the universal march, he entered as he was: an Armenian, a child of Ignatius from Lori, Ahnidzor. And the world recognized and accepted just such.
From the very first day I came into contact with the literary world, I dreamed of getting to know him, talking to him, getting to know him closely, I adore his literature. My dream, albeit late, came true after becoming the president of the Writers' Union. We became close from the first meeting. We talked often and for a long time. It was so open and defenseless against life. Like Jesus walking in the desert. It seemed that he should be the happiest person in the world, but there was great suffering in his great soul. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a vast world was in ruins. Like a lost passenger.
I realized late that it is necessary to write down his thoughts, to pass them on to future generations. Too bad I started the recorder too late. However, I have no doubt that what has been presented is enough to get to know the great Armenian at least a little more, to relate a little to his soul.

06. 08. 1999
- Who were your literary teachers?
- My biggest impression... I was almost a child, I broke my arm, I was lying in the hospital. There I met the two titans at the same time, I read "Taras Bulba" translated by Bakuntsi. It was magnificent. But I must say that Axel is not the first. The first is Chekhov, with his influence on Stepan Zoryan. Zoryan brings Lorva's landscape, dialect, dialect tone to literature. He is also reminiscent of Tumanyan, on one side he is connected to the world of Tumanyan, which is my homeland, my dialect. So much, perhaps, Stepan Zoryan.
I was more inclined towards prose, maybe that was the reason. The prose seemed to me to be a larger poem than the poem itself. The calmness of the prose, the movement of the characters in the landscape. there was an attractive secret in all of that: dark slopes, not sunny... all of that was emanating from Zoryan with a strange unity. Zoryan's stories were suggestive and reminiscent. The green slopes remembered from my childhood, familiar names, familiar accents flowed under his words. But in order not to exaggerate, I must say that he was not a very complete teacher... Two volumes can be compiled, where Chekhov's influence is constantly present. Although in several cases it was almost possible to get out, to break the frames. They are masterpieces of Armenian literature: "The Apricot", "The Sea", "Khandzor's Garden", "The War".
If I were compiling a personal library, I would put at least three volumes of him: the memoirs about Tumanyan and a large part of the prose. As a parent, father, relative, I could adopt his attitude towards history. He was a great man, intelligent, conscientious, handsome. He would never lose his conscience. He was a tall, intellectual person.
We didn't meet that many times, neither was I shameless enough to rush into his life, nor was he ambitious enough to think that everyone who came was his son, to consider the stone he was sitting on as his part. He was not that strong a man. He was an intellectual, beautiful person. I should think that I also said the first right words about him on the occasion of his death.
It was years ago. There was something like a break. We were sitting here. Perhaps right here where we're sitting. I had invented Mdzuri and wanted to spread the word in every way possible. At that time, it was a dead state, particularly in Istanbul. Not only us, even confederate Beirut did not listen very well to the conformist Polis and Polisian literature. It would be Shahnur or Mndzuri... in short, as far as Polish literature was concerned. That is why Mndzuri entered our literature very late. I found two stories by chance, and my heart was bursting that this person is no longer among us. I suggested it to "Soviet Literature" magazine. There seems to be a reference to his literature: Stepan Kurtikyan published a newsletter of the Diaspora literature in the form of reviews in the magazine. At that time, I was an employee of "Grakan newspaper", I had a little bit of authority in front of Kurtikyan, for many years I was by his side as a typewriter, proofreader, and at one time as an employee. I went up to his private room, there is an author named Mndzuri. Zoryan was sitting next to Kurtikyan. I said there is an author named Mndzuri. I have chosen three stories from different places. It is worth to publish and get to know each other. I saw the indifference on that man's face, I won't say stone, but it simply did not exist for him. A hint of malice appeared in my speech. Stepan Zoryan sat in an armchair and watched silently. I said he is an author. Kurtikyan took out Mndzuru's letters from the table drawer. He wrote letters on small, narrow strips, he had a unique handwriting. I see that the manuscript is with him, and that person has absolutely no idea what Hakob Mndzuri said. I looked helplessly to the right: Stepan Zoryan. He felt that I was asking him for help and said his hard words. "Mndzuri is our best village writer." I saw that he knows. He was a wonderful person. He would not offend anyone, he was actively involved in the literary world. Without giving the names, he said, it is better than so-and-so famous names. Bakuntsi's name was not among those names, because he had a reserved attitude towards him, and let's hope he was wrong.
Axel was a master, yes, but above all there was Gurgen Mahari, lively, beautiful, conservative, who filled my childhood. There was also the Stalin prize-winning literature, as abhorrent as wartime, as memoirs, yet simply false literature, which with its poor translation absorbs childhood and leaves nothing in the body. There was that literature, and there was related Armenian literature that I rejected. If the Russians are able to absorb you by masterfully creating plots, we don't have that either.
Against that general background, Maharu's revelation was very beautiful, so was "Childhood and Adolescence". A selection was published on the occasion of his return from Siberia. I think the publishers and editors were Vahagn Davtyan and Hrant Tamrazyan. It was a great collection. My book was when I was living with my brother Hrachik on rent on Aygestani Street. The first purchase we made was a two-century table that was both our bread table and our book table. We spent our small salary on books. I think my first book was by Suren Aghababyan, it was a monograph about Stepan Zoryan. I thought we would collect a library, but it didn't work. Then the book of Gurgen Maharu, the novelist, poet, became a book to be read, worn, and given. I haven't read Maharu's poems since then.
- Did Gurgen Mahari, as a novelist, have any influence on the beginning of novelist Hrant Matevosyan?
- In the matter of initiation, he should definitely have it, he could not not have it. There was something infectious about his work, the childlike immediacy, the lively style, etc... he couldn't have it. But what the prose said, with the formation of that consciousness, Mahari had to leave and stayed. My cherished prose is the prose of a peaceful story: Russian, Armenian - Shirvanzade, a little, partially Tumanian prose. His quiet story. Tumanyan is unique in that he knows what prose, what epic, what poetry, lyric has said. He is a unique connoisseur. And Zoryan had that awareness. He knew what prose said...
Bakunts stopped writing "Red Stone" because he was writing a novel in the style of a short story. Not a soap opera, but a novel. And had to stop. There are some wonderful pieces. Not a novel genre though. Not a novel. Not "Peaceful Don". The era is the same. It is similar in the matter of the epoch, it has the ambition to cover that entire period, but it has not yet developed the declaration of an epic view. The handwriting betrays...
Perhaps these three were my first teachers: Mahari, Bakunts, Zoryan. Then you get old. you received a bad education, a bad literary upbringing, not knowing languages, you were left alone in the borders of your homeland. And there were bigger ones in the world that should have been, but they didn't happen in my life, because you got old, hardened, your receptivity is no longer what it is... The rest is by smell.
My favorite work is Haji Murad, the pinnacle of world prose. Tolstoy's "Cossacks" too. But much more "Hajji Murad", which looks like a petroglyph, accurate, covering all time. Chechnya of 150 years is today's Chechnya. Also, the Kreutzer Sonata is a big deal. Pushkin's prose too. Pugachev's story is a great piece of prose. I'm just in love with the fact that a person can subject himself to a regime and turn from a poet to a novelist, obey the demands of the genre. Be subject to the requirements of poetry, lyric, epic, fairy tale, historiography, prose, which as existences in themselves, presences in themselves, have their own dictates, and you must have an ear to fall there. That is why I once made such a statement that perhaps our language is not a prose language. I had the right to throw that phrase, because if the highest achievements of your national language, Armenian, are the peaks of "Wound to Armenia", "Yerkir Nair", Derenik Demirchyan, etc., and others, where there is no epic story, I am forced to think that perhaps our language is not a prose language, that perhaps our man cannot sit on the riverbank and wait for the fire to start, telling a nice story to his next door neighbor. Ours make aphoric, imaginative, short expressions to each other. How a Turk will sit down and tell his neighbor a long story, a joke, an Arab will tell a joke, a Russian will tell a long story to his neighbor, as if our language does not have that feature. That's why I said that perhaps epic, peaceful story is not characteristic of our language. That is my aspiration, my dream of a peaceful story, and I don't think there has been any progress in that direction. My struggle is always to create prose that tells a peaceful story, calm, without adverbs, with few adverbs, just verbs and nouns, things that flow smoothly. Maybe I'll have a few successful pages.

09. 08. 1999
- Does the company created in Soviet times continue or did it end with the fall of the empire? It's definitely a loss of something big.
- I will not say that I had the perception of the Soviet Union as a great motherland from the beginning, and it was the kinship that was directly expressed from that concept and its bearers: Russians, Uzbeks, Georgians, etc. There was a united, mixed feeling of friendship and enmity. There was also a sense of not losing national identity. I never forgot my nationality and I could not forget it. It was after the collapse of the empire that I had to have the heavy consciousness of losing a truly great and good homeland. The empire was as much an enemy as every state is an enemy to the problem of its citizen. Inasmuch as every individual, in whatever state he is, is in enmity and friendship with him.
A group of our friends emerged in Moscow, which is not a retrospect. It was a very nice group. we drank together, felt sorry for each other, disappointed, read each other's writings and defended each other.
- That's a big thing.
- It was quite a big thing, in the company of Georgian Rezo Gabriadze, Andrei Bitov. We gathered under the same roof by sheer luck. Even if we admired the shootings of Americans and Europeans, we thought that our country was an evil kingdom, even if we mocked it, we were united by something beautiful. We were having fun, not realizing that we were the bearers of that empire. The empire was in each of us, that great man, the citizen of a great country. I remember a random phrase that a Moldovan told me. "History dictates that we were once citizens of another empire as well. - He meant the Ottoman Empire. "There, in the empire, we were together, and now we are together." That awareness was there. And, of course, I considered the achievements mine: it was a united life, it was a unity of religion. And finally, a correct answer can be found to this question: we are all from the East. All of us, Armenians and Russians, Ukrainians and Azerbaijanis, Moldovans and Georgians, have one common feature. Although we are all children of this world, this country, along with Australia, America, the whole world, we are still a little different people. Our cultural idols are here. Go ahead, sin of God, let's deny Shakespeare, I don't know who let's deny, those who are just left... I feel a kinship towards the first ones. However, let me say that in case of high flights, the national costume falls on everyone. In this case, maybe he will appear more Armenian in the clothes of an American than in the clothes native to Armenia. In case of big leaps, you have to say that Don Quixote is more Armenian than the real Don Quixotes here, English Hamlet is more Armenian than our Hamlets here...
Although the Turkish-Azerbaijani enemies, the Georgians have always betrayed us, you don't always understand how they betrayed us. And they had to betray, they think about their bread first. And even though they took a lot of blood, assimilated, ruled, and subjugated many people, still I can't deny that brotherhood, which you don't know what it is: a fellow citizen of the empire, a bearer of brotherhood, brotherhood of an oriental... there is something beautiful. However, we had formed a conglomerate, a family of brothers in small meetings. I think we helped each other to advance. Andrey Bitov appeared before our eyes. I think we contributed a little. Rezo Gabriadze emerged, I emerged, Grinkov in Stalingrad... It was a family. Blessed are those who, even if they were dictators, lived in peace. Blessed are those who did not live in the time of Genghis Khan, but in the conditions of power. And no luck to those who lived in the conditions of the decline of the empire, even if it was Chingiz Khan's. Here we are living in the conditions of the collapse of that empire, even if we call it the kingdom of evil. No luck to us.
- In other words, the atmosphere existing in the crater of different nations contributed to the flight of each of the nations.
- Those are things that have been said, but apparently they were worth reminding. It was an empire, an ideology that published literature in 70 languages. The idea of ​​cultural-national autonomy was embodied, took an administrative form. There was no such thing in the world.
A boy about my height, then 30-year-old Vladimir Sangi, who is the subject of Chingiz Aitmatov's novel Chalik Shun, was a representative of one of the small Sakhalin nations. I think there were thirty thousand. We used to play billiards together in a hostel in Moscow...
- Who was... a writer?
- It was Sangi, yes... He came there to study. Theirs was Mesrop Mashtots, he invented an alphabet for that tribe of thirty thousand, he translated a novel. Human history has never seen anything like it.
But because now, in these troubled times, it is impossible to live, that circumstance makes us smaller, petty, provincial, cut off from the world. Cut off from the world, in itself. This is genocide, genocide. We cannot live without a new society, union, federation or confederation, or just neighborly relations. It takes a lot of tolerance, a lot of intelligence, a lot of thought, a lot of effort to create a country where you can feel yourself a citizen of a great power... With democracy, democracy, with great ideas, awakening a great idea, revealing the capabilities of the individual, the suppression of which caused the destruction of the empire. The whole earth had become a graveyard of oppressed souls, suppressed abilities... It had become a graveyard until it burst.
May God grant that I begin to perceive the Turkish intellectual with such a sense of brotherhood as I had with Vasili Bykov, Nodar Dumbadze. Even now, when I read it, my eyes fill up... Be it a procession, be it going back and forth, let's sit together as boys, there in their country, make fun of their clowns. It was a very nice feeling... One day... Perhaps it was just the three of us, Andrei Bitov, Rezo Gabriadze, and I, watching football. On the occasion of football, we remembered another football. Rezo said: There is a player in the Trabzon team... The Trabzon team are Georgians. Let's say: why are there Georgians? Why should there be Georgians in the Trabzon team? He said: because they can get carried away like Georgians. Tarvel says, because they are tsitsko, they are cute, they jump beautifully, they are cute, they are like Georgians. What is important here is brotherly feeling towards other nations and peoples. If we can overcome the national complex, look at others like that...
- That's why we have to get stronger. As long as we are weak, we cannot.
– Of course, Rezo's base, like mine, was the Empire. On that basis, one could go to such extravagant expressions, make such judgments. We just don't know what we've lost yet.

14. 09. 1999
- I missed the sounds, rhythm, and aromas of my country so much that they were just life for me. By country, it is understood: Lori. The voices are really... Like bread... As a hungry person misses bread, I miss that hunger, that lack. I'm afraid it's already irreversible...
I know that every time I have sex, it's different, life comes to me. I should say animal, because today my condition exists parallel to animal, also inappropriate. Maybe he's from another existence. But I know that life is like that, I know that its living presence, its secret whisper, its whisper in me has prompted me to create a couple of lines alive. Otherwise, relationships of another level come, book lines come...
I missed my father's voice, my mother's voice... My father's voice, his scent, his hand... The weight of his cultivated, working hand on my shoulder. He had a big, beautiful hand... And he was unearned... Unearned in the sense that nothing came home, but he had worked... those evenings, those evenings spent with effort and sweat... That was how the day ended. The day was lived like this...
Time was different. There was hope for the day. They were connected to nature from childhood to gray hair. The child felt that he was not a slave to the world, that their help was a beautiful thing. But far that exists as a distant power, as a distant power of God. Let there be help, that friendship, but the living God is in our field, in that green field...
I missed that hug so much! The wind was playing across the field, that's how life was... Will we see it again?
I consider myself lucky: I have seen that region, from the beginnings of human history to the present day, it has taken all the rural life in itself, and I have seen it. And I would like that... How I pity my children, my grandchildren, these little ones born in the city, that they will not know what a field is, what an ox is, what an ox is, what is the smell of the soil, what is the freedom of space, I pity that they have no place on the ground... That they have not seen the running of deer and the fun of deer...
Here... Here it is... in Vahagnadzor, Shahallvi valley... Before the Soviets, this valley had a different name, with which Tumanyan boasted that the enemy should not pass through those places. It was Shahallvi valley, that narrow gorge... there... I woke up in the train. It was morning time. Through the forest, when you go from there, on the right wing, in the forest, the clouds were slowly rising, up the valley, up the slopes, up the moist, wooded slopes. I know that I became a poet that day. I was recharged that day...
I used to be very perceptive. After reaching Apara, after driving, my voice started to change, my inside, my content started to be filled with something else. And it was so beautiful! The relationship with everything was very good: the land, my mother, the dog, the cow. Cows sitting at the door, heavy, looking at the evening so peacefully. The dog... We were going in different cars. So there was no screeching of the car, engine, so that the dog could recognize it. Our house was at the top end of the village. It's probably a couple of kilometers down. So, let me see one more time from where: Hrant came! Come on Armenians, where are you going, I'm coming... Oh, where did you get lost...
Blessed are those who still have that small homeland. Blessed are those who still have a parent on their head, even if they are sick or bedridden. However, they have. They have someone praying for them. Blessed are those who have a tree planted somewhere or have left a dog, they must go. Blessed are those who have at least a hundred meters of land under the grass.
- After all this, it is worth talking about God, about the universe. About the infinity of space.
- The limit of the universe is our madness.
- And infinity?
- Infinity is our impotence.
- And how do you imagine the existence of God?
- God's existence... God's presence... God's presence is the consciousness of our powerlessness, the consciousness of our powerlessness in front of the perception of the world and with the power of our vast perceptions, a huge fragment from the scope of our perceptions. To another existence that reaches beyond the limits of ability... That is God. And very often also our presence, our existence in the world.
Land, life, nature itself, water itself breathe life. They strive for the life of the country, to come from non-existence, to become a presence. The stone itself is gifted to speak. That's why it decays, moss grows on it, it cracks, it is planted and it became another tree. Here. Strives for life. So do we. We were trees, we were moss, we were soil in the environment. We, too, are their continuation. Thus the earth is inclined to speak, to listen, to make music, to sing, to think, to deny, to collapse, to burn... All this burns. Burning desire...
Life - fire in the swamps - there is and there is no -
Life - a traveler, an expected guest to come.
Life - fire in the swamps - there is and there is no -
Life - a traveler, an expected guest to come.
Life - as endless as the earth, the sky!
Life - a thousand names like lost stars!
Yeghishe Charents, a sixteen-year-old...
- What was your first literary experience?
- I remember, of course I remember. There would have been other attempts that are not worth mentioning. But the first memorable experience, which I still remember with nostalgia, was also a success, it was published later than the other works, in a magazine version. I don't know why, it was left out of some compilations.
It was the first published work that I focused on and worked on for quite a long time, there was both youthful inexperience and also youthful love, which cannot be replaced by anything. It is an extremely expensive business. I also seem to have made corrections on the magazine version of that case, worked in the margins, but the magazine didn't burn. I'll ask my wife to find it and reprint it. It's a small thing, but it means a lot to me. As far as I remember, it was very important, it was the theme of the comeback.
- Was it a story?
- It was a story. Maybe twenty or twenty-five pages. My impressions came from childhood. I was also the acting subject. I found something else. I had an uncle, a little uncle, whom I remember from the age of four. I must have been four years old because it was the Finnish war, he was already gone. I remember that a cow was slaughtered at their door, it was my uncle. That cow was slaughtered, I was a child, I was impressed. He left his wife and daughter and went to war. Then the Finnish had finished successfully, but not yet demobilized, the Second World War began, and they said that Yeranos was shot. That was the end. On cold winter nights, the woman would come to our house and our young mother, who again had small children, would host her. He had a small child, he died, he came to sleep in my mother's lap. He endured for a long time, took a long time, waited. Many people in the village got married very early, became widows, and their children became orphans. He rejected everyone for a long time. When they came to ask for it, he came to our house and cried, "What should I do?" Women, relatives urged him to go. He also said, "I'm going to Dsegh, but I'm standing at that stone and looking at it, wondering if it's coming to me or not, should I give up and come here, to my house... The house they built, the four walls, the roof... However, one side of the roof was broken by the board, the other one didn't make it, he went to the army." And so, one day, the wind of the devil went through the trees from our garden and entered the roof. He went in and lifted the entire brick. And this house collapsed like this. That's how the cramit was broken... We also saw other things...
I loved him very much in my mind. And I did not kill him. I did not agree in my mind that he should have been killed. I saw his return... That return was my return. I came to Yerevan when I was fifteen years old and every time I thought of going back to my hometown. With his return, I saw my return: the yellowed pumpkin, the chicken, the rooster there, the yellow cat on the scale, the apple tree... He was connected, as I was connected. The log at the door, the suffering of the woman, the suffering of the sweet hands of the woman on the log. The woman's hand was unable to tear, it was helplessly gnawed on the sides. He will come and tear the log... That blanket, that throne, that woman... There were our barns, the Hunting barns, there were women who were gathered in the Hunting barns, wondering if he had come! I was going to return that return and the good morning of the next day, as if nothing had happened, that the house was preserved. There have been sins in a woman's life, of course. But there was such a disgust for the dormitory, the war, the dirt, the disease, that here such a small disturbance of morality cannot be more than that pumpkin, that cat, that house, that silence, that peace... That's how it is. I considered it my first serious work and published it.
- The title was "Return?"
- "Joseph returns from the army." But now if I retype it, I'll put "Return". That work was published because after the "Ahnidzor" essay was published, I was expelled from the institute. I was working in two places, one place was also fired, one place remained. There was a small salary. They didn't remove me from there because my child was already born and I was living in a rented house. We lived somehow. They didn't print it anymore, they didn't broadcast it on the radio, everyone rejected it. There were a lot of arguments, there was something like despair, it was just disgusting. Finally, they accepted a proofreader in the "Hayastani Fizkulturnik" newspaper. One day, someone unexpectedly said, "Don't you have anything, let's get it printed." The reason was that the allied center in Beirut had taken note of my banned material and had taken it under protection from afar. They were attacked on the Munich radio, as in 1937, and today, the young people... And so on... A few such articles, let me see them here, they started to atone for their sins. They especially offered to publish in the "Soviet Armenia" magazine published for the diaspora. That's how I recovered. Then that hero who protected me from Beirut came here. I was employed at the "Literary newspaper". I was a wonderful writer, I wrote 20 pages a day, there were two mistakes or there were not. I was also arranging the materials by editing. Dr. Papazyan appeared here, and it turned out that thanks to whom my rights are being restored, thanks to whom the case was published. Dr. Papazyan was a member of the Federation Bureau. They were influenced from afar, and the second work was published. That's how...
- And what was the first best job that you were satisfied with?
- "August" story. It's very serious, it's a traditional plot, and there's no homage to the rest. It suits my way of thinking, with juxtaposition of images that do not interfere with each other, they are a pause for each other, and a relationship, they complete the environment. And it has made a very nice environment. the pear dripped, it's hot, that dry house, that grass... The dialogue is also beautiful. It's a good job, it was done and the "Alho" story continued along with it.
How did the others come about? I remember exactly: I took Zorayr Khalapyan's typewriter and I was writing things. I could do that. I was waiting for everyone to leave the editorial office, I sat and worked at night.
There was a 104-page novel. Crucial was my anxieties about the disappearing nature and our connection. Those concerns were there, it was built on. My editor had read Aitmatov's novel and named my work "The Horse's Eye"... There were such pampered plots that I kept. One of them is the story "Alho", again my "Orange Basket" and others. Of course, it was not well structured as a novel, but there were wonderful fragments from which the story "Mesrop", "Alkhon" and others were written. It can be said that those 104 pages became a work of identity, little was left out. The main connection was left out - that we are facing a disaster because we have lost our ties with the country. The asphalt spread between our soles and the sounds of the earth. I was angry with the city of Yerevan, I didn't think about it. I was thinking about Ani. At the same time, I thought that someday I would write about Ani, how human immorality became so hot that the city was destroyed, that we are so immoral that disaster awaits us too. I don't know if I was able to do it or not... And, apparently, my mind ran away to the saved humanity, landscape, rural work, the work of the peasant became important, which existed as a socio-political issue. Indeed, because we are losing people. Or maybe I was wrong? I was criticized, I had to confirm mine. If the "Ahnidzor" review had gone unnoticed, if it had not been savagely destroyed, if the magazine had not been collected, burned, or banned, perhaps I would have followed a different path and looked for other things. But in the place where they hit me, in the place where they bombed, I stood up against them. Thus, more or less rural writer Hrant Matevosyan appeared. There was another unfinished business, another urban one. I was a city boy after all, I'd been here since I was fourteen. Otherwise I would catch the rhythms of the city. But that bombing, which was also a state policy, because the peasant, as a small cooperative owner, should also be deprived of it and equalized with the worker, he should be a worker on the land, just as he is a worker in the city, in the factory. Therefore, kolkhozes were crushed because they were a form of collective ownership, and sovkhozes were organized. In a word... Everything that happened in the village was painful, I took every change with pain, and it had to be responded to. Then the life lived for one day on one hectare is enough to dedicate your whole life to it and go and go endlessly... Not to mention the history, about what you lived.
- What is Hrant Matevosyan's writing technology like? One writes, finishes, then starts working on it, another spends days looking for words, building sentences.
- One of today's writers taught me something beautiful. write on one page of the notebook, leave the other free, make entries on the white page, which then go to the first page... I know that very cleanly written pages are a sign of uselessness. If it is written at once, if it is not worked on, I shudder and know that something is wrong. Often, even criminally, I intervene, but not to complicate, multiply, pause... I don't know anything... I can't work with a typewriter. After sitting on a case twice, I got to the sixteenth page and saw with horror that my style had changed, it had become something else, the machine suggested something else. That was the end of it, and that wonderful work was spoiled. I left it, but I remember it with nostalgia, I don't know, maybe I'll be able to reflect on it someday. Only with a pen.
Like any work, a literary work should be written all at once, without interruption, and then read and worked on. That's how it was done, I worked during it. Today I corrected what I did the previous day, I moved on. Because of bad life, great things have been interrupted, and every time it has been very difficult to reflect. You are already doing something else, you know for what, which is a pleasure and invention for you, because you have prepared things for tomorrow, you have something to write. And what is interrupted is forgotten, your body fades into itself, it is difficult to be reborn as a new person.
- "Green field" is my favorite work.
- I told "The Green Field" for my son and when I told it, I shuddered myself, I saw that there is something very beautiful that I must write down. But when I started writing, I didn't find the thing that told me that I should definitely turn this into a piece of writing. Another thing that is beautifully done and the reader doesn't notice the flaw, another thing that is well written and you don't notice the lack of a halo on the leg. It is well told, there is a good language, because I also did it for language, because I did it for children and I teach language and rhythm. It is also an expression of love: I was telling it for my child, I was telling it the best. But something was lost. Too bad it got lost.
- It's a very good job. An unnecessary word, an unnecessary connection cannot be found.
- Yes, we can say that a couple of children's work has been done. "My mountains" is not a bad thing either. That was also written in one breath. I wrote the story "Punishment" very hard.
- It would be difficult to write. It's quite a difficult task.
- Yes, he is going to get grass, isn't he?
- Yes, it is a difficult task, but it is very good.

28. 09. 1999
- What is the word for you?
- I don't accept the word... When it acts as a savior in the text. Always avoided it. The text should be strong, not one word to save the whole text. All words must be equal. Gurgen Mahar used the saving power of the word the most. After the dally-dole essay, you could see a saving word that saved the whole page. And so, thanks to words, expressions, texts were saved. And true, great artists don't have words, words don't matter to them. In Hovhannes Tumanyan's text, the word has no meaning, the words are so precisely found that none of them stand out. It seems like a string of gray words, but it creates a bright, big picture. The words themselves, being gray, ambiguous, give rise to a significant text. I don't know what kind of writer I am, but I am a good reader and I was a good literary critic from the beginning. I professed not the culture of the word, but the culture of the text, the culture of the whole.
There is no such word in Tumanyan's "Gikor", the whole word is "Gikor". Based on all this, I will make a true reference for you. Aram Ilyich Khachatryan, who was also a great musicologist, was asked about the "Gayane" ballet. It's about "Dance with Swords". The choreographer suggested that something is missing, let's find an image. He later wrote the famous tune "Dance with Swords" and at the end of his life he said he wished he hadn't written it. It ruined the ballet... That's the word. It is a small text, stood out and moved the epicenter of the ballet to itself.
- How will you explain that everyone can write the same sentences by combining the same words? The text will be written, but not the story. However, the writing of one of the many works, it becomes a story, a work of genius.
- Because the world is both an objective and a subjective presence. Because under the gaze of God another world emerges, under the gaze of the devil - something else. Because it turns out that reality is not the object of literature, but the writer himself. Your question is about the subject perceiving the object. The reality was in front of both Tumanyan and many of his contemporaries. In front of Tumanyan, it turns into a dull, real literary world, under the eyes of others, reality dies, does not grow into literature. Those deliberative subjects cannot be transformed into literary reality.
- When creating, energy is transferred from the artist, sculptor, musician, writer to their creation. In other words, the work is always under the influence of the creator's energy field. I mean physically, not imaginatively. Your opinion is interesting.
- Perhaps that permeates the work and creates the literary and musical reality that I have already mentioned. That's how Martiros Saryan's Armenia, that's how Hakob Hakobyan's Armenia was born. It is the presence of their energy field. On the other hand, for us they are also discoverers of a new reality. Then we join their views.
- If we think on a cosmic scale, man, his coming into the world, his life seem meaningless. Why does a person come to the world, why does he leave? What should he do to live properly? His role.
- If we say the truth, a person is fulfilled, not fulfilled. That's how pointless it seems to you. But it is also able, as some religious movements find, to influence to some extent. Inasmuch as it is a creature, there are also commanding powers in it. It's not that pointless. I believe that God is also in man. After all, if it is set like this: God and reality, God and man, creature and creator, still the foundation is the creature... I am the owner of those views, I have adopted the attitude of our ancestors. In man the power of the whole universe is revealed.
- What do you think, is a person a soul and a body? How do you feel about the idea of ​​the immortality of the soul?
- I used to have seizures. Other times I gave good answers. I consider the whole universe to be lifeless and tending to life. The inanimate tends to animate, and that effort is united. I associate the soul with the earth, with the inanimate, under the sun, with the power of the sun, light, wind... In a word, the whole living thing is a tendency to become spiritual, to take a soul, to life. I don't want to think that it is really soil, it is really dead, the soul drips from above and revives it. Another characteristic of the inanimate is to become alive, spiritualized, and excited. It is the characteristic of the inanimate to grow moss, to have microbes, to grow back, to become a mushroom, the mushroom to define something else, something else that defines the living and the inanimate, such as the starfish and aspires to the soul. It is the characteristic of God's world, his essence, his incarnation into the living. Nobody and nothing wants to be dead. Everyone has a tendency to awaken, to become a soul.
- Do you want to say that life is a characteristic of the soul?
- No, life is the characteristic of inanimate. The inanimate is a tendency to life.
- What do you dislike the most in a person?
- The tyrant. They are the ugliness of the world. They would get their answer before becoming gods. But because man is also a slave, a doer, he obeys, worships, worships and idolizes, and the first attitude is distorted. This is already the second period. But the first moment when he subjected his fellow man to himself, the attitude of that moment is the most correct. I don't lose the attitude of that moment. Violence is the most respectable phenomenon.

15. 06. 2001
- Most prose writers were seduced by writing poetry at a young age. Have you ever written a poem?
- Poetry must also be mature. The genres of the novelist, dramatist, poet, all must be mature. They are completely distant marzes, but they are related to each other, neighbors, domains related to each other, all of them are equal children of the writer. Perhaps the first child is the poem. A gifted person should be able to succeed in all three trainings. Of course, aesthetics attracted me to the phenomenon of poetry. A world with Teryan's poetry, Tumanyan's poetry...
I made several attempts at writing poetry, but that was in my early teenage years. Then the prose, it seems, enchanted with its stingy beauty... My arm was broken, I was in the hospital. The nurse brought a book from the hospital library with something crossed out. Then I realized that it was Axel Bakuntsi's name. It was translated by Gogol. Gogol in me got lucky. I didn't read Russian yet. There was an optional Armenian translation. Then Maupassant, Chekhov, Tolstoy... I read very little. The reader in me was not differentiated yet. And I didn't have a leader to recommend the best literature. Overcoming everything with the sense of smell given from above, just an insatiable thirst for reading, I slowly began to pay attention to aesthetics. I was lucky enough that the time of freedom came. Charents appeared, with its huge and big world, Bakunts came, Totovents...
- What is the prose of Nar-Dos? Especially the language.
– is true prose, but nevertheless, it is meticulous. It is not daring, it is a low flight, the reader does not relate to the borders of falls and flights...
- What do you think about the young generation of novelists? Will the literature of the time be created?
- It has been talked about a lot. I am not a young person, but until now, in all books, both Armenian and foreign, I have always looked for a leader, brave, knowledgeable, who will create a world for me, even if it is hell. Here I am looking for a leader. To say I have that leader would be an exaggeration. But capable people have come who occupy space with their prose. Unfortunately, especially in prose, there are few such names. Again, playing the fool, naming Levon Khechoyan, I must say that some of his works are a step ahead. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a complete case of equal strength.
In that sense, Demirchyan's "Rose" is unique. He turned me into a teenage reader at this age. Infinitely correct essay on infinitely many pages. Either you browse the Armenian literature with an anxious heart, or you will turn the page and encounter mistakes, false propaganda, publicity, etc. Page after page, the episode, the greatness that makes a person practicing literature great, was accumulating. Unfortunately, our contemporaries did not show that ability, as Vernata's writers had. Tumanyan, Isahakyan, Nikol Aghbalyan. The latter was a great literary critic. There are things in his writings that are so familiar to me that I feel like I wrote them. Honorable people who made it their goal to keep literature and the motherland in front of their eyes with that stability, while appropriating the entire culture of the world, they tried to add one more thing. There are no people with such honor. There are people who are tolerant, seem to be able to pull the yoke. This applies to both seniors and relatively juniors.
– The characters you create come to life and live their own lives. Do you always feel their existence, do you miss them or do you forget them after writing, do you live the life of a newborn?
- They are much more in what I don't do than in what I do. Although I wish it wasn't. That attitude is probably because my mind is more on what I still have to do than on what I have done. There is so much to do that I have done little. In front of this powerful, big, uninclusive world, we make efforts, make some feeble attempts to embrace the uninclusive, large areas, a large number of people, perhaps the entire Armenian people, but they are not finished. I don't admit it now, but maybe sometimes something forced me to admit that I'm weak. In the face of this life, what we do, not just what I do, are small experiments.
It all depends on the mood. After all, Saryan's painting does not cover the entire Armenian world. It is, however, a painting that is both inclusive, compelling, and world-opening. It is his world, the world created by Saryan. In other words, Saryan forces people to look at you with his loving, caring gaze. And thus that world becomes beloved. If I can impose my view on my reader, man, world, motherland, like the greats Saryan, Charents, I can make the reader sympathize, be the reader's ally, creative cooperation will be...
It's always like that. Kuchak, Sayat-Nova impose a view, impose the right attitude on their reader, creating together about this big world. This is how both the writer's longevity and immortality come about.
- You speak very modestly about your works, you have a wrong opinion, don't you? Your literature has its readership - a whole nation.
- I can say the opposite.
- Why say the opposite, if it is not so...
- Thank you. But let's get a little more absolute. We presented ourselves to the world neither with the images of Vahagn Davtyan, nor Hamo Sahyan, nor Paruyr Sevak. It seems that we will be able to see the key to reading that world through the eyes of the writers who came after thirty-five, but they are not Charents. It's good that Charents existed in our time. And Charents answered. Also, I wasn't the one who was able to become a leader at the time. It was Charents again. Both in the twenties, and in modern myths, and in "Khambapet Shavarsh"...
- All that is also related to time. In a small fraction of time, cataclysms. Without a doubt, Charents had to answer the big questions. An artist responds to his time. Times have changed. Hamo Sahyan, Hrant Matevosyan, all the greats of the last period will come to the fore again. Isn't it clear that your prose, Zulal poetry of Hamo Sahyan are out of place in the current period, nobody is interested in the exact literature. I am interested in more combative, powerful, cutting, some other kind of literature. And young creators write on demand.
- May God grant that they can create something like "A clean, bright corner", a clean world where the reader can move to... Hakob Mndzuri had no intention of annexing us, but he brought a series of images that are truly a panorama of the entire Western Armenian life of the pre-Egernian period. It created a world of feudal times, it really brought a whole series of images that impress you as if they were in motion, as if they were a motion picture. No analysis. Only images where active attitude is required of you. Only solid and stable images, which become a panorama of the entire past century of Western Armenian life. A whole world lost. The philosopher seems to be weak in the author, but the aesthete is strong. Philosophy is required of you by the images it brings. I mean, you have to draw conclusions.
- When literature preaches virtue, humanity, peace, love, it seems to have no value for our time. Now people don't think about it. Today, let's say, vulgar literature is of interest. People accept phallic literature, awards are given. It is not, however, pure literature. I acknowledge their literary talent. However, that road does not lead to the temple. All this is related to the transition time, the state of mind of the people. There are such phenomena, that's why the literature of Hrant Matevosyan, Hamo Sahyan, the literature that has created great values, may be devalued at the moment. After all, Jesus was also crucified because they were not ready to accept his ideology, but then he came and conquered the world. So is true, great literature.
- The reason to be dissatisfied is not why they speak about it, but who is so superficial. Both Dostoyevsky and Charents dealt with similar situations in "The Four Paths of History", but they were guided by love. And here you enter an unknown, alien, rejectable world where you have a leader. If I am dissatisfied with our new ones, here is for this, for bringing a picture of superficial life, superficiality and impotence, poverty. It is poverty after all. What is missing is the strength to be able to scratch that surface and get to the man-god underneath, because God is not in the sky, God is in man. From the lowest, from the deepest, man took God out, removed it, and placed it in the sky. There is a person in all that garbage and confusion, or we wouldn't be here by now. How many times has a person stood in front of cataclysms and was able to go over the edge, bypass it? That God in his midst, Christ in his midst, took him on the path of kindness, holiness, patience, love, and forgiveness.
- Modern creators also seem to have no attitude. They just describe. One looks through foreign windows, steals the secrets of other people's intimate lives. It's a mean act. But the author doesn't tell the reader: it's bad, don't do it. He simply describes with the careful observation of an eyewitness. But that doesn't make it literature, does it? After all, the creator has an obligation to man, to God.
- They think that they are different, he is different. They think they are standing at a distance. And the only true answer in literature is one: the writer is in everyone. True literature is that which has only one addressee: me, only me. If we read and say: This is not about me, but about my neighbor, it means that the accuracy of the case is approximate. If I don't see myself in the images, it's not true literature. They are just reports. let's mention again, there are names that seem to be related to Western literature, like many of our poor artists; it seems to them that they are abstracting into abstractionism, they are abstracting into surrealism, but that is just their poverty. It is the absence of a powerful worldview. A writer who brings a worldview is powerful. Great are those who have the vision of God and bring it into the world. If they don't bring a worldview, an opening, if they don't have a worldview, only the iconoclasm can't give anything.
- Do your characters dictate their will or are you able to control the course of events until the end?
- It would be a blessed state that is given to very few people. They dictate their will. I attribute most of my failures to this. They go of their own free will. New boundaries are being stepped on, and what you thought beforehand, you should have done with your own will, as an architect, engineer-builder imposing your will on the structure, does not work. In most cases, the overall structure of the spine is lost. God give strength, really somehow the matter will be solved. This is a condition Faulkner alludes to by explaining the failure to include the uninclusive. However, things remain unfinished. You always try to make up for your lost rhythm or to cover up the mistake you made, the flaw in your work, hide it in the next work. And maybe the next vicious thing will happen, because really, heroes are not toys. They must live of their own free will, their full life, and they oblige. Let me give an example. According to my wish of an Armenian Christian, an Armenian writer, the murderer, by killing a person, killed himself, and his physical, bodily death is just a matter of time. He must have been a broken, weak, poor person. It is not even a body, it has no life, it has no demand. And there is no need to die. That was the picture. They went to take revenge and found him weak and pitiful. Fifty or sixty years after the events, I asked him: why, is he alive? He killed a man. It was in our region. He was silent for a minute, then he said, "Is he dead?" It turned out that he did not die, he killed a man on purpose, of his own free will, with his masculinity and continues to live for himself. I had to feel that, not to attribute the desire of a Christian to someone who lives a different life and other desires. Well, with proper upbringing I should have known, built my plans on that knowledge. It would take me to a different depth than if I was thinking, you can't kill, because by killing someone, you're killing yourself. No, he put himself aside and was a man. Murders are also phenomena of a person's inner world and it is also required to come out in a feminine way. I had very few teachers to follow with envy. Read "Haji Murad" and see what it boils down to. Also after being killed, it is the unconscious body that scrapes to live, to be, to exist on Earth.
- There is a ferocity of a powerful pagan love of life, fighting in the character.
- I would very much like our fifteen-twenty-year-old children to be formed by reading Armenian greats and such great works, to be able to cover the depths. That's why I said that I didn't have teachers. They gave us bad literature, superficial, which doesn't teach anything, they didn't teach us nature, that's why a lot of things are empty in us. With our time, just because of that distortion, just because of that partisanship, we have not made a very human novel, life has taken that suffering away, the non-existent literature was born dead and passed on to generations. It's a pity that the effort was wasted on it, that they were read, and not Haji Murad and such works. At least they weren't teachers.
- The adoption of Christianity by Armenians seems to have gone the wrong way. The national heritage of our pagan period was almost completely destroyed: temples, temples, national traditions, even oral traditions, legends were deliberately forgotten. How do you feel about that fact?
- That question was asked much earlier, twenty-thirty years ago, by one of my friends, that every revolution is destruction. And so is Christianity. At the same time, it is not necessary to look with active hostility. Perhaps it is true, or the only truth, that the culture of the pagan period was largely destroyed and a new culture came. To inherit the destructive power of the revolutionary teaching of Christianity and turn against it would be the same as they did. They destroyed something very expensive and big, and established their own. It is the agreement of the society that the current culture was presented as a payment for that culture. Mashtots, Khorenatsi, Narekatsi, hymns, Sayat-Nova... A great, wonderful culture has emerged and should be treated with affection and love, without referring to the origins.
- When you are in a creative process, you create during the day, does that process continue in a dream or in some way during sleep, or is it interrupted to start again during the day?
- They are memories of Jahel times. It happened in a hot bed. But I haven't had it for a long time. That frenzy, that fever, that obsession to create, the power to disconnect and connect, disconnecting from reality, to connect with a larger human world and to be with that world, rave, live, admire, delight, laugh... I haven't had it for a long time. But it's a blissful state. It is a writer's misfortune that it is done at the expense of youth. Joyfully bearing the burdens of life, poverty. And the most amazing thing is that your effort and suffering are not given to you with pleasure. You just do it at the expense of the youth. God willing I can relate to that delusion and work again.
Sometimes, as a person of the real world, I longingly look back on my unfinished work, which is a huge world, a state where, here, heroes, people, small and big, are trying to get out of the stone and live a real life. Love, really, them. Love how much they don't like real people in real life, because he is really made of seven heavens, he really has a part of God in him. I am not alone there, God is with me. Whenever the mother had no rest or sleep, she tried to separate them from the stone so that they could live and breathe with earthly breath... My favorite is the image of a girl named Shushan, who is ten or thirteen years old and dominates her mother, father, and brother. It's a girl who is a mistress. I love her as much as no one has ever loved a woman, a girl, a girl in Armenian reality. I definitely need to extract him from the stone, from obscurity.
- Who is Hay?
- That question is answered by Hay Goy and our entire history. Who are we, where have we gone throughout our history, what have we given to world culture, civilization, art? We connect everything, bring it into one picture and give the moral evaluation of the Armenian. There is one characterization of Mandelstam that at other times has seemed encouraging. An Armenian is a person who avoids everything that is alien to him, rejects him, and believes in the world of things. For him, a stone is a stone, Aragats is Aragats. And repulsive and repulsive to everything alien. The great poet who escaped from the world of revolutions and declines found himself here in the world of things, reality, and worshiped before the earth, land, man. Among the people rejecting the sectarian. I consider the assessment to be true, because he remembers all your and my great manifestations, be it Sarya, Aram Khachatryan, William Saroyan or anyone else. There is something in us that loves, nurtures, builds the world. Our man does not fall to the end, he is afraid. And it doesn't rise all the way. Macbeth does not become by going down to the bottom, nor does he go to the heights, but neither does Magella. Does not sink to the bottom and does not rise to the top. That person is the Armenian. It is proved by its architecture, its music, its painting, its language art. How many times has our creator, the individual, come into contact with the world of knowledge and how many times has he left that world outside the scope of his interests. It will be Saryan, Tumanyan or Aram Khachatryan...
- Armenians become high-level artists and military leaders in other countries, but they are not established in their country, in their nation.
- Where did Garegin Nzhdeh originate?
- Nzhdeh was an exception. And how many Nzhdehs were there in Byzantium, Russia, France...
- Many times I have come across that they just put the blame on the nation, actually on the blood, that the quality is not quality... On the talent. Taknak's attitude towards his parent people. It is a scumbag person who blames the cause of his downfall on his parent. Nzhdeh paid attention to this: when he is lirb, he says, "my mother is lirb".
- Sorry, but that's not the right question.
- No, it is not a correct question. If we look at the origins, we will sing our song, we do not sing our song when we adopt the attitude of the Turkish sultan towards the Russian people and the attitude of the Russian tsar towards the Turkish people. Adopting the attitude of kings towards each other, we speak their language about them, one's language about the other. We need to find our language and the attitude of our Turkish-Armenians towards the Russian emperor should be Armenian and not Turkish-Armenian, Russian-Armenians should not be Russian-Armenian, but Armenian towards Turkey and the Turkish Sultan. This is what we are talking about, that we really danced under a foreign duduk. It is in this case that we sang the song of the Russian king, the Cossacks, "Istanbul will become a sea of ​​blood". That was the cause of our tragedy. Let's say, well, our interest coincides with his interest, it's a very correct word. Then they retreated, and we were left alone against the mighty Turk.
- We were under attack.
- Yes, we are under attack. Another question is that this adoption makes us behave in a completely different way towards reality than if we just felt alone. I have always talked about it, and I can always say that being deceived is being deceived, but already a new quality of man is standing on the stage: tall, in relation to the great ideas of the world, not impoverished. It was such a real, material contribution to the world of the Armenian man, how powerful and material support it would be for the Armenian man. Here, we are talking about material assistance, weighty assistance, as much as military assistance, as much as, let's say, the honorable behavior of Colonel Korolkov, who actually saved Sardarapat himself. The Cossack with his small regiment, with the remnants of his regiment, turned and hit. And, behold, everyone gathered around him.

- The gifts of the tribe are expressed through a representative of that tribe, being transmitted from generation to generation by genetic link. From whom did you inherit the talent of a writer, from your mother or father, to whom do you owe your talent?
- From my mother. He used to see ordinary events in the same way, he told them in the same way... I remember a couple of very nice pictures. Grandpa Avetik's big family used to gather: daughters-in-law and daughters-in-law. We, the child, were present and listened to the whole dramatized life of the village performed by the brides. The entire village was inspected, the whole village was represented. All of the moves were recognizable. And that's where the drama, the comedy was created. It was under the tork of the carpet, working, tiring, wiping, that women created. That's why when Vahagn Davtyan told something to Chobanyan, repeating that all our medieval songs were created by craftsmen, I imagined that here, under those carpets, women sang while sitting. And those natives were created by the people. I saw those people, my aunts, uncles' wives, really creating our stories. Of course, there were also male narrators, but mostly they were women. Language is created by women. Let's remember Pushkin. his language was created by his nanny.

Hovik Vardumyan, "Conversations with Hrant Matevosyan",
"Van Arya" publishing house, Yerevan, 2003.