Sunday, April 23, 2006
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DEFINING A GOOD ARMENIAN
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If a Ramgavar were to tell me a good Armenian is one who hates Tashnaks, I would be tempted to retort, “If we assume hatred to be a defining factor, then I must be a better Armenian than you because I hate both Tashnaks and Ramgavars for adopting and implementing the divide-and-rule tactics of our oppressors.”
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If an Armenian were to tell me it is our patriotic duty to hate Turks, I would react by saying, “I must be a better Armenian than you because I hate not only Turks but also Germans, Russians, Americans, Patagonians or any other people you care to mention that at one time or another raped and massacred innocent human beings in the name of an ideology or religion based on a Big Lie whose ultimate aim is to label and dehumanize a fraction of mankind.”
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How to define a good Armenian? It can’t be done. Every boss, bishop, and benefactor will have his own definition. But they will all agree on one thing: an assimilated Armenian cannot be a good Armenian because he is of no use to them.
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What about the average Armenian? How does he define a good Armenian? No need to ask him. Watch his feet. If he can’t work and provide for his family in the Homeland or if he finds himself at the mercy of intolerant activists or corrupt operators in the Diaspora, he will say to hell with definitions and he will give up his identity before anyone can say Jack S. Avanakian.
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If you were to ask me, I will say the most important thing in life is not to be a good Armenian but a better human being by making a contribution to the welfare of your fellow men. It follows, a Turk who does that is far superior to an Armenian whose number one concern is number one.
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Wars and massacres are instigated not by good men but by charlatans who recycle a propaganda line based on a Big Lie. To an Armenian who believes he is god’s chosen and his brand of Armenianism is the only true one, and anyone who disagrees with him is a second-class citizen, perhaps even a traitor to the cause, I say, “I hope and pray you and your kind assimilate and are not heard from again, because the world will be a better place without your kind of bully.”
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Monday, April 24, 2006
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ZAROUKIAN ON ARMENIANISM,
OTTOMANISM, AND SOVIETISM
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The only reason some of my young readers are shocked, perhaps even outraged by my views is that they are not interested in Armenian literature and the chances are they have not read a single Armenian writer, except perhaps Saroyan (about whom see below). As a result, their so-called patriotism does not go beyond such clichés and slogans as “first nation to convert to Christianity.” I say this to stress the fact that none of my ideas is original. I only select and emphasize.
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Today, for instance, I come across the following passage in Antranik Zaroukian’s THE LAST INNOCENT (Beirut, 1980). “Armenianism is one but Armenians are not. Some Armenians value freedom above everything else, others have Turkish souls, still others Bolshevik brains.”
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Speaking of a certain type of Armenian leader, he further writes: “He was the kind of judge who pronounces a guilty verdict first then looks for a crime that will fit the verdict. And…he finds it.”
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AGEE ON SAROYAN
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“Saroyan is an entertainer of a kind overrated by some people and underrated by others – a very gifted schmalz-artist. In the schamlz-artist strength and weakness are inextricably combined – the deeply, primordially valid, and the falseness of the middle-aged little boy who dives back into the womb for pennies.”
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Elsewhere: “Saroyan’s brand of Christian anarchy I find about equally genuine, sympathetic, professional, and muddled.” For more on Saroyan, see James Agee, FILM WRITING AND SELECTED JOURNALISM (748 pages. Illustrated. Index. New York, 2005).
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MEMO TO A REVOLUTIONARY
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Never start a fight you can’t win. But if you do, fight to the end. Do not abandon defenseless women and children at the mercy of the enemy you know to be bloodthirsty, racist, and ruthless. But if you do, have the decency not to wash your hands afterwards, absolve yourself of all responsibility, and spend the rest of your life blaming others, because that would be the height of cowardice.
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Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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The difference between my generation of writers and the one that preceded it is that we no longer think in terms of “occupying an immortal page in the history of Armenian literature” – an expression and similar ones pop up frequently in Antranik Zaroukian’s writings. Zaroukian’s generation took themselves seriously. We are more realistic. We take nothing seriously except the Genocide. Everything else we view as irrelevant and ephemeral.
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Myself against our bosses, bishops, benefactors, and their assorted hirelings: it is as uneven a confrontation as that of our revolutionaries against the Evil Empire. But in my case, at least, I can always console myself by saying that no one but myself will suffer for my blunders, assuming of course I am on the wrong path and my “betters” on the right one.
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What we say is not always what we believe, especially when it comes to saying what we really believe or our credo; and more often than not “we may believe that we believe, but we don’t believe” (Sartre).
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We have two kinds of best-selling books: cookbooks and massacre books. The offspring of the starving Armenian now have fat bellies – too much pilaf, shish kebab, and baklava.
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Russian proverb: “With cunning you can capture a lion; with force you can’t even catch a cricket.”
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What am I doing to encourage the next generation of writers, I have been asked on one or two occasions. My answer: “What the nation needs more than writers is readers.”
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Somewhere in his THE LAST INNOCENT Zaroukian sums up his philosophy thus: 5% of men are born good and will die good; 5% are evil and no power on earth will change them (“they are born to crawl not to fly”); the remaining 90% can go either way depending on conditions and circumstances. What he fails to add is that the evil ones are better at organizing themselves because lies and greed are more popular than self-sacrifice and truth.
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Wednesday, April 26, 2006
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ON READING
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A question that comes up once in a while: “If I can read Plato and Dostoevsky, why should I bother reading Armenian writers who comparatively speaking are no better than second-raters?”
The answer: Plato and Dostoevsky may teach you a great many things about human nature but they will tell you nothing about our situation.
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Had our revolutionaries read less Plato and more Raffi they would have known that reliance on others (the West in our case) was wrong, and that mass exodus from the Empire (similar to what we see today in the Homeland) would have been a more realistic solution than isolated acts of terrorism and revolution.
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Had they read less Hegel and more Baronian they would have known that after 600 years of subjection to the Sultan, the average Armenian was not about to shed his sheep’s clothing and turn into a wolf.
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Had they read less philosophy and more history they would have known that without popular support a revolution couldn’t succeed.
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They say, “Two pairs of eyes are better than one.” They also say, “None of us knows everything and everyone knows something we don’t know.” The aim of both sayings is to emphasize the importance of solidarity, consensus, and awareness — three essential commodities we lack.
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I am not saying reading Armenian writers will solve all our problems, but I believe it may promote an intellectual and political climate in which fewer disastrous decisions are made.
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