“HRANT MATEVOSIAN CREATED A LITERATURE THAT SHOULD BE TREATED AS A WORLD PEAK,” RUSSIAN INTELLECTUALS CONSIDER
Noyan Tapan
Jun 07 2006
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, NOYAN TAPAN. A memorial evening dedicated to great
Armenian writer Hrant Matevosian’s 70th anniversary was held at Moscow
Central House of Writers within the framework of Year of Armenia in
Russia. As Noyan Tapan correspondent was informed by David Matevosian,
Director of the Hrant Matevosian Foundation, the jubilee event was
initiated by the Armenian Embassy in Russia, Russian Federal Agency
of Culture Development, International Association of Russian Writers’
Unions, as well as RF and RA Culture Ministries.
Russian and Armenian intellectuals were also present at the
event. Mikhail Sinelnikov, Felix Kuznetsov, Sergei Shevelyov, Rustam
Ibrahimbekov, Felix Meloyan and Roman Balayan were among them. They
emphasized that H.Matevosian’s creation “unanimously obliges to
treat it as a high world peak and not to think that this literature
is comparable with the samples of the world culture.”
According to them, the generation of the 60-s has left a huge trace
in the world cultural heritage. This is the “generation of war” born
in 1920-40 – Hrant Matevosian, Sergei Parajanov, Vasili Shukshin,
Andrei Tarkovski and others.
“20-year-old young people do not know who is Hrant Matevosian, but the
public and lack of the state policy is more to blame for this,” the
intellectuals said considering important translation and publication
of Armenian and Russian writers’ works. “A Russian child should know
Hrant Matevosian, Hamo Sahian and an Armenian child Andrei Bitov,
Vasili Shukshin,” the intellectuals consider. According to them,
we should bring up our generations with this culture for the sake of
the future of our homeland.
“… Maybe today’s youngest generation, may God give them a long life,
will see the day when Hrant will be properly appreciated. What he
has done for the Armenian language can be compared only with what
Pushkin has done for the Russian language…,” Russian writer Andrei
Bitov had once said in one of his speeches.
According to the Hrant Matevosian Foundation Director, it is necessary
that Hrant Matevosian’s unpublished works be translated, published
and the works abridged in the years of the Soviet censorship be
republished. It is also time to include the writer’s works in the
school textbooks: according to David Matevosian, we cannot bring up
the generation only with H.Matevosian’s story “Green Field” included
in the textbooks of middle classes.