Thursday, July 20, 2006
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Dante is to Italians what Shakespeare is to the English, Cervantes to the Spaniards, and Goethe to the Germans, and like these writers he has had more than his share of biographers, the latest being Barbara Reynolds, who writes that in his INFERNO this celebrated Florentine portrayed his fellow Florentines “as thieves, usurers, sycophants and sodomites.” As far as I know, no Armenian writer has ever dared to say as much about his fellow Armenians. It is true that near the end of his life Zarian called them “cannibals” but then he was speaking only metaphorically.
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Nina Berberova (1901-1993) was a prolific Russian writer of Armenian descent who like all wise Armenians (Henri Troyat comes to mind, also Arthur Adamov, and Shahan Shahnour in his Armen Lubin phase) kept a safe distance between herself and her fellow Armenians. The only time she discusses her Armenian ancestors is in her autobiography, THE ITALICS ARE MINE (available in English) where we learn that Goncharov modeled his most famous fictional character, Oblomov, on her great-grandfather. Many of her books (short stories, novels, essays, biographies) are available in a number of languages and continue to be translated today, the latest being MOURA: THE DANGEROUS LIFE OF THE BARONESS BUDBERG, a shadowy character who became notorious as a spy and as the mistress of, among others, Maxim Gorky and H.G. Wells.
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I am willing to plead guilty to the charge that sometimes I tend to underestimate my fellow men, but only in the sense that I don’t underestimate them enough.
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Those who violate someone’s freedom of speech do so on the grounds that they know best what’s good for the people, which is what all criminal regimes say.
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Some of my Armenian critics belong to a school of thought that says, “If I cannot slaughter you, I shall do my utmost to massacre your self-esteem” – all in the name of Armenianism of course, that is to say, Ottomanism.
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Friday, July 21, 2006
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Many years ago I remember to have read an old Mohammedan prayer that goes something like this: “O God, if I worship Thee in fear of Hell, burn me in Hell; or if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise.” Is it conceivable that as a non-practicing Catholic I know more Mohammedan prayers than the mullahs who promise 73 virgins to sex-starved gullible teenagers?
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It is true that some of the most important questions will forever remain beyond our reach, but we must keep raising them all the same lest we come to terms with falsehoods.
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Born-again fanatics remind me of the Jewish proverb that says: “Men occasionally find a new truth, but never an old button” – the implication being that sometimes an old button may be worth more than any number of new truths.
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On more than one occasion I have been verbally abused by born-again readers. To them and to all ayatollahs and mullahs I would like to quote the following passage from Pascal: “The worship of truth without charity is idolatry.”
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“From good books I learn how to write; from bad books I learn how not to write,” I once read in an interview with a writer. One of our elder statesmen once said to me: “The problem with us is that we don’t have role models.” But where there are no positive role models, there will be negative ones, and from them we can learn how not to behave. In other words, if you are disposed to learn, you will learn; but if you are of the opposite disposition, you are destined to remain an ignoramus.
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Saturday, July 22, 2006
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ON OUR HISTORY, CULTURE, AND IDENTITY
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If you want to understand the history of your people and the cultural forces that went into shaping your identity, forget everything you were taught as a child. I would say this not only to Armenian boys and girls but also to boys and girls of all nations.
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Individuals may learn to be honest and objective, but not nations, perhaps because there is more fiction than fact in the concepts of nationality and nationhood.
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Almost everyone who identifies himself as an Armenian today or, for that matter, as a Greek, Turk, Russian, Jew, or Palestinian, comes with a political and ideological baggage that is incompatible with objectivity. Take away objectivity from history and the result is bound to be propaganda.
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The history of Armenia and the history of the Armenian people, moreover, are not one and the same. Until the Communist takeover the two centers of Armenian cultural life were Istanbul and Tiflis, not Yerevan, which was only a small single-factory town of no importance.
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Even more to the point: Armenians played a much more prominent role in the Byzantine Empire than in Armenia, and more often than not they adopted an anti-Armenian foreign policy; that is to say, they were more loyal to the Greek Empire than to the Armenian nation. This pattern of conduct followed within the Ottoman Empire and more recently within the USSR.
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