Thursday, August 17, 2006
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Armenians may be perennial losers, Saroyan says somewhere, but they are inextinguishable. After which he challenges the world to exterminate us, clearly implying that it can’t be done.
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What is it that makes of us perennial losers and why would anyone want to exterminate us? If Saroyan had the answers to these questions he kept them to himself, probably because he didn’t want to risk his popularity among his fellow Armenians, who idolized him together with Mikoyan and Gulbenkian.
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Since Saroyan could not read Armenian, he was probably unaware of the fact that our status as perennial losers has been a central theme of our literature from Khorenatsi and Yeghishe in the 5th Century to Zarian, Shahnour, and Massikian in the 20th.
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Had Saroyan known that only 7% of Gulbenkian’s money is earmarked for Armenians and Mikoyan played a key role in the Stalinist purges in Armenia during which our ablest men were systematically and ruthlessly exterminated, he could have said to the world, “No need to go out of your way to exterminate Armenians. Left to their own devices they will be glad to do it themselves.”
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Friday, August 18, 2006
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ZEN MOMENTS
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D.T. Suzuki, the author of a best-selling INTRODUCTION TO ZEN BUDDHISM, was having lunch in a restaurant when he was approached by another patron who interrupted his own lunch to ask for an explanation in layman’s terms of what exactly was Zen. After a brief moment of reflection, Suzuki replied, “Eat.”
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To the question by a journalist as to why he had devoted decades of his life writing his STUDY OF HISTORY in twelve thick volumes, Toynbee replied, “Curiosity.”
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When a factory owner once said to Karl Marx, “If I understand your economic theories correctly, all you want is our money.” Marx replied, “That’s right.”
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In addition to being one of the greatest composers of all time, J.S. Bach was also a celebrated virtuoso organist. Once when asked by an admirer what it takes to master such a demanding instrument, Bach replied, “You just press the keys.”
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These laconic replies leave a great deal unsaid (reminiscent of “Shut up! he explained”) but to the perceptive mind they speak volumes. Consider Suzuki’s “Eat,” as a case in point. In reality we never just eat. We also think, reminisce, plan, worry, imagine… Zen consists in doing what you are doing at any given moment and nothing else. This may sound easy but it is not. It is, as a matter of fact, as difficult as understanding, let alone, loving the enemy. And understanding the enemy is difficult because by understanding him we may begin to perceive the evil within us.
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Saturday, August 19, 2006
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OF TRIBES, NATIONS, AND EMPIRES
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Once upon a time there were 42 (or is it 56) tribes in the Caucasus. If most of them have not survived it’s because, unlike us, they didn’t have what it takes, or so I was told as a child. Which meant that we were, if not the master race of the Caucasus, then something in that neighborhood. Now that I am no longer a child I know that these 42 or 56 tribes did not perish. They survive in us.
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Tribes, nations, and empires share this in common: they need constant foreign transfusions to survive because if left on their own they would end by moronizing themselves.
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Armenians come in all sizes and shapes. In the ghetto where I was born and raised there were Armenians who looked like Mongols, Tartars, Negroes, Germans, and so on, but they all spoke Armenian and identified themselves as Armenian because in a tribal or ethnic environment most people tend to identify themselves with the dominant minority, the way we did in the Byzantine Empire, and after that in the Ottoman and Soviet Empires, and the way we do today in America.
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In the Byzantine Empire, for example, some of the most powerful imperial dynasties and their military leaders were Armenian or part Armenian, but their foreign policy was consistently anti-Armenian.
Smart Armenians know that the only way to get ahead in the kind of world we live in is to serve the interests of those in power even if they happen to be our mortal enemies. Grub first, then ethics.
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One of our elder statesmen once told me that some of the key players in our organizations are not Armenians but Turks. I didn’t believe him. All I can say today is that after six centuries of cohabitation it’s not easy to tell a Turk from an Armenian.
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Race, color, creed – these are poorly defined terms that according to scientists and historians are nothing but figments of our imagination.
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What could be more Russian than Russian literature? And yet, if you take a closer look, you may discover that some of the greatest and most influential Russian writers were not Russians. Pushkin was a Negro, Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn Ukrainians, Pasternak and Brodsky (two Nobel Prize winners) Jews. Something similar could be said of all literatures. Most French writers are not French but Jews (Montaigne, Barthes), Italian (Zola), Irish (Beckett), Rumanian (Ionesco), Armenian (Adamov).
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How many Armenian writers are Armenian? I don’t know and I don’t care to know because what I admire in a writer is not his race, color, or creed, but his work, his ideas, his worldview, his style, his humanity, none of which recognizes any man-made boundaries.
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