Thursday, October 26, 2006
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DIARY
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Paul Johnson on Brahms’s Intermezzo in B flat minor: “I have a beautiful recording of it by the Turkish pianist Idil Biret, a pupil of Cortot…”
My first thought: Biret must be either Armenian or half-Armenian. Once a chauvinist, always a chauvinist.
Even when one’s mind adopts an anti-chauvinist stance, one’s gut remains chauvinist.
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It never pays to examine too closely a man’s ancestry. If he identifies himself as a Patagonian, a Hottentot, or a Mongol, we should take his word for it. Speaking for myself, you may simply identify me as a human being.
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Socrates said, “Of the gods we know nothing.” But if you read the Bible from beginning to end you will reach the exact opposite conclusion: Of God we know everything and then some!
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Memo to an Armenian writer:
If you have more than two or at most three fans, you must be doing something wrong.
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Friday, October 27, 2006
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ARMENIAN INTELLECTUALS
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During the Soviet era I wrote about twenty letters to writers in the Homeland asking if I could interview them. Only one of them replied suggesting I write a letter of congratulations on the 25th anniversary of the magazine he was then editing. I had never seen or heard about his magazine but I wrote a brief cliché-ridden paragraph, which he promptly published, and that was the only thing by me that ever saw the light in Soviet Armenia.
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Last summer I was interviewed by e-mail by an Armenian editor in Moscow. When he disagreed with my answers, he sent follow-up question with whose answers he also disagreed. This routine was repeated a few more times. When the interview finally appeared, it bore the following Pinteresque title: “Interview with an Armenian Dissident: Incomprehensible Answers to Misunderstood Questions.”
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Long before I met Vahé Oshagan I was told he was, like his illustrious father, partial to blunt talk, especially when dealing with lesser writers in no position to retaliate. So when I found myself seated beside him at a banquet in an Armenian community center, I told him in no uncertain terms what I thought of his poetry, which was not one hell of a lot; to which he said: “You and I have nothing further to say to each other.” When I got up to leave, I heard him say: “Not so fast, my friend!”
Did he get even? I no longer remember. But he did say I was wasting my time translating a phony like Zarian, and if I wanted to make myself useful I should get busy translating such worthy and authentic writers as his father.
Shortly thereafter mutual friends informed me that Vahé Oshagan’s opinion of me was so low that it could not be quoted or even paraphrased in polite society. Strange as this may seem to some readers, this development flattered my vanity instead of offending my ego.
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Saturday, October 28, 2006
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THEORY AND PRACTICE
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Theory: Since you and I are Armenian, we must be brothers.
Practice: Since you and I belong to different tribes, we cannot even begin to communicate with each other.
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ENIGMA
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Being wrong I understand. What I don’t understand, and I doubt if I ever will, is being catastrophically wrong with total unawareness, like the good citizens of Athens who condemned Socrates to death with the unshakable conviction that they were discharging their patriotic duty.
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TRANSLATION
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Perhaps a modern translation of the commandment “Love your enemy” is “Humanize yourself.”
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HOW TO READ
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When I don’t understand a sentence or a paragraph I seldom reread it because (a) I lose interest in a writer or translator who makes no effort to make himself accessible to the general reader, and (b) the certainty that someday I will read the same idea in another context more clearly expressed.
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If an idea is good, it will be remembered, rephrased, and repeated an infinite number of times.
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TO KNOW IS TO REMEMBER
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All so-called new or original ideas are as old as mankind. The meaning of the word “original” is going back to the origins. We sometimes forget that when we speak of the history of ideas, what we mean is written ideas. For thousands of years men could not write. That does not mean they did not think.
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