PRESS OFFICE
Department of Communications
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern)
630 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Contact: Jake Goshert, Media Relations Specialist
Tel: (212) 686-0710 Ext. 160; Fax: (212) 779-3558
E-mail: [email protected]
Website:
May 17, 2007
___________________
ZOHRAB CENTER ORGANIZES EVENING WITH AUTHOR OF ACCLAIMED GENOCIDE NOVEL AND
MOVIE
By Jake Goshert
Professor Antonia Arslan was born and raised in Italy. Her grandmother was
an Italian countess from Venice. A professor and literary critic, she’s a
renowned expert on Italian literature.
But she’s never felt truly at home in Italy, for her soul remains tied to
her ancestral Armenian home of Kharpert.
"The Armenian part of me was living, although very quietly and very deeply,"
she said during a discussion of her novel, "Skylark Farm," which was
recently translated into English. "In my childhood, I had a long history of
receiving oral history from my relatives from all around the world who came
to visit. They came into our home and in the evening they started to tell
stories of survival. All these stories were deep in my conscience, but not
loud, not at the surface."
She spoke at the Diocesan Center in New York City to about 70 people
gathered for a discussion organized by the Zohrab Information Center and the
Diocese, along with the support from the National Association for Armenian
Studies and Research. Rachel Goshgarian, director of the Zohrab Center,
introduced the speaker and her novel. Arslan was professor of Italian
literature at the University of Padova in Italy. "Skylark Farm," her first
novel, tells the story of her great-uncle, Sempad, and his wife, Shushanig,
who were killed and deported during the Genocide.
STORY OF SURVIVAL
Arslan’s grandfather, Yerwant, was 13 when he left Turkey to study at the
renowned Armenian, private high school, Moorat Rapaelian in Venice, Italy.
Having made his fortune in the Veneto, he planned to visit his friends and
family in June 1915, but before he left the killing had begun. Italy entered
World War I on May 14, 1915, closing its borders and keeping Yerwant in
Italy.
The first half of the book tells the story of the killing; the second part
is the story of those deported into the desert.
"The second part is a story of women, because the men are slaughtered. The
men are no longer there. The men are absent and women have to do everything
themselves," Arslan said.
First published in Italy in 2004, the book has gone through 20 editions.
Various versions (paper back, hard cover, and a new version related to a
recently released movie) are simultaneously on Italy’s best-seller list in
the third, fifth, and ninth place. She has won sixteen major awards and the
book has been translated into 12 languages, including Japanese and Greek.
TOOL OF EDUCATION
Perhaps the most significant aspect of the book’s astounding success in
Italy is that while the book has sold 100,000 copies in Italy, the nation
has an Armenian population of around 2,000. The book is truly serving as a
way to educate non-Armenians about the tragedy so well known in all Armenian
households.
"This book is not for a few people," Arslan said. "It is for all Italian
people, all people. They have to know what happened and why we have to speak
about the Armenian tragedy in the same way we speak of the Jewish tragedy."
A long-time friend of Arslan, Siobhan Nash-Marshall, a philosophy professor
at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, joined in the discussion of
"Skylark Farm" and stressed the importance of its appeal to a wide audience.
"The miracle is that it is not Armenians buying it only. It is the odars
buying it, making it their story too," she said.
The book was been so well received in Italy, Nash-Marshall said, because
Arslan had worked in 2001 to pressure the Italian government to officially
recognize the Genocide. So the population generally knew the facts about the
Genocide, but they didn’t have a personal connection to the horror.
"Everyone knew the Genocide took place, but it was impossible for them to
empathies with the Armenians and feel what they felt," she said. "What
Antonia has done is made it possible for someone like me, a non-Armenian, to
say tzaved danem (I take your pain). It is a miracle for someone to present
a story in such a way to make us not see the horror from the outside, but to
see from the inside."
The book, Nash-Marshall said, is a reminder of who the Armenian people are
and how they are an integral part of Western culture.
"We’ve come to think of the Armenians as a culture that is not part of
Western culture. We seem to think since the Armenians were stripped of their
land, we think of them as a fable-like people who exist in story books and
are not part of Western history," she said. "One of the things Antonia has
done is place Armenians back in Western culture."
"The whole enterprise of having non-Armenians read and recognize the story
of the Armenians as thought it was their own, is what makes this book so
special," she added. "I am hoping this will be one of the books that does
well in the U.S., because the moment you have people identify with the
Armenains, the battle is won. Then they can no longer deny history."
JOURNEY TO HER HERITAGE
Long-recognized as an expert in Italian literature, Arslan stumbled into her
sleeping Armenian nature when she began to study the work of Taniel
Varoujan, an Armenian poet killed in the Genocide. His work was so powerful
that it moved her to reawaken her Armenian nature.
She translated his poems into Italian and the book quickly sold out four
editions. "This was an Armenian poet no one knew, they sold just on the
strength of his poetry," she said.
She then began examining the Armenian Genocide, publishing a book five years
ago, "Italian Voices of Armenian Survivors." The book presented the personal
recollections of individuals who lived through the horrors of 1915-21. The
book, Arslan noted, was modeled after the English-language book "Survivors,"
written by Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller. Arslan noted that the
last survivor she had interviewed for the publication had, in fact, died
this past January at the age of 101. Following the book of other’s stories,
Nash-Marshall encouraged her to write the stories she heard from her family.
Nash-Marshal said to her: "You have to write about what you heard in your
childhood. You have inside you all these stories, but you have to put them
together in an interesting way," she remembered. "Once I started with the
first page, after that it was like a dream. Everyday I had something to put
down something to say. All the stories from my grandfather came out like a
weavers carpet, it flowed, step after step, page after page."
Now, after years of study and contemplation on her identity, she sees how
her Armenian heritage shades her writing.
"My way or writing is, of course, Italian," she said. "But the content, the
shapes of things, the colors, how they appear to me, is something different
than Italian."
CINEMA AND CRITICS
Arslan’s successful book was quickly made into a movie by the Taviani
brothers, best known for their work "Padre Padrone" for which they won the
prestigious Cannes Film Festival Award in 1987.The film, "Skylark Farm,"
premiered this year at the Berlin Film Festival, and stars Paz Vega and
Arsinee Khanjian. (An American release has yet to be set.)
Showing the film and publishing the book in Germany, with its large Turkish
community, created interesting ripples. The German people, generally, saw it
as a way to connect to a murdered people and reflect on the horrors of
genocide. But with death threats from Turkish activists, Arslan had to
cancel at 10-city tour planned for this June. "I was just a little scared,"
she quietly said.
Members of the Turkish representatives were also concerned with the Tavini
brothers receiving 600,000 Euro from EuroImages, an European Union cultural
body that includes Turkey, to help finance production of the film. Even
though the book had not been released in Turkey (there are plans for it to
be published this fall by well-known published Ragip Zarakolu), Turkish
officials were enraged their funds would go to fund such a film.
But while some demonized her as a "dirty Armenian" (or "dirty traitor" for
those Turkish reporters who thought Arslan was a regular Turkish last name
and not an un-Armenized version of Arslanian), Arslan refuses to vilify the
Turkish people. In fact, there is a Turkish character in "Skylark Farm" who
plays a very interesting role in her novel. Nazim, the Turkish beggar of the
Armenian quarter, begins as an informant on the Armenian people. His
character goes through a crucial transformation and Nazim ends up saving
several of the children of Sempad’s family.
"Many Turks tried to help, above all help the young people, that is a
truth," she said. "But that is not to say this character is a good person,
but he is a human being. And as a human being he can change, repent, become
a better person."
It is that openness to the human condition that makes "Skylark Farm" such a
powerful novel for non-Armenians to read, Nash-Marshall said.
"There is not a single word of hate in the book. It is very easy for people
to be so angry that it seeps out of everyplace. But that’s not Antonia’s
case. This is a story of survival," she said.
— 5/17/07
E-mail photos available on request. Photos also viewable in the News and
Events section of the Eastern Diocese’s website,
PHOTO CAPTION (1): Rachel Goshgarian, director of the Eastern Diocese’s
Zohrab Center, far right, introduces Antonia Arslan, author of "Skylark
Farm," and her friend Siobhan Nash-Marshall during an evening of discussion
at the Diocesan Center on May 15, 2007.
PHOTO CAPTION (2): Antonia Arslan, author of "Skylark Farm," a newly
translated book about the Armenian Genocide, and Siobhan Nash-Marshall, a
philosophy professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, speak
about the book and Arslan’s motivation in writing it to a group of 50 people
during a discussion organized by the Zohrab Information Center in New York
City.
PHOTO CAPTION (3): Armenian-Italian author, Antonia Arslan, whose book on
the Armenian Genocide, "Skylark Farm," has been an international success,
speaks during a session organized by the Zohrab Information Center and the
Eastern Diocese, along with the support from the National Association for
Armenian Studies and Research.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
