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Sunday, January 21, 2007
*******************************************
BOOK REVIEW
*********************************
SHAHAN SHAHNOUR: CORRESPONDENCE, volume 3 – LETTERS TO VAHAN TEKEYAN, ZAHRAD, VRATSIAN, SARAFIAN, ALAJAJIAN, SAROUKHAN & OTHERS. Edited, Annotated and with an Introduction by Krikor Keusseyan. Illustrated. (215 pages, 2007). Privately printed (50 Watertown St., #302, Watertown, MA, 02472).
************************************************** ***********************************
Shahnour was an honest man and an objective observer of our contemporary scene; and that was his undoing. Honesty has never been good policy in our environment. If the ubiquitous secret agents of an alien tyrant don’t get you, the hirelings of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors will. The occasional grudging support he received from benefactors (which more often than not he rejected) was more akin to charity that probably did more harm than good to his self-esteem and precarious health.
In his introduction, Krikor Keusseyan writes that three of Shahnour’s favorite writers were Turgenev, Flaubert, and Hardy, and that like them he was austere in his private life but audacious in his work. Which in our context means, among other things, that he consistently refused to recycle partisan propaganda and chauvinist clichés about the eternal snows of Mount Ararat. As a result he was treated as an enemy of the people and reduced to the status of abominable no man. Even after he gave up writing in Armenian, assumed a different name (Armen Lubin) and produced several volumes of prose and verse in French, a collected edition of which was issued recently by Gallimard, his critics would unearth things that he wrote thirty years ago and continue their attacks. In one of his letters, Shahnour quotes with obvious approval Mahari’s observation, “The curses of a good man are preferable to the flatteries of an idiot.”
Speaking of our writers under the Red Sultan in Istanbul, he comments: “They had neither universities nor scholarships, and yet they produced many more valuable works than our academics today.”
Some of his opinions on contemporaries are worth quoting:
On Nartuni: “He is neither good nor bad. He is elsewhere.” (This could be said of so many of our Turcocentric academics today.)
On Vorpuni: “He is not devoid of talent. What he lacks, it seems to me, is individuality. He tends to write under the influence of a book (invariably by a foreign writer) that he has just read and enjoyed.”
On Minas Tololyan: “In his CENTURY OF LITERATURE he discusses 56 writers none of whom he tears to shreds as thoroughly as he does me. He seems to be unaware of the view that there is a kind of hostile criticism that might as well be equivalent to praise.”
The illustrations consist of photos of the author, alone and with other writers, and samples of his own brilliant caricatures executed in different styles.
There is a great deal more in this excellent volume that is worth rereading and translating; and I promise to do so in future installments.
#
Monday, January 22, 2007
******************************************
NOTES AND COMMENTS
*************************************
In a fight both sides discover the worth of the other, Shaw says somewhere. But in my view, what a fight exposes more often than not is less worth and more worthlessness.
*
The art of making dupes consists in simplifying complexities for the simple-minded.
*
To those who disagree with me I ask: How much of your disagreement is based on hearsay? Do you disagree with me because you think I am wrong or because you heard someone say I am wrong at a time when you were in no position to know and judge for yourself?
*
Most people think if they hide their defects they will project a better image. But the truth is, the more we try to hide our defects the louder our body language or style declares them. Have you noticed the way Putin and Kocharian walk? They don’t walk so much as they swagger like bullies.
*
Not all Nazis were racists. When they saw a smart Jew they promoted him. To those who objected, Goering once explained: “It’s up to me to decide who is a Jew and who isn’t.”
*
I see something fundamentally wrong in being right and dead. I don’t believe in being an excellent corpse. “A corpse is without interest,” says the Talmud.
*
Life after death? Who’s who in the messiah business? Irrelevant questions. It’s more important that we concentrate on the mess we have made of the world, because that’s the first subject on which we will be cross-examined by the messiah or whoever is in charge of eternity.
*
Man values knowledge over ignorance. In theory. In practice, the brainwashed, the dupe, the fanatic, and the man of faith are unteachable.
*
Whenever we follow our gut or instinct and ignore the voice of reason, we behave like Hrant Dink’s killer. In that sense WE ARE ALL ASSASSINS, which happens to be the title of a post-World War II French movie. It is to be noted that the word assassin begins with “ass” and ends in “sin.” But that’s pure coincidence, like so much else in life. The root word of assassin is hashish, a drug used by a gang of Middle-East fanatics before they went on the warpath. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hrant’s assassin pleads not guilty by reason of drug-induced insanity.
#
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
******************************************
If you tell me Armenians are nice people, I believe you on the assumption that you speak from experience. If someone else tells me Armenians are nasty people, I don’t see why I should call him a liar. And if you were to ask me what I think of Armenians, I would say they come in all sizes and shapes and the higher they rise in the community, the nastier they are.
*
The better the message, the more easily it will be perverted. “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” says the Good Book. So what our kings and nakharars, bosses and bishops do? They concentrate their efforts on inventing orthodoxies and ideologies with which to divide and demolish our house.
*
If a man stands on principle it may be because he has nothing else to stand on. Another way of saying he is a born loser.
*
If you begin to make a list of all those things you don’t know, you will never have time to brag about what you know.
*
If war is hell, everyone involved in it must have something of the devil in him.
*
Writing about Armenians for Armenians is a dead end. Writing about Turks, that’s different.
*
If you repeat a thousand times what they want to hear, they will love you.
If you repeat twice what they don’t want to hear, they will hate you.
#
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
**********************************************
CONVERSATION WITH A PARTISAN
***********************************************
“Are you saying we have done nothing right for the nation?” an angry partisan demands to know?
“No, I have at no time said that,” I reply. “What I have been saying is that on peripheral things you may have done some good. But on central and important issues, no.”
“Such as?”
“Such as solidarity -- developing a mechanism whereby all sides engage in dialogue and reach a consensus; such as the waste of funds for building and maintaining multiple churches, schools, community centers, and weeklies when one will do.”
“I don’t agree with the notion that one is better than two if only because where are two there will also be competition.”
“I too believe in competition, but not competition that begins and ends with us, but competition with standards set by the world at large.”
“You mean like AIM and TIME magazine?”
“That was less competition and more slavish imitation. Less AIM and more APE. No matter how hard I try I don’t see any purpose in having a dozen or more mediocre weeklies with a handful of readers each, instead of a professionally edited publication with many more readers, including odars who are interested in our culture.”
“That will never happen.”
“If it doesn’t it will be because we are incurably tribal – many chiefs and no Indians – and we are tribal because of partisans who are afraid that some day their blunders may be exposed for all to see.”
“What blunders?”
“The very same blunders we have been talking about.”
“If you mean business, why don’t you join us and get involved in changing things? Talk is cheap.”
“So is censorship. During the last few years that I have been discussing our failings, our publications have been unanimous in treating me as an abominable no man. They say I insult Armenianism. The Turks have a law against insulting Turkishness. We don’t have such a law but we behave as though we did. Insulting Turkishness or Armenianism! What utter nonsense. How do we define these terms? Why should honesty and objectivity be an insult? In what way are we better than Turks if we allow our political leadership to define Armenianism? Does Armenianism consist in clinging to ideas that have been dragging us from genocide to alienation and from alienation to assimilation or white massacre? What is the difference between shooting a critic and silencing him…which amounts to cutting out his tongue?”
#
*******************************************
BOOK REVIEW
*********************************
SHAHAN SHAHNOUR: CORRESPONDENCE, volume 3 – LETTERS TO VAHAN TEKEYAN, ZAHRAD, VRATSIAN, SARAFIAN, ALAJAJIAN, SAROUKHAN & OTHERS. Edited, Annotated and with an Introduction by Krikor Keusseyan. Illustrated. (215 pages, 2007). Privately printed (50 Watertown St., #302, Watertown, MA, 02472).
************************************************** ***********************************
Shahnour was an honest man and an objective observer of our contemporary scene; and that was his undoing. Honesty has never been good policy in our environment. If the ubiquitous secret agents of an alien tyrant don’t get you, the hirelings of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors will. The occasional grudging support he received from benefactors (which more often than not he rejected) was more akin to charity that probably did more harm than good to his self-esteem and precarious health.
In his introduction, Krikor Keusseyan writes that three of Shahnour’s favorite writers were Turgenev, Flaubert, and Hardy, and that like them he was austere in his private life but audacious in his work. Which in our context means, among other things, that he consistently refused to recycle partisan propaganda and chauvinist clichés about the eternal snows of Mount Ararat. As a result he was treated as an enemy of the people and reduced to the status of abominable no man. Even after he gave up writing in Armenian, assumed a different name (Armen Lubin) and produced several volumes of prose and verse in French, a collected edition of which was issued recently by Gallimard, his critics would unearth things that he wrote thirty years ago and continue their attacks. In one of his letters, Shahnour quotes with obvious approval Mahari’s observation, “The curses of a good man are preferable to the flatteries of an idiot.”
Speaking of our writers under the Red Sultan in Istanbul, he comments: “They had neither universities nor scholarships, and yet they produced many more valuable works than our academics today.”
Some of his opinions on contemporaries are worth quoting:
On Nartuni: “He is neither good nor bad. He is elsewhere.” (This could be said of so many of our Turcocentric academics today.)
On Vorpuni: “He is not devoid of talent. What he lacks, it seems to me, is individuality. He tends to write under the influence of a book (invariably by a foreign writer) that he has just read and enjoyed.”
On Minas Tololyan: “In his CENTURY OF LITERATURE he discusses 56 writers none of whom he tears to shreds as thoroughly as he does me. He seems to be unaware of the view that there is a kind of hostile criticism that might as well be equivalent to praise.”
The illustrations consist of photos of the author, alone and with other writers, and samples of his own brilliant caricatures executed in different styles.
There is a great deal more in this excellent volume that is worth rereading and translating; and I promise to do so in future installments.
#
Monday, January 22, 2007
******************************************
NOTES AND COMMENTS
*************************************
In a fight both sides discover the worth of the other, Shaw says somewhere. But in my view, what a fight exposes more often than not is less worth and more worthlessness.
*
The art of making dupes consists in simplifying complexities for the simple-minded.
*
To those who disagree with me I ask: How much of your disagreement is based on hearsay? Do you disagree with me because you think I am wrong or because you heard someone say I am wrong at a time when you were in no position to know and judge for yourself?
*
Most people think if they hide their defects they will project a better image. But the truth is, the more we try to hide our defects the louder our body language or style declares them. Have you noticed the way Putin and Kocharian walk? They don’t walk so much as they swagger like bullies.
*
Not all Nazis were racists. When they saw a smart Jew they promoted him. To those who objected, Goering once explained: “It’s up to me to decide who is a Jew and who isn’t.”
*
I see something fundamentally wrong in being right and dead. I don’t believe in being an excellent corpse. “A corpse is without interest,” says the Talmud.
*
Life after death? Who’s who in the messiah business? Irrelevant questions. It’s more important that we concentrate on the mess we have made of the world, because that’s the first subject on which we will be cross-examined by the messiah or whoever is in charge of eternity.
*
Man values knowledge over ignorance. In theory. In practice, the brainwashed, the dupe, the fanatic, and the man of faith are unteachable.
*
Whenever we follow our gut or instinct and ignore the voice of reason, we behave like Hrant Dink’s killer. In that sense WE ARE ALL ASSASSINS, which happens to be the title of a post-World War II French movie. It is to be noted that the word assassin begins with “ass” and ends in “sin.” But that’s pure coincidence, like so much else in life. The root word of assassin is hashish, a drug used by a gang of Middle-East fanatics before they went on the warpath. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hrant’s assassin pleads not guilty by reason of drug-induced insanity.
#
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
******************************************
If you tell me Armenians are nice people, I believe you on the assumption that you speak from experience. If someone else tells me Armenians are nasty people, I don’t see why I should call him a liar. And if you were to ask me what I think of Armenians, I would say they come in all sizes and shapes and the higher they rise in the community, the nastier they are.
*
The better the message, the more easily it will be perverted. “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” says the Good Book. So what our kings and nakharars, bosses and bishops do? They concentrate their efforts on inventing orthodoxies and ideologies with which to divide and demolish our house.
*
If a man stands on principle it may be because he has nothing else to stand on. Another way of saying he is a born loser.
*
If you begin to make a list of all those things you don’t know, you will never have time to brag about what you know.
*
If war is hell, everyone involved in it must have something of the devil in him.
*
Writing about Armenians for Armenians is a dead end. Writing about Turks, that’s different.
*
If you repeat a thousand times what they want to hear, they will love you.
If you repeat twice what they don’t want to hear, they will hate you.
#
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
**********************************************
CONVERSATION WITH A PARTISAN
***********************************************
“Are you saying we have done nothing right for the nation?” an angry partisan demands to know?
“No, I have at no time said that,” I reply. “What I have been saying is that on peripheral things you may have done some good. But on central and important issues, no.”
“Such as?”
“Such as solidarity -- developing a mechanism whereby all sides engage in dialogue and reach a consensus; such as the waste of funds for building and maintaining multiple churches, schools, community centers, and weeklies when one will do.”
“I don’t agree with the notion that one is better than two if only because where are two there will also be competition.”
“I too believe in competition, but not competition that begins and ends with us, but competition with standards set by the world at large.”
“You mean like AIM and TIME magazine?”
“That was less competition and more slavish imitation. Less AIM and more APE. No matter how hard I try I don’t see any purpose in having a dozen or more mediocre weeklies with a handful of readers each, instead of a professionally edited publication with many more readers, including odars who are interested in our culture.”
“That will never happen.”
“If it doesn’t it will be because we are incurably tribal – many chiefs and no Indians – and we are tribal because of partisans who are afraid that some day their blunders may be exposed for all to see.”
“What blunders?”
“The very same blunders we have been talking about.”
“If you mean business, why don’t you join us and get involved in changing things? Talk is cheap.”
“So is censorship. During the last few years that I have been discussing our failings, our publications have been unanimous in treating me as an abominable no man. They say I insult Armenianism. The Turks have a law against insulting Turkishness. We don’t have such a law but we behave as though we did. Insulting Turkishness or Armenianism! What utter nonsense. How do we define these terms? Why should honesty and objectivity be an insult? In what way are we better than Turks if we allow our political leadership to define Armenianism? Does Armenianism consist in clinging to ideas that have been dragging us from genocide to alienation and from alienation to assimilation or white massacre? What is the difference between shooting a critic and silencing him…which amounts to cutting out his tongue?”
#