Confessions

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, January 22, 2009

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JINGOISM

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“If I love my country I am justified in hating those of my countrymen who do not share my views.”

*

“If I speak in the name of patriotism it means my heart is in the right place, which also means no one can challenge my views, unless of course they are willing to make themselves vulnerable to charges of anti-Armenianism, pro-Ottomanism, and treason, which, as everyone knows, happens to be a crime punishable by death, and rightly so.”

*

“Since our failings are human failings shared by all of mankind, we should stop bitching about them.” It follows, exposing incompetence, intolerance, corruption, greed, and divisiveness, among other failings, is classified as bitching, which common sense tells us, is unmistakable evidence of anti-Armenianism.

*

According to an old Jewish saying, “Some people are such nobodies that when they go out of a room it feels like someone came in.” Something similar could be said of the jingoist arguments mentioned above. No matter how often they are contradicted and rejected they are voiced again and again as if they were gospel truths.

*

Armenians are a strange breed indeed: they can take centuries of subservience and brutal oppression but they can't stand straight talk. They believe in freedom but not in free speech. Figure that one out if you can.

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Friday, January 23, 2009

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DZOUR NESDINK, SHIDAK KHOSSINK

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Those who oppose free speech operate on two assumptions: (one) free or uncontrolled or unsupervised speech will inevitably lead to verbal abuse; and (two) they are themselves infallible when it comes to drawing the line that separates freedom from abuse. History tells us these two assumptions have been more open to abuse than free speech, and more crimes have been committed in the name of censorship than in the name of free speech.

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In the same way that war is diplomacy by other means, genocide is censorship by other means.

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Freedom without free speech is a fascist illusion.

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No matter how hard I try I cannot agree with a belief system or ideology that legitimizes the violation of someone's fundamental human rights.

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It is my ambition to speak of reality. Let others speechify, sermonize, and propagandize about their pet abstraction. A nation that does not have its feet firmly planted in reality is a nation that may survive (in the same way that animals in a zoo survive) but cannot live. Survival is life to the same degree that slavery is freedom.

*

Flaubert said: “Everything must be learned, from reading to dying.” And for an Armenian, engaging in dialogue with a fellow Armenian.

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I preach but I don't always practice what I preach. When the other day I read that a member of this group wanted to have his name removed because he was “too busy,” my first uncensored thought was, “Busy doing what? -- beside pulling his dick.” Immediately I decided to keep this nasty thought to myself, and if I write it down now for everyone to see it's because I want to underline the discrepancy between theory and practice. I offer it not as a justification but as an explanation.

*

To be a good Armenian is not the same as being a good human being, and I'd much rather deal with a good human being than an Armenian who considers himself la crème de la crème.

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And here is a rule without a single exception: An Armenian who considers himself la crème de la crème doesn't even qualify as la crème de la scum.

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Saturday, January 24, 2009

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DEMOCRACY

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Power does not mean imposing your will on others. Power means responsibility, accountability, and service. Politicians are not our lords and masters or highnesses and excellencies, but our servants. They do not represent God on earth but the will of the people, and the people is not an abstraction but you and me. The more power they have, the greater their burden of responsibility and accountability. I say these things because I had an Armenian education and I was not taught any of it. You might say, I enjoy sharing my discoveries. If there are those who are not aware of these things it may be because it took mankind millions of years to formulate them, and after having formulating them it took many more centuries of strife to realize them. That doesn't mean all power structures today are democratic. Far from it. As a matter of fact, undemocratic regimes today outnumber democracies, and even more to the point, the temptation of tyranny and fascism is a constant in all democracies.

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How long before we reject the Ottoman and the Soviet from within us and are born again as human beings?

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If I speak in the name of common sense and decency, am I then an enemy of the people who should be insulted and silenced? If you disagree with me it must be because you have a better explanation. If you do, why don't you let me know what it is and I will be more than happy to make it mine.

*

Remember, a good Armenian is first and foremost a good human being and he would be recognized as such not only by those who agree with him but also by those who disagree.

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[arabaliozian]

Sunday, January 25, 2009

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SOME NOTES ON THE ARMENIAN PSYCHE

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Let me begin with a warning to the reader: I don't understand everything, neither do I claim to have truth on my side. I write as I do because those who understand everything or know the truth are either silent or have failed to convince all of us. Therefore, consider what follows only as fragments from a work in progress.

*

Why are Armenians mean to one another? What is at the root of our dogmatism, mutual intolerance, and divisiveness which have made of us perennial losers and underdogs? Puzant Granian once quoted to me a teacher of his who used to say, “There is a Turk in all of us.” This may suggest Armenians are not harmless Saroyanesque clowns whose sole aim in life is to entertain and amuse odar audiences, but more like carnivores who “survive by cannibalizing one another” (Zarian).

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We are divided because we lack a common pool of values, customs, traditions, and language. We have as many as 43 dialects, not all of them mutually comprehensible. We might as well be foreigners and barbarians (the Greek word for foreigners) to one another.

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Solidarity is a function of the leadership not of the people. Where leaders disagree, people quarrel.

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Our conquerors divided and ruled us for so many centuries that divisiveness has entered our DNA and become the central component of our identity.

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For millennia we took it from barbarians because we had no choice in the matter. We now have a choice and not only we refuse to take it but we also feel liberated enough to verbally slaughter anyone who dares to disagree with us.

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In his LAMENTATION, Naregatsi (our Dante/Shakespeare) explains that like all men we too are walking encyclopedias of failings (or sins). The only way to come to terms with this fact is by becoming aware of it in the hope that the reality principle (or God) will reward us with understanding, forgiveness, acceptance, and serenity. It follows, when a fellow Armenian arouses the worst in us, we should be grateful to him for making us aware of the Turk within, for, according to Freud, the aim of civilization is to make the unconscious conscious.

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God bless you and God bless the divided tribes of Armenia.

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Monday, January 26, 2009

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ON THE FALLACY OF DOGMAS

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In the USSR the economy was controlled; in the U.S. it was free. Both went bust. This may suggest a number of things, among them:

(one) all systems are open to abuse and corruption, and no system is foolproof;

(two) sooner or later all dogmas are exposed as fallacies by the reality principle;

(three) more often than not crises are created by experts or self-assessed superior intellects;

(four) the stronger an opinion, the weaker its foundation in truth;

(five) to know all there is to know about a specific academic discipline does not mean to know more about life;

(six) next time you run into someone who knows better, consider the possibility that his superior knowledge may be inferior to your ignorance;

(seven) a political party will have a better chance to survive if its party line is a zigzag;

(eight) when it comes to their own expertise, all experts are optimists.

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009

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REPLIES

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“I disagree with you because I have more than one bishop, historian, and professor on my side.”

I could always claim to have God on my side (“A house divided against itself cannot stand”) but I refuse to take the name of the Lord in vain.

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“Has it ever occurred to you that a divided house may have a better chance to survive because if one half perishes the other may continue to live and prosper?”

Maybe so but let's see if this theory applies to us. Once upon a time we had vibrant communities in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, how many of them survive today? And let's consider the Armenian-American diaspora: judging by its rate of intermarriage (80% I believe) and assimilation, the consensus is it may not make it to the next century.

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“The Diaspora may perish, but the Homeland will live!”

If in the Diaspora we have a high rate of assimilation, in the Homeland they have a higher rate of exodus. I have heard it said that the only people who don't want to emigrate are the cops.

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“We have the leadership we deserve.”

No one deserved the likes of Sultan Abdulhamid II, Talaat, and Stalin, not even our leaders.

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“I believe in the immortality of the nation because Armenians are men of faith.”

Faith is not enough. We must also do what must be done. Which means mutual tolerance, solidarity, dialogue, compromise, consensus, and above all respect for human rights, including that of free speech. If our bishops, historians, professors, and pundits don't believe in free speech, even He, whose name I refuse to to take in vain, and all His angels and archangels cannot save us.

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009

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VICTIMS

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No one, not even Armenians, are interested in Armenians as human beings, only as victims – victims of massacres, earthquakes, wars, and starvation. Whenever Armenians are mentioned in the odar press, the chances are it will be in connection with Turkish criminal conduct during World War I.

Armenians as victims. Speaking for myself as a human being rather than as an Armenian, I say enough of this miserabilism! Enough of our status as perennial victims. What could be more repellent than pity?

*

An old friend whom I have not seen or exchanged a single word in fifty years comes to see me. He comes armed with a fat dossier outlining his economic plan. He wants to improve conditions of life in the Homeland. Someone must have told him as a writer I may be in a position to introduce him to benefactors. He goes away a thoroughly disappointed man.

*

Once when I expressed a pedestrian wish to a woman (Armenian), she was outraged. “You are a writer!” she said. Did she want a sonnet? I have never written a sonnet in my life. On a good day and with a little bit of luck and daring, I may manage a third-rate haiku, but that's as far I am prepared to go. Even a fourth-rate sonnet I consider altogether beyond my ambitions and capabilities.

*

A writer? An Armenian writer? What could be more contemptible! I am only a human being who does some scribbling on the side. If you find what I say irrelevant I suggest you read our writers, who, you may be interested to know, were also victims of both foreign and domestic tyrants.

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[arabaliozian]

Thursday, January 29, 2009

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THE BLAME-GAME

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What makes the blame-game irresistible to charlatans like Governor Blogojevich of Illinois is that it allows them to portray themselves as morally superior even when irresponsible, corrupt, greedy, and guilty as hell. One important difference between Blogojevich and our own wheeler-dealers is that no one died as a result of the Governor's misconduct. Even more important: Americans have a justice system and a legal maneuver known as impeachment. Do we even have a word for it? And if we do, when was the last time anyone heard it? Which may explain why very soon Illinois will be rid of Blogojevich but we will continue to be at the mercy not of one Blogojevich but a whole gang of them.

*

When our speechifiers and sermonizers speak of unity, they remind me of wolves who would like to see sheep gathered in a single enclosure as opposed to being scattered all over the forest.

*

The comments of our Turcocentric ghazetajis sometimes read like memoranda to a non-existent foreign office staffed by invisible bureaucrats anxiously waiting for their input and advice.

*

At one time or another I have been accused of all those things that I have exposed and ridiculed, including fascism, racism, Antisemitism, anti-intellectualism, and intolerance. I don’t mind pleading guilty to the charge of intolerance: I am indeed intolerant of stupidity and ignorance parading as knowledge and wisdom. I am also intolerant of greed, double-talk, tribalism, chauvinism, yes-men, Ottomanism, Stalinism, cowardice, treason, and arrogance. If by being tolerant of these things I will be a better Armenian, I say, No thanks! I’d much rather be an honest human being.

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Friday, January 30, 2009

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THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

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With unemployment soaring everywhere, many Armenians may decide to return to the Homeland, get organized, and throw the rascals out. Wishful thinking on my part? I am not sure. Such a movement has already started in France and Russia, and I expect any day now America may follow.

*

I am so used to being insulted by readers that I feel ill at ease when one of them is kind to me. And when I insult a reader I expect him to say it comes with the territory and to forget about it, as opposed to holding a grudge for ninety-nine years. But I guess that too comes with the territory – that is, unforgiving Armenians with the memory of elephants and the venom of seven Turkish vipers.

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Anti-intellectualism has been a constant in our history because it allows hoodlums the luxury of looking down on their betters and assuming a morally superior stance on the grounds that God and Country are on their side.

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They rise in defense of God and Country. As for me, I rise only in defense of that most uncommon of all human faculties: common sense.

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Everything I write is an answer to a specific question, objection, or criticism. And yet, some of my readers complain that I ignore them. I suspect what these readers want is not answers but attention, flattery, propaganda, and lies. To them I say: It’s been a pleasure disappointing you.

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Saturday, January 31, 2009

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BIG LIES

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Dupes and fools are the backbone of a nation because they are willing to kill and die in the name of a Big Lie.

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Between a Turkish friend and an Armenian enemy I would choose a Turkish friend. Who in his right mind wouldn't? Many Armenians alive today owe their life to Turkish friends, and many victims of the Genocide, including some of our most beloved writers and poets, owe their death to Armenian traitors.

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We know the family trees of royal dynasties but not of the masses, to which most of us belong. And the leaders, elites, and top dogs of all nations are, like Obama, mutts.

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Turks call themselves Turks because they have been brainwashed to believe they are Turks by men who were not themselves Turks. We are all products of mixed marriages.

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The Byzantine Empire was Greek but some of its greatest emperors and generals were of Armenian descent. The so-called Ottoman Empire that succeeded it was as much Greco-Armenian as Turkish. Most of our own kings and generals were imported talent.

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At the turn of the last century, the kings and queens of Europe were related to Queen Victoria and to one another; that did not prevent them from fighting a world war that was meant to end all wars (another Big Lie) but resulted in the bloodiest war in the history of mankind.

*

Germany's most dangerous enemies were neither the Russians nor the French but the Nazis (from “national socialism”), in the same way that Russia's greatest enemies were the Bolsheviks, whose supreme leader was a Georgian, whose belief system was based on the theories of a German Jew.

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World history is full of Big Lies like that one and the Biggest of them all is that political leaders are selfless servants of the people and their number one priority is not number one but the welfare of their subjects.

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[arabaliozian]

Sunday, February 1, 2009

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IT TAKES ALL KINDS

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My friends may forget me, but my enemies never will. That is why I never lose an opportunity of making one. Most of my enemies however are not enemies because I offended them in any way, but because I failed to flatter their colossal egos, which, in their eyes, might as well be a crime against humanity comparable to a massacre of civilians.

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Ignorance is not a crime, neither is credulity. But some of the worst crimes against humanity were committed by fools and dupes – and, of course, leaders who knew how to organize and use them.

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A dupe may also be a man of cunning who is infatuated with his own brain power, judgment, and perception of reality.

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Even after Stalin's crimes were exposed, there were many Armenian-American academics, poets, writers, and merchants who were pro-Soviet (I called them chic Bolsheviks). I know this because I would receive angry letters and telephone calls whenever I published a commentary critical of the regime.

*

Even dupes with a negative IQ are smart enough to believe only in things that are clearly to their advantage. The reason there were so many chic Bolsheviks in America is that the regime treated them as celebrities whenever they visited the Homeland. I will never forget the archbishop who once said to me: “If you ever decide to establish yourself in the Homeland, they will take good care of you.”

Moral: Be aware of charlatans offering unsolicited advice that may sound flattering to your vanity.

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Monday, February 2, 2009

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THE ABYSS

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If I write about our dark side it's because no one else does. If our Turcocentric ghazetajis and their role models, our nationalist historians, are to be believed, Turks are our only dark side. But when writers like Raffi, Baronian, Odian, and Zohrab wrote, they stressed our failings, not those of other nations. And then there is Naregatsi, a saint: our greatest and least read writer whose sole subject was the abyss within. Next time you feel like bragging about your Armenian identity, read Naregatsi. Whenever I run into an Armenian who brags about our celebrities, multi-millionaires, our Mikoyans and Mamoulians, our Arlens and Saroyans, and above all about our survival as a nation, I begin to see more merit in a dignified death. To those who brag about Armenia being the first nation to convert to Christianity, may I ask how successful have they been in loving not only their enemies but also their fellow Armenians?

*

I had the following exchange with one of our editors last week:

“We need poetry and fiction,” said he.

“What about essays?” I asked.

“You can do your preaching elsewhere,” was his reply.

My guess is this editor would have rejected Naregatsi on the grounds that his writings did not qualify as vodanavors and massals.

*

Speaking of massals and grandmother stories: Once when I asked another one of our editors why he published so many grandmother stories, he explained: “Because grandmothers have played an important role in our lives.”

Have they? That was news to me. Has any one of our nationalist historians included a chapter on grandmothers in his texts?

Speaking of my own grandmothers: I never knew one of them because she died long before I was born. The other one lived in another town and I saw her once or twice a year. She never told me a single story.

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Tuesday, February 3, 2009

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POLITICIANS AND WRITERS

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The difference between politicians and writers is that politicians understand people and writers want to be understood. Politicians understand people in the sense that they know all about their need for flattery and big lies, such as “chosen people,” “superior race,” “first nation this/first nation that.” One could even say that politicians are in the business of inventing and exploiting big lies, and writers in exposing them. This may explain why to this day Hitler, an unspeakably mediocre intellect, has his admirers, and Thomas Mann, a writer of genius, his detractors.

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The chosen people: If one is to adopt history, facts, and reality as an index, it would be more accurate to speak of the unchosen people.

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To speak of superiority even as one behaves as the most depraved of criminals: what could be more asinine, perverse and inferior?

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Perhaps one reason big lies are popular is that they combat repellent truth that are even bigger.

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What could be more absurd than dupes at the mercy of control freaks speaking of freedom?

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It is not safe being a law-abiding citizen among criminals, or to speak one's mind among the mindless.

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Wednesday, February 4, 2009

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WITH OLD AGE

COMES OBJECTIVITY

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With old age comes objectivity, which means the more aware I become of our failings, beginning with my own, the more clearly I see the strategies we employ to cover them up.

We survived because we were divided.

It is all the fault of the bloodthirsty barbarians that surround us.

There is nothing wrong with us.

It's all the fault of the rotten world in which we are condemned to live.

Had we lived in a civilized world, we would have been a role model to all nations.

As for our critics, beginning with Naregatsi: all they do is project their rotten problems on the rest of us because misery like company.

Hence our fondness for massals and vodanavors like “Yes im anoush Hayastani” and the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat.

Between “once there was and was not” we have a marked preference for “was not,” at the end of which three golden apples will fall and we will live happily ever after.

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[arabaliozian]

Thursday, February 5, 2009

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NOTES AND COMMENTS

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You cannot solve a problem whose existence you refuse to acknowledge.

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Armenians are not litigious by nature – they learn it from their leaders.

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Fascists don't believe in dialogue and compromise, only in consensus and unanimity. Even when there are ninety-nine voices saying yes, and only one saying no, they feel the need to silence the sole dissenting voice.

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To know a great deal about Turks and next to nothing about Armenians, except their status as victims: that, it seems, is the mission of our Turcocentric ghazetajis.

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The reason why I am consistently negative is that my life and work may be divided into three distinct periods:

(one) past -- naïve and sentimental;

(two) present -- old and cynical;

(three) future – unprintable and unmentionable.

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“After all, we are Armenians!” – meaning , anything we say or do must be accepted and forgiven, including that which would be normally unacceptable and unforgivable. Some Armenians use Armenianism the way cold-blooded killers use the plea of insanity.

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There are as many versions of the past as there are ideologies, religions, nations, tribes, and schools of thought, all of whom assert to have a monopoly on truth. To say therefore that our own version of the past is true but the French, Russian, Patagonian, or, for that matter, Turkish versions of their own past is false, is to bury our heads in the sand.

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Friday, February 6, 2009

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ON EASTERN MYSTICISM

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What can we learn from schools of Eastern mysticism? Or rather, what has the East learned from its own mystics? To those who say the ideas of Eastern mystics have universal validity even if they have been corrupted by their religious and political leadership, I say, the same could be said of Christianity and its mystics.

Gandhi, a Hindu, learned a great deal from the Bhagavat Gita and other Hindu scriptures. But he also learned from Tolstoy (a Russian), Ruskin (an Englishman), and Thoreau (an American).

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If history teaches us anything it is that no matter how noble an idea or ideology, sooner or later it will be corrupted and perverted by an authoritarian elite whose greatest concern will not be the welfare of the masses but its own powers and privileges.

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What can we learn from mystics of both East and West? Only this: the mystical experience is not transferable and all efforts to express it in words are destined to fail. For more on this subject see Aldous Huxley's THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY, and Arthur Koestler's THE LOTUS AND THE ROBOT. Also of interest, the writings of Krishnamurti, an Indian mystic, who said, “If you follow someone else, you are on the wrong path,” or words to that effect. This is true of individuals as well as nations. Our greatest exponent of this particular idea is Gostan Zarian. See his TRAVELLER AND HIS ROAD and BANCOOP AND THE BONES OF THE MAMMOTH, both available in English.

*

Arthur Koestler on Zen Buddhism: “Inarticulateness is not a monopoly of Zen; but it is the only school which made a philosophy out of it, whose exponents burst into verbal diarrhea to prove constipation.”

Elsewhere: “Zen always held a fascination for a category of people in whom brutishness combines with pseudomysticism, from Samurai to Kamikaze to Beatnik.”

Koestler is much better on Indian mysticism and its countless aberrations, including Gandhi's.

*

Finally, here are two of my favorite Buddhist sayings: “Look not for refuge to anyone beside yourself”; and “Foolish friends are worse than wise enemies.”

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Saturday, February 7, 2009

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DIARY

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It is written “You can't cook pilaf with words.” It is also written “Soft words can break bones.”

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Once upon a time a man went all over the world in search of buried treasure only to discover on his return home that it was buried in his own backyard.

Moral: It's a waste of time searching wisdom in what you don't know.

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To be the slave of former slaves is not freedom.

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In a recent edition of the PETIT LAROUSSE ILLUSTRÉ (the most widely used French-language reference work) there is an entry on Talaat Pasha wherein we read about what an Armenian did to him as opposed to what he did to the Armenians. As a matter of fact, there is only one Armenian mentioned and that is in the final line, which reads: “He was assassinated by an Armenian.” The innocent reader is left with the impression that some bloodthirsty crazed Armenian victimized an innocent Turkish statesman.

*

In all fairness to LAROUSSE: in its entry on ARMENIA we read: “1915: The Young Turks committed genocide (1,500,000 victims).”

…

DIKRAN THE GREAT is identified as a Parthian. Armenian emperors of Byzantium are not identified as Armenian; neither are such Armenian writers as Adamov and Troyat.

…

Pierre Gaxotte: “There is no such thing as History, there are only historians.”

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[arabaliozian]

Thursday, February 12, 2009

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HORROR SH0W

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In his impressions of Siberia, an American traveler writes that whenever he wanted to say “good” in Russian, he would say, “horror show” (=horosho). Reminds me of Rosalind Russell in A MAJORITY OF ONE saying “You're welcome” in Japanese sounds like “Don't touch my mustache” (=Do-itashimasta”).

*

From a televised interview with deputy prime minister of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, a puppet of Putin:

“What do you like doing best?”

“Fighting. I'm a soldier.”

“And when there's no one left to fight?”

“I have bees, bulls, fighting dogs.”

“What else to you like?”

“Partying. I love women.”

“And your wife doesn't mind?”

“I do it secretly.”

From THE ANGEL OF GROZNY by Asne Seierstad (New York, 2008, page 100).

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A moderate pacifist doesn't have a chance against a warlike fanatic.

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When an Armenian realizes he cannot settle his score with Turks, he moves on to an easier target – his fellow Armenians, and the more defenseless the better.

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We learn from failure. Success has the opposite effect.

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It is good to be smart but not to appear to be smart – especially if one is an idiot.

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As a child I was brought up to believe all Turks go to hell. As an adult I know that not all Armenians go to heaven.

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Friday, February 13, 2009

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THE POWER AND THE GLORY

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Because they can't promise peace and prosperity, nationalists promise power and glory, and what mortal can resist two divine attributes? (“For thine is the power and the glory.”)

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There are many schools of criticism, the most common are envy-driven and revenge-driven.

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I have yet to meet an anti-Semite who wasn't a bully.

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Churchill on de Gaulle: “What can you do with a man who looks like a female llama surprised when bathing?”

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Under the Soviets we experienced despotism, intolerance, censorship, corruption, abuses of power, and purges (a euphemism for the systematic slaughter of the best and the brightest). And yet, there are those who assert the Soviets ushered in a renaissance of arts and culture. Who says Armenians are smart? Only Armenian idiots who think they are thinking even as they recycle enemy propaganda.

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Nabokov's aristocratic contempt for lower-class writers like Dostoevsky, Mann, and Sartre reminds me of the king who, after the premiere of DON GIOVANNI, said to Mozart: “Too many notes.”

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Once, when I was the regular book-reviewer of several Armenian-American weeklies, I received a book of memoirs by a rug merchant with a note that said, the longer the review, the bigger the check in the mail.

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The universal and irresistible temptation to appear smarter or better than we are.

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Saturday, February 14, 2009

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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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Our faith in Athena, goddess of wisdom, has collapsed, but the Parthenon stands. We are made of stardust, and it is the dust that will survive.

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We are careful to admit only the failings we think we have overcome.

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Our Turcocentric ghazetajis think humor is pro-Ottoman.

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In his WISDOM OF THE SANDS, Saint-Exupery tells us to be aware of misguided pity. There are beggars, he explains, who love to cling to their stench and to expose their sores.

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A self-appointed commissar of culture may qualify as a potential murderer but not as a critic.

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"For a smart man, you can be very naïve!" a trial lawyer, who is also a good friend, tells me. I don’t know about smart but I am worse than naïve when I get emotionally involved. Emotion reduces a complex reality into a one-dimensional extension of ourselves. Emotion, writes Sartre somewhere, attempts to change the world by means of magic. What could be more primitive?

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Saint-Simon: “My self-esteem has always increased in direct proportion to the damage I was doing to my reputation.”

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Tolstoy: “The higher I rise in the opinion of others, the lower I sink in my own.”

*

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Writers like Naregatsi, Raffi, Baronian, Odian, Zarian, Shahnour, Massikian, among many others, prove that criticism and patriotism are not incompatible concepts; blind patriotism by contrast is almost always symptomatic of fascism.

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[arabaliozian]

Sunday, February 15, 2009

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THE GREEKS AND US

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Whenever I am told to be more positive, I think of Homer who begins his story with a rape and ends with the destruction of Troy. And what do we learn from the ODYSSEY? Only this: even when one is engaged in as innocent an undertaking as going home, one will have to deal with obstructionists.

If you dismiss Homer's testimony as suspect on the grounds that he was an unbeliever, let's consider the Bible: Why did the Good Lord introduce a serpent in the Garden?

There are those who maintain it was not the Lord who did that but the CIA. But I for one don't believe everything I am told, and that's where my troubles begin. When I am told, for example, that we are better or smarter than the Greeks because we no longer believe in many gods some of whom fornicated with mortals, all I can say is that, that's true, we have made some progress in that department. We believe in only one God who is divided into three, and only one of the three, the Holy Ghost, engaged in the business of impregnating a mortal.

The Greeks condemned Socrates to death because he said “Of the gods we know nothing.” Christians, by contrast, persecuted and killed only those who did not share their dogmas, lies, and propaganda.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or, as the French are fond of saying, “Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme merde.”

#

Monday, February 16, 2009

***********************************************

THE ANGEL OF GROZNY

******************************************

We are smart, no doubt about that. We are as smart as any nation you care to mention. We may even be smarter than some. But we have been systematically moronized by our leadership. We have been as systematically moronized as any nation under a corrupt and incompetent leadership that has collaborated with some of the most brutal, ruthless, and bloodthirsty regimes in the history of mankind -- and it has collaborated to the point of betraying and murdering its greatest intellects.

If you want to know more on the subject of systematic moronization, I urge you to read Asne Seierstad's THE ANGEL OF GROZNY (New York, 2008), a masterpiece of contemporary journalism that deals with recent developments in Chechnya and the evils of Russian and Chechen nationalism.

*

The very same readers who tell me not to open old wounds, never give up blabbering endlessly about older wounds.

*

I have never heard a loud-mouth charlatan or fanatic to admit error, which may suggest, the louder they are, the more infallible they consider themselves to be.

*

Some of our most ardent nationalists live in self-imposed exile, and when war breaks out in the Homeland, they selflessly allow others to do their killing and dying for them.

#

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

***********************************************

STANDARDS

******************************************

To agree in the name of an ideology or belief system is to conspire against the majority of mankind.

*

Speech and honesty can be a lethal combination.

*

The danger is not in worshiping false gods but in worshiping the devil in the name of god.

*

When a loser's dreams come true, they turn into nightmares.

*

The more successful you are in fooling men, the less successful you will be in fooling reality.

*

Armenian etiquette: If you are wrong you will be corrected. If you are right you will be insulted.

*

And now, from the general to the specific:

How to explain the decline of our cultural standards when compared with those of the turn-of-the-century Ottoman Empire and pre-Stalin Soviet Union? The answer must be: the philistinism of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors combined with the opportunism of our academics.

#

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

***********************************************

RANDOM THOUGHTS

******************************************

All ideologies begin as belief systems and end as bureaucracies; and all bureaucracies might as well be interchangeable. What failed in the United States and the Soviet Union is neither capitalism nor communism but “the invisible hand” of faceless bureaucrats.

*

If so far we have failed to learn from history it's because history and propaganda are mutually exclusive concepts, and our propaganda tells us we know all there is to know and there is nothing wrong with us – it's all the fault of the rotten world in which we live.

*

It's unbelievable the number of things people will avoid saying in order to achieve popularity. I could never acquire that particular talent – or is it tactic?

*

Smart Armenians are a dime a dozen. Honest Armenians – that's different.

*

In our environment, the higher they rise, the more crooked they get.

*

A fellow Armenian (a white-haired elderly no-nonsense type) knocks on my door, introduces himself, barges in, and demands to know if I am really an atheist. I tell him I don’t believe in the god of our priests. He is too puzzled by my answer to pursue the matter. What I fail to add is that, the true atheist is he who uses someone else’s crucifixion to make a comfortable living.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, February 22, 2009

***********************************************

MEMO TO A YOUNG ARMENIAN WRITER

******************************************************

Always keep in mind that you will never be able to make a living by sharing your wisdom with readers who are much wiser than you.

*

No matter how good you are, you will have your critics, some of whom would gladly stone you to death. Think of Tolstoy on Shakespeare, Schopenhauer on Hegel, Turgenev on Dostoevsky, Russell on Sartre, and Sartre on himself.

*

When asked which church or community center you go to, say “I am with the good guys.”

*

The three pillars of fascism are: nationalism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-Semitism. I may have told you this before but some things bear repeating, maybe not as often as first nation this and first nation that, but at least once or twice a year.

*

One of our skinheads, who had verbally abused me for several years on a daily basis, once called to apologize. We had a long conversation. Shortly thereafter it became clear that he had not called to apologize but to gather more ammunition against me.

*

When it comes to enemy propaganda, we have 20/20 vision. When it comes to our own, we are blind.

#

Monday, February 23, 2009

***********************************************

READING

******************************************************

Since I don't do much traveling, I enjoy going places by proxy. I just finished reading Farley Mowat's big book on Siberia – SIBIR: MY DISCOVERY OF SIBERIA (Toronto, 1970) – a fascinating place that has attracted many travelers, among them Chekhov.

Mowat writes that Russians love partying and their favorite drinks are Georgian wine and Armenian cognac. I suspect our cognac has done more damage to the Soviets – if only to their livers and longevity – than all their dissidents and ours combined.

I am now reading Paul Theroux's GHOST TRAIN TO THE EASTERN STAR: ON THE TRACKS OF THE GREAT RAILWASY BAZAAR (New York, 2008), where he revisits places that he first wrote about thirty years ago – from London to Tokyo and all the way back via Siberia. Theroux is one of my favorite travel writers and his PILLARS OF HERCULES, about the countries on the Mediterranean coast, is a classic in the genre.

When told by a Romanian academic that Turkey cannot join the EU for another ten years because “they have problems with human rights of the Kurds and the Armenians,” Theroux dismisses Kurdish demands as unreasonable, “and the Armenian business was a hundred years ago.” He goes on to identify himself as “a mild Turkophile” and reflects that “the massacre of Armenians a century ago, the later expulsion of Greeks, and the Kurdish outrages and Turkish reprisals are lamentable facts of Turkish history; still, no city in Asia is so self-consciously reform-minded and it is lucky in its writers, who are public intellectuals in the European mode – Orhan Pamuk was one of the many who denounced the downplaying of the Armenian slaughter. He represented a public conscience.” I should like to see one of our own writers in that role.

#

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

***********************************************

More on Paul Theroux's GHOST TRAIN TO THE EASTERN STAR: ON THE TRACKS OF THE GREAT RAILWASY BAZAAR (New York, 2008).

****************************************************************

While in Istanbul, Paul Theroux has long conversations with several Turkish writers, among them Orhan Pamuk and the young, dynamic, outspoken, and stunningly attractive Elif Shafak.

Speaking of Pamuk's trial, he writes it was a case of “a lion being judged by donkeys.” “Pamuk's crime,” he explains, “ was his mentioning to a Swiss journalist that 'a million Armenians and thirty thousand Kurds were killed in this country and I'm the only one who dares to talk about it.'”

“Turkey has amnesia,” Elif Shafak tells him. “Turks are indifferent to the past, to old words, to old customs...We need to know about the Armenians.”

Another speaks “about the burden of being a Turkish writer abroad. Westerners whose knowledge of Turkey was limited to MIDNIGHT EXPRESS and doner kebab would challenge them saying, What about the Armenians? What about the Kurds? How come you torture people?”

In Baku we learn that there are Armenocentric Azeris as surely as there Turcocentric Armenians.

“Azerbaijan is a police state,” Theroux is informed by a foreign diplomat. “TV is controlled. Print media is somewhat free, but an opposition editor was gunned down last year.”

An Azeri tells him America should declare war against Iran because Iranian are bad people, but “Armenians are worse...In the 1990s they had captured the Azeri province of Nagorno-Karabagh, killing 20,000 Azeris and displacing a million more.”

“In football, Armenia is our enemy. In life too,” another Azeri tells him.

And, “We are overwhelmed by emotions! Armenians don't make any distinction between Turks and Azeris. Hey, it's all about 1915. When I was at Harvard, I met Armenians from Yerevan and had no problems. But Armenians from Watertown were very belligerent.”

“...in March 1918 in an Armenian uprising, Armenians killed 30,000 Azeris.”

Paul Theroux may identify himself as a moderate Turkophile but what's uppermost in his mind is to be objective, to report rather than to editorialize. We could learn from him.

#

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

***********************************************

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

****************************************************************

On the radio: four answers to the question “Do you believe in the present economic crisis?” asked at random in a train station:

“No! I think that's something politicians talk about and I don't believe them.”

“Yes. Some people I know have lost their jobs, but I am not worried because I am a teacher.”

“(Laughing) I don't care because I have very little money.”

“Sorry, I can't answer, my train leaves in four minutes.”

*

Julien Green: “Thoughts have wings, words only feet. That's a writer's greatest source of anguish.”

*

“We are Armenians!” yes, I know. But what kind? Ottomanized, Levantinized, Sovietized, Americanized?... Because most of our disagreements are rooted not in our views but in our identities or cultural backgrounds.

*

A French magazine calls Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-il of North Korea “the living-dead.”

*

If like me you prefer dialogue to long descriptive passages, Vladimir Sorokin's THE QUEUE (New York, 2007) is for you. Originally published in 1985, this is a Soviet-era work of fiction that consists in brief exchanges between people waiting in a long line hoping to buy whatever it is that's being sold at the other end.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, February 26, 2009

***********************************************

POLITICIANS AND INTELLECTUALS

****************************************************************

Arnold Toynbee: “Society is the total network of relations between human beings. The components of society are thus not human beings but relations between them.”

*

A politician will never say or do anything that may question his ability to lead and to do what must be done, even when he is catastrophically wrong, and even if it means violating the human rights of his fellow countrymen.

By contrast, the function of an intellectual is to say what must be said even if it means exposing the incompetence and criminality of politicians and in the process risking his own survival.

As for propagandists: as extensions of politicians, they specialize in exposing the crimes of the opposition and ignoring and covering up their own.

I am not implying here that politicians and propagandists are always wrong and intellectuals aways right. What I am suggesting is that it is not easy to reconcile the demands of self-interest with objectivity.

*

PARALLELS

*******************************

There is a passage in Toynbee that explains even if indirectly what befell us a hundred years ago in the Ottoman Empire. In what follows, all you need to do is replace the words Egyptiac and Hyksos with Ottoman and Armenian:

“At this moment the apparently defunct Egyptiac society was recalled to life and action by an overwhelming impulse to chastise the Hyksos trespassers who had ventured to desecrate a swept and garnished house by their unclean presence. The stimulus was so powerful, that it raised the Egyptiac society not just from the deathbed but actually from the bier on which it was being carried to the grave, and in this demonic xenophobia the society seemed to have discovered at the thirteenth hour, the long-sought elixir of immortality.”

The final lines of this quotation may also suggest that the glue in nationalism is provided more by fear and hatred of the enemy and less by love of one's fellow countrymen.

#

Friday, February 27, 2009

***********************************************

HEAVEN AND HELL

****************************************************************

If the system is good to you, you will be good to the system. Millions believed in Stalin because he promised heaven and earth, and he even delivered some of it in the guise of full employment, prosperity, power, and glory. And these believers, like all believers in organized religions, did not stop to question the validity of dogmas that legitimize intolerance, persecution, torture, murder, war and massacre. One could go as far as saying faith is the real source of all evil.

*

A belief system should be judged not by its promises but by its victims. Consider militarism, a belief system that promotes honor, courage, self-sacrifice, glory, and heroism: what mortal could resist these noble attainments? What decent human being would dare to suggest that their opposites, among them cowardice and dishonor, to be superior virtues? And now, listen to Toynbee on these military virtues:

“It is flying in the face of all experience to jump to the conclusion that the only place where we can ever hope to find these precious things is the slaughterhouse where they have happened to make their first epiphany to human eyes.”

*

Closer to home: who supports the present regime in our homeland? First and foremost, our fund-raisers who, according to insiders, make a very comfortable living beyond the wildest dreams of those they claim to help. Unmask these bloodsuckers and you will come face to face with wheeler-dealers whose role models are Wall Street chief executive officers.

Moral of the story: Don't be a fool. Don't believe everything your are told or read in the papers. Demand accountability and make sure the firm that does the accounting is not run by a brother-in-law or a co-conspirator. And last but not least, next time someone speaks of heaven, makes sure he doesn't mean your hell.

#

Saturday, February 28, 2009

***********************************************

RANDOM THOUGHTS

****************************************************************

When a doctor kills instead of curing, his license is revoked. This law governing the practice of medicine does not apply to Wall Street chief executive officers probably because law-makers and CEOs are co-conspirators.

*

During World War II Armenians fought on both sides – on the Soviet side in the name of defeating fascism, on the German side in the name of liberating the Homeland. Both sides were convinced theirs was a noble cause. Neither had the initiative or intelligence to ask what's so noble fighting Hitlerism in the name of Stalinism and vice versa? It is simply astonishing the ease with which self-assessed intelligent people are moronized.

*

You want to know what makes Armenians so mean? Six hundred years of kissing Ottoman ass.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, March 8, 2009

***********************************************

IF

***********************************************

If I speak well of some Turks it's because I have heard about good Turks and even met and dealt with some of them. If I am critical of my fellow Armenians it's because, very much like the rest of mankind, we are far from perfect. If, on the other hand, you think Armenians are beyond criticism, I can only say, you must be just about the luckiest man on earth because obviously so far you have dealt only with good Armenians. Either that or you are a nationalist, that is to say, blind in one eye.

*

I was brought up to believe reality is not what I see but what I was told to see. I have wasted so much time seeings things that weren't there.

*

Reading teaches us that our blunders, defeats, and humiliations are not unique to us and that countless others have been through the very same experiences.

*

It’s not easy civilizing barbarians. But what is infinitely harder is civilizing barbarians who brag about their past civilization.

#

Monday, March 9, 2009

***********************************************

KILLERS

***********************************************

“But he was such a kind man!” neighbors say of a serial killer. I am not implying kindness is suspect. What I am saying is that there is a killer in all of us.

*

Regardless of what you say, you will have your share of critics who belong to the Richelieu school of criticism that says, “If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him.”

*

I don't expect to be published in a newspaper or magazine where archbishops advertise the sale of Oriental rugs in their cathedral. Neither do I expect to be welcome in an Internet discussion forum whose moderator is the son of a bishop or the hireling of a benefactor.

*

To be an honest man means to make many enemies and very few friends.

*

When in a hurry, go slower than your normal speed.

*

“After all, we are Armenians!” – meaning , anything we say or do must be accepted and forgiven, including that which would be normally unacceptable and unforgivable. Some Armenians use Armenianism the way cold-blooded killers use the plea of insanity.

#

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

***********************************************

ON JUSTICE

***********************************************

I gave up publishing books on the day I realized we had more writers than readers. That may well be another first for us -- first nation to produce more writers than readers, and first nation to massacre more trees per capita than any other nation on earth. One thousand academics in the United States alone – and academics, as everyone knows, must either publish or perish. And then we have, what a friend of mine calls, “a massacre mafia” -- academics whose field is the Genocide and who review and promote books written only by members, they ignore all others.

Once when I wrote something to the effect that massacre books may promote a victim mentality, several reader wrote in protest to say that they don't feel like victims. But suppose a member of your family has been traumatized by a criminal, say, like a rapist. Would you remind her of the rape every chance you get? You may deceive yourself into thinking you are not a victim on the conscious level, but what about your subconscious where the real action is?

Writing books may well be another way of establishing our immortality and as such a legitimate reaction to genocide, granted. But writing books that no one reads?

Like the offspring of all oppressed and victimized people we are first and foremost bundles of unsettled scores for whom verbal abuse is the only safe way to get even. Instead of constantly reminding us of our victimhood, we should be taught the value of such mantras as “Let the dead bury their dead,” and “What's done is done and cannot be undone.” I am not promoting amnesia. What I am doing is reacting against our masochists.

Speaking about verbal abuse: once when I took it upon myself to remind a garbage mouth reader that insulting me simply because he disagrees with me is wrong, he said, “Sue me!” thus expressing an awareness of the fact that the rule of law is mightier than bitching, and one competently written legal brief is worth a thousand lamentations and as many insults.

You want justice? Get a lawyer.

#

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

***********************************************

NOTES AND COMMENTS

***********************************************

The real conflict is not between ideologies or belief systems but between those who cling to what they have (even when obtained by piracy or exploitation) and those who have nothing to lose.

*

Sometimes the only way to disarm your accusers is by pleading guilty to crimes that didn't even cross your imagination to commit. It is not easy to satisfy someone who has tasted blood.

*

The ideal citizen is a fool who allows himself to be brainwashed and manipulated. All others are classified as trouble-makers and malcontents. That's the way it is with gravediggers – they prefer to deal with corpses.

*

I don't write to have anyone's agreement. I write the kind of things I would have liked to have read in my formative years when I was programmed not to think for myself.

*

We live as though our problems were insoluble; but we argue as if we had a minimum of two solutions for every one of our problems.

*

Some people are so outrageously wrong that they don’t have to be corrected. Sooner or later life, facts, the reality principle will speak to them much louder than any logical argument or appeal to common sense and decency.

#

[Gorec]

Ты бы еще переводил,тогда бы пообщались.

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, March 12, 2009

***********************************************

ON OPTIMISM

***********************************************

If all our writers, from Khorenatsi to Zarian, have so far failed to penetrate the thick walls raised by our political and religious leaders, whatever possesses me into thinking I have a better chance? And what kind of arrogance bordering on pathological megalomania is it that makes our Turcocentric ghazetajis entertain the illusion they will have better luck with the Turks? Perhaps there is a Don Quixote in all of us – a Don with the IQ of Rosinante, or is it Sancho Panza's jackass?

*

“Please, don't tell my mother I am a CEO on Wall Street. She thinks I am a pimp.”

*

When millionaires declare bankruptcy, they do so to protect their millions. Some laws, it seems, are made by crooks, for crooks.

*

In his autobiography,Theodore Reik, a Freudian psychoanalyst, writes that for many years he was deeply in love with a very attractive woman. But when he finally married her, the wedding night was a disaster. He seems to be saying, a penetrating awareness of the other is achieved only by penetration.

*

Both pessimism and optimism are more or less legitimate ways of forecasting the future. Sometimes pessimists are right, and sometimes optimists. But optimists are never right if their optimism is motivated by wishful thinking. Reality advances on a different plane from our wishes. That’s why, even when our dreams come true they have a tendency to turn into nightmares.

#

Friday, March 13, 2009

***********************************************

REFLECTIONS ON OUR HISTORY

***********************************************

“If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”

Our history in a nutshell.

*

There are two kinds of nations: those who divide and conquer, and those who divide themselves and are conquered.

*

The function of a belief system or ideology is to raise a wall between us and our perception of reality. The function of our nationalist historians, leadership, and educational system is to cover up this fact. And the function of our writers is to remind us of it. There are many references to this fact in our literature. (See below.)

*

To those who say, how could little Armenia resist the overwhelming might of ruthless empire builders like Genghis Khan (13th century), Timurlang (14th century), and Suleiman the Magnificent (16th century), my answer is: our predisposition for dividing ourselves was in full swing long before these gentlemen went on the warpath. Listen to our 5th-century historian, Yeghishé:

“Solidarity is the mother of good deeds, divisiveness of evil onces.”

Elsewhere: “We may not be allowed to question the integrity of princes, but neither should we praise men who pit themselves against the Will of God” (that is, the Reality Principle).

And more to the point:

“In the same way that a man cannot serve two masters, a nation cannot have two kings. If a nation is ruled by two kings, both the kings and their subjects will perish.”

*

Am I rubbing salt in our wound? Why not? -- if the wound is self-inflicted.

*

Raffi: “An Armenian's worst enemies are not odars but Armenians.”

*

Gostan Zarian: “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”

*

Charents: “O Armenian people, your salvation lies only in your collective powers.”

*

For more on this subject, see my DICTIONARY OF ARMENIAN QUOTATIONS.

#

Saturday, March 14, 2009

***********************************************

LITERATURE

***********************************************

The only time I am referred to as a writer by our commissars is when they tell me it is my duty as a patriotic Armenians to echo their sentiments and thoughts. You say I have said this before? How flattering! Not only you read me but you also remember what I say.

*

Money goes to money, they say. Something very similar happens to culture too. Consider the situation of 20th-century French literature, one of the most highly developed and influential in the world: the three playwrights who revolutionized the French theater (Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, and Eugene Ionesco) were an Irishman, an Armenian, and a Romanian respectively). And now consider the situation of Armenian literature at the other end of the spectrum: not only we don’t encourage or welcome outside contribution, but we also alienate and silence our own (from Abovian to Zarian). Figure that one out if you can.

#

[Pandukht]

Контрасты армянского мира

"Билл и Василий" — так называется эссе известного писателя и публициста Ара БАЛИОЗЯНА. Эссе удивительное, тонкое, глубокое и неоднозначное, в нем автор проводит сравнительный анализ двух армян — духовных антиподов, разделенных к тому же чуть ли не одиннадцатью веками.

Один — Билли — Уильям Сароян, американский писатель, другой — Василий I Македонский (Армянский) — император Византии в 876-886 гг. Вроде бы совершенно несопоставимые личности. Но Балиозян со всей хитроумностью западного интеллектуала находит грани соприкосновения. По его словам, это история о "единой общности — нашей нации". Ему ли не знать...

Ара Балиозян, недавно отметивший 70-летие, родился в Афинах, образование получил в Венеции, долгие годы живет в Канаде. В определенном смысле он типичный представитель зарубежной армянской интеллигенции. Автор ряда книг, посвященных диаспоре, в том числе весьма значительного труда "Армяне: их история и культура". Один из наиболее печатающихся и издаваемых армянских авторов — на английском, армянском и многих других языках. Год назад его книга "Эта ужасающая тишина" — тоже об Армении и армянах — впервые была издана на русском языке. А. Балиозян также профессиональный переводчик художественной литературы, в частности таких армянских классиков, как Григор Зохраб, Забел Есаян, Костан Зарьян. О его литературном творчестве Уильям Сароян сказал: "Я читаю все написанное Ара Балиозяном с очарованием и благодарностью".

Балиозян фактически сталкивает два "полюса" армянского характера и миропонимания, два армянских "эго", два "я". Один могущественный император Византии, добравшийся до трона и пурпурной мантии из самых низов прежде всего за счет недюжинного ума и энергии, а также за счет коварства и любви — как и водилось в Византийской империи изначально и вплоть до ее падения (лого "византийское коварство" возникло не случайно). Василий I — родоначальник Македонской (Армянской) династии, давшей империи чуть ли не дюжину императоров. Он успешно побеждал арабов, покушавшихся на Византию, боролся с Павликианским движением, был в весьма дружеских отношениях с армянским царем Ашотом I Багратуни и признал царство Багратидов.

Совершенно другим предстает Уильям Сароян в версии Балиозяна, писатель, создавший собственный мир красоты, нежности, любви — личный Эдем. Балиозян не в укор сравнивает два армянских типа (далеко не единственных, есть и масса других), а для того, чтобы получить два ответа "на вызов жизни".

Разумеется, не литературного интереса ради. Резкие, далеко не во всем приятные для армянского "я" размышления мудрого Балиозяна проецируются на армянскую действительность любого этапа истории. Что было, то было, но главное — они актуальны сегодня, сейчас, каждый армянский день и завтра. Важны в частностях и абсолюте. В абсолюте жизни армянской нации, и та, что вне родины, и та, что в Армении, глобальные проблемы нации. Ведь выдуманного Сарояном мира никогда не было и никогда не будет, его литература останется литературой. Она даже не модель армянского мира, тем более не образец для подражания. Но Василий I? Мы вечные жертвы — агнцы или... Эссе об этом "или". И о свободе формировать свою собственную судьбу и судьбу нации. Мы это уже сделали, Карабах тому свидетельство. Ара Балиозян самокритично и, повторим, порой очень резко дает великолепную пищу для ума, для размышлений, наконец, для ориентации в сегодняшнем жестоком мире.

Очень хотелось бы, чтобы эссе вызвало резонанс, споры, дискуссию, ведь "пассивное принятие судьбы" уже не для нас.

P. S. Чтобы точнее ориентировать не слишком внимательного читателя, мы позволили себе незначительное вмешательство в текст и рядом с именем Билл кое-где вписали фамилию.

С одной стороны, история, которую я хотел бы рассказать, — это история двух людей, никогда не встречавшихся друг с другом. С другой стороны, это история о едином целом — армянской нации. То есть обо мне, о вас и о любом другом армянине, живом или умершем. Это не вымысел, а факт. Так действительно было. От начала и до конца. От себя я ничего не добавлял. Я выбрал Билла (Сарояна), американского писателя ХХ века, и Василия, греческого императора IX века, прежде всего по той причине, что они наиболее наглядно олицетворяют постепенную трансформацию некогда гордой воинственной нации в послушных и услужливых дядей Томов (имеется в виду герой романа Гарриет Бичер Стоу "Хижина дяди Тома" — прим. перев.).

Пусть чужеземные имена обоих героев вас не смущают. Они оба были армянами, и это было не единственной их общей чертой. Оба были амбициозными и очень одаренными людьми, получившими мировое признание. Оба были более или менее ассимилированы, хотя помнили свое происхождение, свои корни. Оба были рождены и выросли на чужой земле: Билл (Сароян) в Калифорнии, Василий в Македонии. Сыновья обедневших беженцев, они не получили регулярного образования. У обоих родились сыновья, последовавшие по их стопам: Арам, сын Билла, посвятил себя литературе; Лев, сын Василия, — политике. Сыновья написали мемуары о своих отцах: Арам представил горькие разоблачения, а Лев — триумфальную песнь. Однако начнем сначала и в хронологическом порядке.

Когда в начале IX века родился Василий, Армения, как и сейчас, была маленькой раздробленной страной, окруженной кровожадными сверхдержавами. Ситуация не очень изменилась со времен первых ассирийских надписей, относящихся к третьему тысячелетию до нашей эры, где говорилось о периодических вторжениях и резне на территориях вокруг горы Арарат. Некогда в Армении, возможно, и находился Эдемский сад, но змей из Ветхого завета перерос в грозного вишапа, огнедышащего Дракона войны, который превратил эту землю в постоянное поле битвы.

Вместо того, чтобы деморализовать и ослабить местных жителей, суровые условия жизни сделали их сильными, уверенными в себе, гордыми и упрямыми. Раз за разом они отказывались сложить оружие, сопротивляясь подчинению и колонизации. Обычай сотрудничать с врагами был чужд их крови. Через некоторое время даже римляне, казалось, потеряли все надежды покорить этих людей. В своих "Анналах" Тацит называет армян "ambigua gens" - нелояльным народом, из-за их отказа сотрудничать с Римом. Другими словами, армяне не были верны делу Рима, зато были верны своему: очень важная особенность, ускользнувшая от такого империалиста, как Тацит, в чьих глазах весь мир за пределами Римской империи был ничем иным, как сборищем варваров, нуждающихся в цивилизации.

В захватывающей истории успеха Василия удача сыграла незначительную роль. Можно даже сказать, другого от него и не ожидали. Тогда каждый армянский мальчик воспитывался в вере, что он может стать императором, точно так же как и сегодня в Америке каждый мальчик уверен, что для него открыт путь к президентскому креслу. И многие армяне до и после Василия действительно всходили на императорский трон Византии — могущественнейшей из держав Запада на протяжении почти целого тысячелетия. Однако, в отличие от других, у Василия не было полезных знакомств и необходимых связей. Простому необразованному парню из провинции пришлось начинать свою жизнь буквально на дне общества. Ему понадобилось почти тридцать лет, чтобы достичь своей цели: тридцать лет тяжелой работы, бескомпромиссной верности делу, непоколебимого упорства и дерзких интриг. Ему повезло лишь в одном: природа одарила его тем, что сегодня в бизнесе называют внешними данными и харизмой. Он научился использовать эти качества для собственной выгоды. Современные ему историки упоминают его высокий рост, необыкновенную силу и умение укрощать диких лошадей. Он был также борцом олимпийского уровня. Одним словом, он был наделен нужными качествами и умел управлять собой. Ходят слухи, что тогдашний император Михаил III знал о Василии все задолго до их личной встречи. Существует несколько версий их встречи, однако этим версиям не стоит уделять большого внимания. Литература того периода очень обширна и противоречива. Известно, что Михаил III и Василий познакомились и понравились друг другу. Император предложил работу во дворце, и Василий ее принял.

С этих пор грубый, необразованный, красивый выскочка и могущественный, элегантный, умудренный опытом император стали часто встречаться, обсуждая лошадей и сопутствующие темы (вначале Василий был назначен на придворную должность главного конюшего). Постепенно они обнаружили и другие общие темы, разговоры зашли о внутри- и внешнеполитических делах. Василий стал доверенным советником и незаменимым компаньоном. Он даже женился на любовнице Михаила, чтобы помочь тому выйти из неудобного положения. Василий шел на одно повышение за другим до тех пор, когда повышать уже стало некуда. Он стал соправителем императора. Чтобы самому стать императором, Василию необходимо было устранить конкуренцию, что он и сделал с непревзойденным мастерством, безошибочной эффективностью и выдающимся чутьем момента. Он убил не только законного наследника престола, но и самого императора. Первого своими собственными руками, а второго при помощи небольшой группы верных армянских наемников. Да, именно он устроил засаду и убил своего друга и покровителя Михаила III-го. По-макиавеллиевски кровожадный, неблагодарный человек? Возможно. Очевидно, что Василий, его современники и преемники на троне отличались от нас. Вернее, мы отличаемся от них, так как это отличие сравнительно ново и развилось в течение последних нескольких веков, но не тысячи лет. Их можно с полным правом считать нормой, а нас — отклонением.

Вскоре после царствования армянских императоров Ближний Восток был наводнен азиатскими кочевниками, известными как османли, или турки-османы. Туркам потребовалось четыре века, чтобы преодолеть армянское сопротивление (следует отметить, что Армения была покорена турками гораздо позже того, как они завоевали и колонизовали Балканы), и еще четыре столетия, чтобы усмирить, подчинить и низвести армян до бледных теней их предков. Из непокорного, непримиримого и "нелояльного" народа армяне превратились в "самое лояльное" этническое меньшинство Османской империи, согласно мнению самих турок — их господ и хозяев.

Вырождение было таким постепенным, что прошло незаметно для большинства армянского населения, хотя оно иногда обсуждалось, анализировалось и осуждалось ограниченным числом мыслящих и мужественных армян — среди них романисты Хачатур Абовян и Раффи, исполнитель народных песен Дживани, сатирик Акоп Паронян, государственный деятель Григор Зохраб. Всех их либо заставили замолчать враги, либо игнорировали наши руководители и церковники, считавшие коллаборационизм единственной альтернативой полному уничтожению. Эти представители нашего истеблишмента, похоже, забыли то, что их предки знали на уровне инстинкта, а именно: коллаборационизм — только первый шаг на пути к раболепию, которое в перспективе обрекает нацию на утрату человеческих качеств и деградацию до такой степени, что она уже практически мертва и нет необходимости убивать ее. Так что в окончательной катастрофе — абдулгамидовских погромах и геноциде 1915 г. — не было необходимости, поскольку катастрофа уже произошла в сердцах и умах армян. Когда человек подчиняется врагу — сначала складывает оружие, затем сдается телом и душой — от него остается только пустая оболочка. Но то, что должно было произойти, произошло. Последний акт Трагедии был сыгран, и весь мир наблюдал его в ужасе, не имея возможности или желания вмешаться.

Те немногие, кому удалось спастись, рассеялись по четырем сторонам света. Малая часть жалких, потрепанных, несчастных осколков некогда великой нации осела в г. Фресно, штат Калифорния, где сосредоточилась на печальном деле зарабатывания на жизнь.

Между прочим, зарабатывание на жизнь в чужой среде — нелегкая задача. Жизнь в Османской империи была трудной, но даже беднейший армянин имел клочок земли, которую он мог назвать своей, круг друзей, родных, соседей, человеческое общение, теплоту, ощущал причастность и преемственность. Все это было отнято у армян, когда они попали в Новый Свет, где люди говорили на странном, непонятном языке, потешались над ними, оскорбляли и нещадно эксплуатировали. Жизнь стала такой невыносимой, что амбициозный молодой писатель по имени Билл Сароян почувствовал непреодолимую потребность создать собственный мир и бежать туда — в мир красоты, нежности, любви, сострадания, смеха и веселья, где все люди были бы братьями. Мир такой прекрасный, что он вполне мог быть раем на земле. Мир его раннего детства. Мир, который он наблюдал невинными глазами ребенка. Мир, где он испытывал блаженство, поскольку ничего не понимал. Весь остаток своей земной жизни Билл посвятил обретению заново этого личного Эдема, где не было бы Змея. Он начал с написания коротких рассказов, пересказа случаев из жизни, которые позже превратились в романы, пьесы и воспоминания о членах семьи, родных, друзьях и соседях, преимущественно армянах, как и он сам, со всеми их необычными привычками, колоритными манерами, остроумными выражениями и народной мудростью. Это было ново, свежо и остро. До явления миру Билла армяне были известны в англоязычном мире как голодающие жертвы турецких жестокостей, создания из ночного кошмара. Годами они появлялись на первых полосах газет, вызывая чувство беспокойства, возможно даже ужаса и вины. После книг-откровений Билла они стали известны как приятные и безобидные дяди Томы, неиспорченные, неунывающие, положительные, привлекательные и слегка своеобразные.

Следует заметить, что в историях Сарояна нет опасных армян. Даже генерал Андраник, которого можно было бы назвать истинным потомком Василия, описан в одном из рассказов как простак, неспособный понять, что "турок — беспомощный человек, вынужденный делать то, что он делает", и ненавидеть турка — то же самое, что ненавидеть армянина, поскольку они одинаковы. Благородные мысли, достойные "необычного парня, постоянного, честного, доброго, чувствительного, набожного, правдивого и прямого", как Гарриет Бичер Стоу описывает дядю Тома — этот персонаж сейчас считается всеми настолько неприглядным, что его имя стало сильнейшим расовым оскорблением. Подобно создательнице дяди Тома, Билл Сароян стал одним из самых продаваемых авторов. К нему пришли слава и богатство. Но затем грянула Вторая мировая война, огнедышащий вишап вторгся в его личный Эдем и сжег дотла.

Билл отличался от Василия. Он был мирным человеком, не имеющим склонности к насилию и кровопролитию. Будь в нем хоть капля крови Василия, он бы написал роман про войну, который низвел бы "Нагих и мертвых" и "Отсюда в вечность" до уровня сценариев диснеевских мультфильмов. Но посланец любви, мира и братства людей, Билл смотрел на пламя, пожирающее мир вокруг него, со сладкой наивностью и непонимающим изумлением младенца. Все как положено. Но не совсем, поскольку он не был больше ребенком, а его аудитория больше не забавлялась. Когда он продолжил петь свои сладкие песни сирен о любви, о том, как чудесны все и как велик сам он, говоря об этом, казалось, все человечество, охваченное безумием, взялось доказать ему его неправоту, действуя подобно кровожадным азиатским кочевникам, убивая без разбора стариков, женщин и детей, испепеляя целые города.

Правдоподобию мира Билла Сарояна был нанесен серьезный удар. Малая трещина превратилась в бездонную пропасть. Его литературная репутация пошла на убыль. Он сам пошел на убыль. Он начал пить, играть, у него возникли семейные проблемы, проблемы с налоговой службой. Чем больше падала его популярность, тем больше он писал о старых добрых временах, которых никогда не было. Он умер печальным стариком в отставке, неспособным принять свою собственную бренность.

Ныне Сароян мертв и похоронен, но его Сад живет. Особенно в сердцах его братьев-армян. Каждый армянин, читавший его книги, уверен, что разделяет магию его персонажей и ауру его славы. Если кто-нибудь посмел бы назвать армян Билла литературным вымыслом — милые, убедительные, иногда даже неотразимые, но все же вымышленные, наш вклад в американский фольклор, наши дяди Томы и тетушки Джемаймы (тетушка Джемайма в США является образом негритянки, сердечной, по-матерински заботливой, безобидной женщины — прим. перев.), наши "скрипачи на крыше" (созданные, в свою очередь, самым сарояновским еврейским автором Шоломом Алейхемом), — это было бы воспринято как личное оскорбление. Терпеливо выслушав мои слова, американский профессор армянского происхождения попытался меня поправить, он утверждал, что вымышленные персонажи Билла реальны, поскольку сам он встречал их достаточно часто. "Где? Когда?" — допытывался я. "Когда я рос в Лос-Анджелесе". — "Вы имеете в виду, когда вы были маленьким мальчиком?" — "Именно". Когда он был маленьким мальчиком.

Другой армянин, жадный, жестокий левантинец, наиболее несарояновский персонаж, который можно себе представить, уверял меня, что он тоже встречал множество сарояновских армян. "Расскажите подробнее", — попросил я. "Что именно?" — "Когда и где вы встречали их?" — "Повсюду". — "Когда были маленьким?" — "И когда был уже взрослым". — "Вы встречали их в Бейруте?" После секундного размышления он ответил: "Пожалуй, нет, в Бейруте не встречал". — "В Австралии?" — "Австралийские армяне не заслуживают обсуждения". — "Как насчет Бразилии?" — "Никогда там не был". — "Стамбул?" — "И там тоже не бывал". — "Но армян из Стамбула встречали?" — "Да. Но я не назвал бы их армянами". — "А как?" — "Переодетыми турками". — "Как насчет канадских армян?" — "Они армяне только по названию".

Так продолжалось некоторое время. Постепенно стало ясно, что армяне в целом и особенно американские армяне (я говорю "особенно", поскольку до этого выяснилось, что он испытывает почти османскую неприязнь к американским армянам) не только несарояновские персонажи, но чаще всего и неармянские вовсе. Небольшая личная ремарка: я родился и вырос в армянском гетто, получил образование в армянских школах, провел большую часть своей жизни в армянской среде в Греции, Италии, Канаде и Соединенных Штатах, встречался и имел дело с армянами всего мира, людьми разных слоев общества, разных политических убеждений и разной степени ассимилированности. Могу засвидетельствовать: я никогда — никогда! — не встречал сарояновского персонажа.

Арам, сын Билла, рассказал нам, что и сам Билл был совершенно несарояновским персонажем. Он был скорее персонажем Достоевского, даже византийским персонажем — сложным, непредсказуемым, непостижимым, противоречивым, темным, — нежели сарояновским.

Тем из читателей, кто может заподозрить, что я пытаюсь принизить достижения Билла Сарояна, позвольте сказать, что я не открыл ничего нового. Многие известные американские критики и его современники уже говорили подобное, если не сверх того. Позвольте добавить, что я всегда был большим почитателем Билла. Меня тоже покорила его магия. Как человек и художник Билл сделал лучшее, на что был способен. Лучшее, на что способны мы все. И даже более. Подобно Василию, его можно назвать уникальной и неожиданной фигурой. В новое время мы дали миру более тысячи писателей, но ни один даже близко не подошел к тому, чтобы бросить вызов месту Билла в мировой литературе.

При анализе судеб и характеров Билла и Василия я ставил себе целью сопоставить не их значение, но два различных ответа на вызов жизни. Ответ Василия заключался в понимании сил истории и влиянии на них. Ответ Билла заключался в попытке ухода в искусственный рай, которого не было и никогда не будет. Конечная цель жизненного пути Билла состояла в развлечении правящего класса и служении ему. Целью Василия было войти в состав правящего класса, установить над ним контроль и устроить будущее империи.

Чтобы еще больше подчеркнуть разницу между случаями Билла и Василия, сыграем в небольшую игру исторических трансплантации и проекции. Что бы случилось с Биллом в Византии? Если бы он родился в греческом мире IX века нашей эры, он стал бы популярным поэтом или летописцем, разделив судьбу сотен своих собратьев по перу. Его бы вспоминали сегодня лишь несколько специалистов-ученых, так же как через тысячу лет имя и место Сарояна в истории американской литературы XX века вспомнят лишь несколько специалистов — конечно, при условии, что таковые найдутся.

Что бы стало с Василием в Калифорнии? "Голосуя" на дороге, он бы добрался до Вашингтона, устроился бы механиком в гараж или водителем такси. Он бы встретился и подружился с секретарями и помощниками президентских советников, конгрессменов и судей Верховного суда. Он бы хорошо изучил структуру власти в столице, участвовал бы добровольцем в политических кампаниях, сам бы баллотировался и, в конце концов, стал бы президентом. Список его достижений во внутренней и внешней политике был бы феноменальным, невероятным по нынешним меркам. Отважный полководец, харизматический глава государства, мудрый знаток людей, наций и удачных моментов истории, он применил бы все свои способности, в том числе и те, о которых никто не подозревал бы — именно это и означает творческое лидерство. Для быстрого и эффективного претворения своей политики в жизнь он преодолел бы все препятствия, используя разнообразные средства: от дипломатических инициатив и мирных переговоров до подкупа, шантажа, пыток и убийств. После череды локальных войн, переворотов, революций и контрреволюций в стратегических точках, он бы колонизировал весь мир и солнечную систему и подготовил бы вторжение в близлежащие галактики. Больше того! Он бы сбалансировал бюджет. Невозможно? Конечно. Особенно для тех из моих читателей, кто подобен больше Биллу, нежели Василию, поскольку для василиев этого мира невозможное и есть тот единственный вызов, который стоит принять. Наоборот, для биллов и вообще для представителей всех наций, которые исчерпали свои созидательные полномочия, даже словесные кротовые холмики (в нашем случае маленькие внутренние конфликты и противоречия) представляются непреодолимыми преградами.

По прочтении этих строк один мой друг обвинил меня в пропаганде милитаризма и империализма. Я отвергаю подобное обвинение. Вначале я предупредил читателей, что, с одной стороны, это история о единой общности — нашей нации. Возможно, с другой стороны, это исследование по осознанию человеческих возможностей, то есть на тему свободы. Свободы выбирать, свободы формировать не только собственную судьбу и судьбу нации, но и судьбу самой Вселенной. Если это уже делалось в прошлом, если такая возможность была доказана деятельностью человека, это возможно сделать и в будущем.

Путь, который мы, армяне, коллективно избрали, а именно, пассивное принятие судьбы, уготованной нам другими, — только одна из бесчисленного количества открытых нам возможностей.

При пересказе истории Билла Сарояна и Василия I Македонского я обсудил две из них. Ни больше ни меньше.

Перевод А. Акопяна, Т. Закояна

"Новое Время"

Edited March 18, 2009 by Pandukht

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, March 15, 2009

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BOOKS IN MY LIFE

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I grew up in time of war – two wars, as a matter of fact: World War II and the Greek Civil War. I grew up in a house without books. It was only at the age of fourteen that I read my first book – WITH FIRE AND SWORD by the Polish Nobelist Henrik Sienkiewicz: a historical novel of WAR-AND-PEACE dimensions, but less Tolstoy and more Dumas pére and Errol Flynn. The only thing I remember about it today is the name of the central character, Pan Mikael Volodiovsky. I read it in an Armenian translation done by a Mekhitarist monk. At one time the Mekhitarists were formidable translators and the most prolific of them all was Arsen Ghazikian, who single-handed translated all the epic poems of the Western canon from Homer to THE SONG OF ROLAND, among many other Greek and Latin classics. Two of his students, Padre Elia (Yeghia) Pachikian and Mesrob Janashian, were my teachers. Janashian was also the author of a highly detailed and competent HISTORY OF MODERN WEST-ARMENIAN LITERATURE.

After FIRE AND SWORD I chanced on a thin paperback, Dostoevsky's THE GAMBLER, and was hooked on the Russians. What fascinated me about Dostoevsky was the fact that his characters spoke their mind, held nothing back, refused to stand on ceremony or consider what others may think of them. In that sense, they were more authentic human beings than anyone I had ever met. Chekhov was different. His characters impressed me as people I had known or could have known. There was nothing bizarre or incomprehensible about them.

The Russians, and I include Tolstoy and Turgenev, made me realize that I wasn't alone, and whenever I try to reread them now I also realize that you can't go home again.

#

Monday, March 16, 2009

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THOMAS MANN

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On a visit to Venice, a middle-aged German writer falls for a beautiful Polish boy on the beach, postpones his return home, and dies of cholera. (As a youth, Mann idolized Wagner, who also died in Venice.) I first read DEATH IN VENICE in Venice, at the age of fifteen, in an Italian translation. It left me cold. Much ado about nothing, I thought. Ten years later I read it again, this time in an English translation, with the same result. But I refused to give up on Mann and with CONFESSIONS OF FELIX KRULL, CONFIDENCE MAN I got religion. Immediately after I read and reread THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, and DOKTOR FAUSTUS the way a born-again reads and rereads the Bible.

Two things fascinated me about Mann: his subtle humor and his expertise on a wide range of subjects. When he expanded the Biblical story of Joseph into a four- volume, 2000-page long novel, for instance, he acquired an entire library on both the Bible and ancient Egypt. To write about the life of a modern composer, he befriended and pumped several famous musicologists, composers, and conductors, among them Adorno, Schoenberg, and Bruno Walter (who happened to be a next-door neighbor as well his daughter's secret lover). In politics and philosophy, he could argue both sides of any issue – an advantage over Shaw, Sartre, and Nabokov who took sides with disastrous results -- Shaw and Sartre in their support of totalitarian regimes, and Nabokov in his defense of the war in Vietnam.

Mann has had his share of critics: Shaw ignored him, Sartre and Nabokov dismissed him as a bourgeois, Brecht called him “a short-story writer," Stefan Zweig thought he was long-winded, Furtwaengler accused him of changing nationalities as if they were shirts, and Hitler wanted him assassinated -- some said because THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN outsold MEIN KAMPF.

*

Mann on Hitler:

“Thanks to his own baseness, he has indeed succeeded in exposing much of our own.”

*

“The totalitarian statesman is the founder of a religion; or, more accurately, the founder of an infallible, inquisitorial system of dogma that forcibly suppresses every heresy while itself resting on legend – a system to which truth must austerely submit.”

*

Mann on what it takes:

“The creative genius must first become a world in itself, in which only discoveries and not inventions, remain to be made.”

*

“The intellectual man is almost as much interested in painful truths as the fool is in those which flatter him.”

#

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

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ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE

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When asked by a journalist what had motivated him to dedicate most of his adult life to writing his monumental multi-volume STUDY OF HISTORY, Toynbee replied with a single word: “Curiosity.”

Of the twelve volumes, my favorite is the 12th, subtitled RECONSIDERATIONS. Here Toynbee replies to his critics – an astonishingly large number of them from all over the world. Sometimes he is willing to admit error, at others he reaffirms his position and goes further. Case in point: “Spate's failure to keep his knowledge of the Jordan valley's history up to date would have been venial if the tone of his criticism had not been supercilious. However, my concern with Spate is not to return his fire but to follow out the second thoughts into which I have been stung by the stimulating shot with which he has peppered me.”

One reason I enjoy reading and rereading RECONSIDERATIONS is its quintessentially unArmenian tone of tolerance and acceptance of dissent as worthy of consideration.

Toynbee's general theory of the rise and fall of civilizations and empires goes something like this: civilizations grow by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities, and decline when the leaders fail to react creatively.” In his own words: “A growing civilization can be defined as one which the components of its culture [economic, political, artistic, and scientific] are in harmony with one another; and, on the same principle, a disintegrating civilization can be defined as one in which these elements have fallen into discord.”

All general theories are vulnerable to contradiction and criticism. Plato's were criticized by his student, Aristotle, Marx's by Keynes, Spengler's by Jacques Maritain and Teilhard de Chardin, and Toynbee's by a wide range of specialists who saw in him an interloper who had dared to exploit their findings to serve his own alien agenda.

In my view, Toynbee's greatest merit is not his general theory but the many brilliant observations on the human condition. Random samples follows:

*

On racial superiority:

“The Jews, the Japanese, the British 'sahibs', the Nazis...all seem to me to have been chosen by no one except themselves.”

*

On critics:

“Whenever a reviewer is tempted to treat an author as a dart-board he should remember that the missile which his hand is itching to lance is not a dart but a boomerang.”

*

On chauvinism:

“Self-idolization is most flagrantly in evidence, not as a self-adjudicated reward for success, but as a self-exculpating compensation for failure.” (I think of these lines whenever I hear one of our charlatans bragging about our celebrities and achievements.)

*

“The egocentric illusion has always beset every living organism in which an ego has ever asserted itself.”

*

On pessimism and optimism:

“The truth is that Valéry's pessimism and Gibbon's optimism are, both alike, rationalizing of feelings that are irrationally subjective.”

#

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

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REFLECTIONS

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Whether God exists or not is not the problem. The problem, the real problem, the existential problem is placing as great a distance between us and the Devil as possible. Likewise, knowing the truth is not the problem. The problem is recognizing a deceiver when we see one.

*

Because I criticize Armenians I am accused of anti-Armenianism; and because some Turks quote me, I am accused of pro-Ottomanism. I may be wrong about everything but I have no doubt whatever in my mind that no one, not even the very best among us, are beyond criticism. And not to criticize in the name of patriotism is to support the corrupt and the incompetent, and when things go wrong, to blame the enemy who probably was also duped into supporting lying riffraff.

*

Among us, politics (or the art of the possible) is confused with ideology (the art of the impossible), and inevitably, ideology is confused with theology (the art of the incomprehensible), and theology is confused with pathology. Some day, in a future progressive and enlightened Armenian democracy, if our partisans are arrested and put on trial, they will be absolutely right in pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.

*

As solitary creatures, Armenian writers have been perennial victims of political parties and their satellite institutions, all of which have a tendency to divide their fellow Armenians into friends and enemies or yes-men and dissidents. As for dialogue: who has ever heard of such a thing in an Ottoman or Soviet environment, or, for that matter, in a crypto-Ottoman or neo-Stalinist context?

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, March 19, 2009

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SWINE

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Again and again we are told by so-called experts in Washington that the bonuses of the chief executive officers on Wall Street are such an insignificant fraction of the total bailout that it is a waste of time discussing them. These gentlemen must be blind not to see that a million dollars is a million dollars; it may be small change to some, but they are a fortune to the rest of mankind who must work for a living. And I suspect the outrage is less about the bonuses themselves and more about the fact that the very same individuals who are responsible for the present crisis have the judgment and manners of greedy swine.

*

C.G. Jung: "Even in our civilization, the people who form, psychologically speaking, the lowest stratum, live almost as unconsciously as primitive races."

*

The words of an honest man don’t need definitions; but the commas of a crook should be carefully examined under a microscope.

*

We are told by scientists that we are made of stardust, and it is the dust that survives.

*

I knew I was going places when a number of Oriental carpet dealers wanted to hire my services as reviewer and translator of their books. These gentlemen are not the kind that would waste their money carelessly.

*

It is men without honor who are the first to rise in defense of their honor.

#

Friday, March 20, 2009

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ON A NUMBER OF THINGS

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Obama wants to negotiate with Iran. I suspect Iranians will not fall for his rhetoric as readily as those who voted for him. That's because they have their own brand of rhetoric; and when rhetoric meets rhetoric the result is bound to be a dead end.

*

Talaat's blunder: left to their own devices, Armenians would have done a far more through job on themselves.

*

While listening to the televised sermon of a bishop, I could not help thinking: “I don't believe a word he says, and I doubt if he does.”

*

Bonus: What's a five-letter word that starts with a “b” that stands for bastard, and ends with an “s” that stands for swine?

*

Armenian Ottomanism: alienating a fellow Armenian in the name of patriotism.

*

Atheism: If an ant were to speak to me and say, “I don't believe in your existence,” would I step on it?

*

Benefactors: Take away their money and what have you got? An empty suit, albeit an expensive one. Am I alienating benefactors? Hell no! What I say has as much effect on them as the fart of an ant.

#

Saturday, March 21, 2009

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JOHN UPDIKE

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After COUPLES, I read everything he wrote, and he wrote a great deal, and he knew how to write -- fiction as well as criticism and poetry. He was an inspired craftsman. His nonfiction was as good as his fiction, which is not something that can be said about such contemporaries of his as Mailer, Bellow, and Roth. But somewhere along the line – it may have been after the second or third RABBIT – I gave up reading him.

Shortly before he died a few days ago I read a critical essay about him by a young American writer in whose last sentence Updike was dismissed as an “asshole.” (I later learned this critic had committed suicide.)

I am now reading Updike's TOWARD THE END OF TIME (1997), an autobiographical novel about old age that, as always with Updike, brims with sharp observations and verbal felicities. And now I am looking forward to reading his posthumous works – diaries, notebooks, correspondence, perhaps even an unfinished novel and several big biographies.

*

Some random samples of Updike's descriptive skill:

“Girls with orange hair hanging like seaweed or loosely bound with gold barrettes like pirate treasure.”

*

“A runty senior with a huge mane of black hair that for diving he did up in a hairband like a Greek girl.”

*

“The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.”

*

“An aluminum screen door with a misadjusted pneumatic attachment that snaps like lightning the first two-thirds of its arc and then closes the last third slow as a clock ticking.”

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, March 22, 2009

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ON MYTHS

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We either react against the ideas instilled in us during our formative years, or we treat them as infallible articles of faith and stick to them to the bitter end.

Deep inside somewhere Charents remained a nationalist even when he spoke against it; and Zarian remained an anti-nationalist even when he voiced nationalist nonsense. In a letter to a fellow Tashnak, the editor of HAIRENIK wrote: “If we treat him (Zarian) right, he may come to our side.” When he didn't, he was ignored and treated as an eccentric and a non-person. “I was told he was crazy and I stayed away from him,” a Tashnak neighbor of his once said to me, “and now you tell me he was a great writer?”

According to Ilya Ehrenburg, Stalin said, “Don't touch Charents, he is on our side,” or words to that effect. But truth or God or the Reality Principle is on nobody's side.

Studied in a Christian context, Greek myths about gods who fornicate with mortals sound blasphemous as well as ridiculous. And yet, the Greek effort to explain Reality makes as much sense today as the myths invented by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian theologians who have legitimized murder and massacre in the name of God.

Toynbee is right: after choosing themselves, the chosen assert moral superiority and expect everyone else to be subservient to them. You are either with us or against us, they say, and if you are against us, you don't deserve to live. Some day when mankind is finally civilized, this kind of mindset will be viewed as worthy of barbarians and serial killers.

#

Monday, March 23, 2009

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CROOKS UNLIMIMTED

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What's the use of writing if you end up alienating friends and making enemies of the very same people on whose goodwill you depend for your survival? On the other hand, what's the use of writing if you are not allowed to say what must be said? I may be more popular and have a better chance to survive by making at least minimum wage if I were to write cookbooks. I am not much of a cook, granted. My repertoire is limited to hard-boiled eggs, cheese sandwiches, pilaf, and spaghetti. But I am told you don't have to be a cook to write cookbooks. A best-selling author of cookbooks once told me, “I try at least once every one of my recipes before publishing them,” thus implying many other don't. If there are dishonest politicians, incompetent chief executive officers, and fornicating bishops, why not plagiarizing cookbook writers?

*

Speaking of crooks: why do you think Bernard Madoff wasn't exposed for twenty years? The answer is simple: Wall Street if full of them. Exposing him would have meant exposing themselves. And now that the bonus scandal has exploded, I am looking forward to the second act of the play – investigations, hearings, and indictments. As for the third act, I expect, very much like Watergate, it will end in the resignation, arrests, trials, and incarceration not only of CEOs but also of politicians and other fat cats. Unless of course there are so many of them that both Wall Street and Washington would be paralyzed.

#

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

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THE PLACEBO EFFECT

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All talk of Historic Armenia belongs to the realm of archeology. In a political context, it makes as much sense as Historic Macedonia, Mongolia, or, closer to home, America.

*

There are so many laws and lawyers that protect the interests of the wealthy that even God wouldn't dare to challenge them.

*

Whenever a fellow Armenian contradicts me, I cannot help suspecting that he is too smart to be in a position to plead ignorance, and that his disagreement is more like a game, a challenge, or a thoughtlessly adopted political agenda.

*

A movement that fails to evolve a leader is as doomed as one that evolves two of them.

*

To label ideas as pro- or anti-Armenian can be misleading because what may be in our interests today may be against the Reality Principle tomorrow, as our revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire discovered. After all, not all wars of liberation end in liberation, and “freedom or death” makes sense only if it means freedom for the majority. To confuse the placebo effect of some ideas with objective reality may result in disaster.

#

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

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READING

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Books are my favorite companions. I don't care where I live as long as there is a good library in the neighborhood. Between a hell with books and a heaven without them, I would choose hell any day.

Once, a few years ago, after observing the monotony of my daily routine and drab surroundings, a childhood friend commented, in my place he would have committed suicide. He promised to share his home and wealth with me if I agreed to return to Athens. Shortly thereafter he went bankrupt and died of a heart attack. I was reminded of this episode while reading Christopher Isherwood's mammoth DIARIES (1048 pages). In almost every other entry he speaks of encounters and conversations with the likes of Thomas Mann, Aldous Huxley, Greta Garbo, and Krishnamurti. And yet, he suffers from fits of depression and requires the constant care of quacks, shrinks, and swamis. There are endless passages about dreams, nightmares, meditation techniques, yoga, and mystical nonsense – passages I now skip for the sake of entries like the following:

“After dinner, Aldous [Huxley] and I got in a corner. He was a little drunk, and started on a favorite topic: the poorness of all literature. Homer was terribly overrated, Dante was hopelessly limited, Shakespeare was such a stupid man, Goethe was such a bore, Tolstoy was silly, etc. etc.” (page 92).

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, March 26, 2009

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ON REVOLUTION

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The average layman may not understand the exact meaning of subprime mortgages, hedge funds, toxic assets, derivatives, and all the complexities of the present economic crisis, but he understands greed when he sees it, and recognizes a bloodsucker when he sees one.

Anger is negative, we are told. Anger does not solve problems.

Where would revolutions be without anger?

Where would America be without its Revolution?

Americans today, especially the homeless and the unemployed who number by the million, have many more reasons to be angry and to revolt against their financial officers on Wall Street and representatives in Washington than they had against the mad English king.

You say, anger is negative?

I say, what could be more positive than anger against corruption, greed, incompetence, and injustice?

*

Even if they are allowed to keep their bonuses, the CEOs will spend it in fear, they will live in fear, and they may even go underground for the duration. Some day they may even realize that accepting those bonuses was the dumbest thing they ever did.

*

Organized religions have victimized more innocent civilians than organized crime. The same could be said of organized ideologies, including nationalism, communism, and capitalism.

*

Under a corrupt or authoritarian regime, law and order might as well be synonymous with fear and lawlessness.

#

Thursday, March 26, 2009

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RIFFRAFF

***********************************************

A so-called young financial expert on TV speaking of Wall Street chief executive officers: “Their salaries could be as low as $75,000...they survive on bonuses...”

Bernard Madoff ruined about 5000 investors. Wall Street CEOs ruined the global economy. They should be grateful that so far they haven't been arrested. The very least they can do is work for minimum wage until they correct their blunders. But of course, not being a financial expert, I can rely only on my common sense, which, it seems, flies out the window when applied to Wall Street riffraff. And this so-called young whippersnapper thinks he will be quelling the anger of the unemployed and homeless on the grounds that these poor CEOs work for next to nothing?

*

Speaking of American movies, a French critic once described them as “technical perfection in the service of cretinism.” What we have here is financial expertise in the service of moronism!

Consider the following scenario: Your house is on fire. Firefighters arrive and after pouring gasoline instead of water they expect you to be grateful to them. Thank you for doing such a great job. Here, please accept this small check as a token of my appreciation.

*

Another scenario: You hire a contractor to fix your old house. He in turn hires electricians, plumbers, dry-wallers, roofers, and so on. But by the time they are through the house is torn down as in the story of the big bad wolf and the three little pigs. At which point, the contractor demands to be paid the agreed on amount plus a bonus.

*

We are told the CEOs who bankrupted AIG have already quit. So what? Let's get them back and let them work for a dollar a year. Liddy is doing it. Is decency on Wall Street limited to only one CEO?

*

Once upon a time, when Communists spoke of Wall Street, they meant everything that was evil in the capitalist system. Who could have foreseen that some day Wall Street would be perceived as such by the whole world, including Americans?

#

Saturday, March 28, 2009

***********************************************

MEN AND WOMEN

***********************************************

According to a study conducted by a Vatican theologian, men and women are tempted by the same sins but in different order of frequency. Men are tempted by women, food, laziness, anger, vanity, envy, and avarice; and women by vanity, envy, anger, men, food, avarice, and laziness.

*

THE SINS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT

**********************************************

To support only writers who are pro-establishment is to be against literature and for prostitution.

*

A NEW BOOK

*************************

In a recent issue of LE POINT (Paris, March 3, 2009) I read the following ad for Gilbert Sinoué's EREVAN:

“The great novel of the Armenian people.”

“A great novel that speaks of a terrible truth.”

“Written with intense emotion, but also with justice.”

“Gilbert Sinoué makes us relive the tragedy of an entire people.”

*

CARLOS FUENTES

*******************************

“It makes no difference whether you surrender your ass or your conscience: you will get them back in bad shape.”

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, March 29, 2009

***********************************************

WHERE WE STAND

***********************************************

Russians gave communism a bad name and Americans did the same with capitalism. The next “fail-safe” or “best” system, whatever it may be, will also bite the dust by its dedicated supporters as surely as communism and capitalism. It is almost as if the destiny of the best were to be the worst.

*

Armenianism: the triumph of dogmatism over solidarity.

*

It is the most assertive among us that are the most insecure.

*

What we are is not a monolithic structure but fragments of what we could have been.

*

We are constantly bombarded by lies that encourage us to hate our fellow men. It is almost as if the function of our “betters” were to make us worse.

*

Pablo Neruda: “I only know the skin of the earth, / And it has no name.” After “All men are brothers,” the best argument against nationalism.

*

I see a clear parallel between what contemporary composers have done to music, what artists have done to art, what politicians have done to statesmanship, with what economists have done to the global economy.

#

Monday, March 30, 2009

***********************************************

SOCRATES

*******************

“We approach truth only in the proportion as we are farther from life.”

*

ON OBJECTIVITY

***************************

Objectivity and passionate involvement are mutually exclusive concepts – unless of course one develops the difficult art of thinking against oneself, which means assuming one is wrong even when – especially when – one is absolutely certain of one's moral superiority and infallible judgment.

*

ON UNDERSTANDING

*******************************

To understand and solve a problem, one must be objective, and one must be objective for purely selfish reasons – to improve one's chances of survival. Cultures that are not tolerant of objectivity or dissent (in this context, two words that might as well be synonymous) have a short lifespan. Think of the Soviets, the Nazis, the regime of the Young Turks, and more recently, the Nixon administration. Closer to home, think of all the dissenting voices in the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the last century that were ignored by our revolutionaries who to this day emphasize their heroism instead of questioning their judgment.

*

DEFINING EVIL

******************************

To know what must be done and not do it.

To know that what one does is wrong but do it anyway.

To know that “a house divided against itself cannot stand” and to divide it anyway.

*

WORTH REPEATING

******************************

The surest way of moronizing a nation is to brainwash the people into believing they are not just smart but smarter than any other nation, and anyone who dares to say otherwise is an enemy of the people. I speak from experience. The more moronized I was, the smarter I thought i was.

#

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

***********************************************

STRANGE BUT TRUE

************************************

What a strange world we live in!

Chief executive Rick Wagoner (the one who traveled to Washington by private jet to ask for a handout) is getting $23 million for bankrupting General Motors as the management is demanding more concessions from the workers.

*

The best argument against women's intuition and men's IQ (if such a thing exists) is the high rate of divorce.

*

In the struggle for justice there are no losers. Even if you lose you may inspire others to carry on the struggle, or you may wear down the opposition even if it is by an invisible fraction of an inch.

*

No one can be as ignorant, or rather, as infatuated with his own ignorance, as he who pretends to know and understand everything. I would even go as far as saying, the safest way of judging a man's knowledge and understanding is by the number of times he is willing to say “I don't know” and “I don't understand.”

*

One of the most difficult things in politics is separating friend from foe – especially the kind of foe who knows all the right words and can easily guess what it is exactly that you want to hear.

*

It is only after the obvious solution is rejected that a problem is declared insoluble.

#

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

***********************************************

DON'T BE A FOOL!

************************************

A wise man (it may have been Aldous Huxley) once said that our planet is the insane asylum of the universe.

It is said, “There are forty-three kinds of insanity.”

Or, to paraphrase Tolstoy, “Every insane person is insane in his own way.”

There is a school of psychology that says, since the social order in which we live in is insane, the function of psychiatry is to replace one form of insanity with another.

Consider the case of Christians who believe the Bible to be the source of all wisdom, including scientific knowledge.

Chief executive officers who believe they deserve million-dollar bonuses after bankrupting not only their business but also the global economy.

After reading one of my commentaries, a Mekhitarist monk is quoted as having said: “He is an intellectual and all intellectuals eventually go insane.” Which may suggest that we are better at diagnosing insanity in others than in ourselves. Either that or we assume to be the norm and any deviation we label as insane.

We may know how to survive, but do we know how to live?

We brag about our literature but we suppress free speech.

Don't be taken in by appearances.

Don't believe everything you read in the papers.

There are as many lies in the speeches of our speechifiers and the sermons of our sermonizers than there are forms of insanity.

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, April 2, 2009

***********************************************

THE UNANSWERED QUESTION

************************************

It is said of the 18th-century French aristocracy that they knew how to live. Yes, that they did. They knew how to live alright! What they didn't know – which is infinitely more important than what they knew – was how to survive.

With us it's the other way around: we know how to survive, or so we are brought up to believe, but not how to live.

If we use the word survival only in reference to the nation, and if by nation we mean the regime, yes, we may qualify as survivors. The questions to be asked at this point are:

What kind of survival is it that requires the death of millions of innocent civilians, including our best and brightest?

What kind of survival is it that places the survival of the regime above the survival of the people?

What kind of survival is it that allows the regime to brainwash the people into believing that it is our patriotic duty to serve the regime?

Serving the regime is a fascist concept. In a democracy, it is the state that serves the people (not the other way around), which is why politicians are referred to as public servants.

But that's not the end of the story, which in our case happens to be not so much a comedy of errors as a tragedy of fallacies, or again, as a perversion of priorities.

Now then, let us suppose for the sake of argument that your family perishes and you are the sole survivor. Do you then go around bragging about your own survival? I don't think so! And yet, this is what we are encouraged to do to perpetuate the lie that we never had it so good because we are in the best of hands.

A final question: We may indeed know how to survive, but do our leaders know how to govern?

#

Thursday, April 3, 2009

***********************************************

4 STORIES / 4 MORALS

************************************

1.

The Pope holds shares in the Casino at Monte Carlo.

*

2.

After bankrupting the global economy, chief executive officers collect million-dollar bonuses.

*

3.

Priests make a comfortable living by exploiting someone else's crucifixion.

*

4.

Turcocentric ghazetajis try to make a name for themselves by exploiting the martyrdom of innocent victims.

#

Moral I: When you reach the top, the rules of the game no longer apply.

*

Moral II: The rules governing underdogs do not apply to top dogs.

*

Moral III: When it comes to taking care of number one, all rules are suspended.

*

Moral IV: After declaring yourself to be on the side of the angels, you may forge an alliance with the devil.

#

Saturday, April 4, 2009

***********************************************

AS OTHERS SEE US

************************************

Did Princess Diana (may she rest in peace) have one, or is it two, drops of Armenian blood in her veins? Was Guderian of blitzkrieg fame an Armenian? Why should anyone give a damn? It seems to me we are so hungry for celebrity that nothing would make us happier if someone were to prove that Hitler's or Stalin's great-great mother or father was half- or even one-quarter Armenian.

*

We have a great many writers today who write as Armenians. I for one would like to write as a human being. We are all born as human beings but somewhere along the line we are carefully educated to identify ourselves with a specific group, after which we are told all kinds of lies about that group and it makes no difference which group it is.

*

We are brainwashed to justify our regime's failings by saying we are a young democracy. We are also informed that Armenia is “the cradle of civilization.” Figure that one out if you can.

*

If I were to meet an Azeri today and if I were to identify myself as an Armenian to him, my guess is he would see in me someone with a bloodthirsty disposition. I am told Azeris today identify Armenians as “the Israelis of the Caucasus,” and when a Muslim calls you an Israeli, take my word for it, that ain't no compliment.

*

Hanging a label on a fellow human being is the beginning of all crimes against humanity. Azeri refugees today think of Armenians the way Armenians think of Turks. Have I said this before? Readers accustomed to hearing old lies expect me to come up with new truths. To them I say, the number of truths is limited and nothing that is true is ever new.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, April 5, 2009

***********************************************

THE CHARITY OF SWINE

************************************

We are told the favorite reading matter of Roman emperors was epic poems glorifying their deeds. Which reminds me of a book I once wrote for an Armenian publisher subsidized by one of our national benefactors in which his (benefactor's) name wasn't mentioned. Though the book was a success (three printings in as many years) the publisher was fired.

*

Roman emperors, Ottoman sultans, Soviet commissars, Armenian benefactors, Wall Street chief executive officers: they expect to be brown-nosed and rewarded even when they make a mess of things. They want smart people working for them but not smart enough to see their limitations. They support free speech provided it doesn't expose their failings.

*

The wealthy think of the poor as lazy parasites. The poor return the compliment by viewing the wealthy as a bunch of bloodsuckers.

*

Some of the worst blunders in the history of mankind were committed by men who assumed to know better.

*

In the world of high finance, the lower in the totem pall you are, the more checks and balances you have to deal with.

*

I think of my schooldays in Venice when the Mekhitarist monks charged us for the toilet paper we used. Then motivated by greed they trusted the wrong investment firm and lost everything.

#

Monday, April 6, 2009

***********************************************

HUMAN NATURE EXPLAINED

************************************

“In his place I would have done the same thing.” There is more truth in that sentence than in many treatises on understanding and human nature.

*

“...tribalism has impeded African progress. What Africa needs is precisely such transmutations of tribal loyalties to the larger loyalties of nationhood.”

Why is it that none of our pundits dares to say as much about us?

*

Both Turks and Armenians are naïve dupes in so far as they believe in the lies of their own political leaders, the biggest lie being that as civilized people they are incapable of violating anyone's human rights, let alone committing crimes against humanity. Butter would not melt in their mouths -- or anywhere else for that matter.

*

Reality is versatile in its production of facts and by carefully selecting some and ignoring or rejecting others one can justify anything. Theologians, ideologues, historians, and propagandists in general are fully aware of this phenomenon and like lawyers they go about their business with ruthless dishonesty.

*

Somewhere Alain writes that we conceive of birth as something that happened in the past and of death as something that will happen in the future. But in reality, he tells us, they are both ongoing processes. Every moment that passes is a preview of death, and it is up to us to be reborn as human beings “today, now, immediately, it is our only chance.”

#

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

***********************************************

TWO FASCINATING WRITERS

************************************

In his DIARIES, Christopher Isherwood speaks of several encounters with Lesley Blanch (then wife of Romain Gary) but at no time does he mention that she is the author of SABRES OF PARADISE, one of the most fascinating books ever written on the Caucasus, and one of the very few books that I have read three times -- the others being THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN (Mann), LOLITA (Nabokov), and Toynbee's RECONSIDERATIONS.

Simenon is mentioned only once to be dismissed as “a dreary little mind.”

In my twenties and for about ten years Simenon became an obsession. I read everything that I could locate in libraries and bookstores. He wrote under several pseudonyms and may have published as many as five hundred book, and slept with as many women, he never tired of boasting in interviews, and did so to enhance his understanding, he would explain. I think it was Gide who first compared him to Chekhov.

In a 1960 entry, Isherwood quotes Leon Surmelian as having said: “...among Armenians who come to America, it is always the third-rate who succeed,” and “Armenians are either businessmen or dreamers.”

I remember once when I wrote Surmelian a letter proposing an interview, he turned me down and said he had just published an essay in the weeklies and I was welcome to comment on it in a letter to the editor.

#

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

***********************************************

ISHERWOOD AND WHITMAN

************************************

By skipping passages dealing with Ramakrishna, Krishnamurti, assorted swamis and gurus, and mercenary Hollywood producers, I was able to finish Christopher Isherwood's mammoth DIARIES. May I confess that what I enjoyed most are his one-liners on his fellow men and women:

On Charles Laughton: “stupid, vain and pretentious...an arrogant old fool.”

On Laura Huxley (Aldous Huxley's third and last wife): “[a] mannish well-tailored bitch.”

On Claire Bloom (who was to become Philip Roth's wife): “demure but probably quite a bit of a bitch.”

On Shelley Winters: “a blundering Jewish leftwing ass.”

On Izak (OUT OF AFRICA) Dinesen (Baroness Blixen): “a withered monkey.”

*

I am now reading Walt Whitman. Some of his lines are piercing in their precision, as when he speaks of animals:

“They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago...”

We need more Whitman in our lives and less sermonizers and speechifiers who rub salt in our wounds and promise heaven which is even more inaccessible to them than it is to the rest of us.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, April 12, 2009

********************************************

THE LANGUAGE OF DIPLOMACY

*************************************************

According to Talleyrand (see below) “Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.” Elsewhere he gives the following definition of non-intervention: “Mot metaphysique et politique qui signifie a peu pres la meme chose qu'intervention.” (A metaphysical and political word that means approximately the same thing as intervention.)

Had our revolutionaries known what Talleyrand knew, namely that, in diplomacy verbal support means the opposite of military intervention, the Genocide could have been averted.

What a difference a single word makes! No wonder medieval Jewish scribes copying the scriptures were warned a single wrong letter would mean the destruction of the world.

Which is why Turks are against the use of the word genocide: they know it would usher in escalating territorial and financial demands with no end in sight, in addition to legitimizing Kurdish territorial claims.

*

Talleyrand (1754-1838) maybe said to have been the French Mikoyan. No matter who was at the top he got along with him. He knew how to compromise, adapt, and survive. Like Mikoyan he was educated in a seminary and it was said of him (as it could have been said of Mikoyan): “He would sell his soul for money, and he would be right for he would be exchanging dung for gold.”

#

Monday, April 13, 2009

********************************************

MY FAVORITE AMERICAN WRITER

*************************************************

It was in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones that I first “met” Gandhi, and it was in Gandhi's writings that I first read about Thoreau. I dare anyone to read him (Thoreau) and not be infatuated by his down-to-earth honesty and style that does not take any prisoners.

*

On politicians: “Office-seekers and speech-makers who do not so much as lay an honest egg.”

*

On patriotism: “The remembrance of my country spoils my walk.”

*

On society: “Pigs in a littler which lie close together to keep each other warm.”

*

On wealth: “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”

*

On his fellow men: “The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.”

*

On his choice of career: “I have tried trade; but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil.”

#

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

********************************************

ON BLUNDERS

******************

Since the number of blunders is infinite and man's capacity to commit them without limit, both the young and the old, the experienced and the inexperienced, the careful and the careless, and the wise and the fool are destined to commit an equal number of them.

*

MAN AND GOD

**************************

If to believe in God were the same as believing in men who speak in His name, a suicidal terrorist would qualify as a man of faith instead of a brainwashed fanatic and a brainless dupe.

*

THE GOOD AND THE BAD

*************************************

In the presence of a bad man I am diminished. In the presence of a good man I am born again.

*

ON BEING HONEST

***********************************

One of the benefits of being honest is to be shunned by crooks.

*

ON ECOLOGY

******************************

God is not an ecologist. He exterminated dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers, the mammoth, and countless other species.

#

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

********************************************

DRAGON'S TEETH

***********************************

“The Passage du Commerce Saint-André” by Balthus is no doubt one of the most mysterious paintings by one of the most enigmatic modern painters. The old man in it is identified by Balthus himself as an Armenian. See BALTHUS: A BIOGRAPHY by Nicholas Fox Weber (New York, 1999), page 27.

I am reminded of the words of a much traveled Dutch doctor who once told me: “No matter where you go, you will run into an Armenian.”

If Talaat were alive today he would be willing to concede that deporting Armenians was a blunder because it amounted to sowing dragon's teeth.

*

In DICTIONARY OF LITERARY AND THEMATIC TERMS by Edward Quinn (New York, 2000), there is an entry on “naturalism,” with a single bibliographic source, Y.H. Krikorian's NATURALISM AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT (1944).

*

ON THE ART OF WRITING

******************************

Reduce a page into a single line.

*

ON THE ART OF LIVING

*****************************************

“Divorce reason and marry booze.” This according to Omar Khayyam.

*

ACCORDING TO HORACE

**************************************

“Poems written by water-drinkers have a short lifespan.”

*

ON LITERARY IMMORTALITY

******************************************

It lasts as long as the blink of an eye when measured in cosmic time.

*

MORE WORDS OF WISDOM

****************************************

Viscount Samuel: “It is those who strive to make things better who save them from becoming worse.”

*

The TALMUD: “Thy friend has a friend, and thy friend's friend has another friend: be discreet.”

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, April 16, 2009

********************************************

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

***********************************

You may have noticed that, when an intelligent man behaves stupidly, the reasons he invents to justify his conduct will be even more stupid.

*

A fanatic will always have more enemies than a moderate because he will arouse hostility among fanatics in the opposite camp as well as moderates in his own.

*

Even when our predictions come true they do so in such an unexpected manner or context that their accuracy becomes irrelevant.

*

It is not at all unusual for our chauvinists to preach Armenian civilization and to practice Ottoman barbarism.

*

Where a part-time janitor makes more money than a full-time writer, there will be an abundance of trashy propaganda and a total absence of ideas.

*

In all political movements, lust for power is invariably hidden behind noble slogans: the greater the lust, the nobler the slogans.

*

The nobler the idea or ideology, the more crooks it will attract.

#

Friday, April 17, 2009

********************************************

CONTEMPT

***********************************

A couple of weeks ago I was exposed to a long televised lecture on solidarity and the primacy of Etchmiadzin by a former members of the Communist Party from the Homeland, that is to say, a full-time professional divider and atheist.

Because as an orphan during World War I my mother was brought up as a Catholic by nuns, my schoolmates made fun of me and treated me as a lesser Armenian, perhaps even a coward and a renegade, all because, it seems, during the massacres, when Turkish soldiers came to arrest Armenians, the Catholics would say, “I am not an Armenian, I am a Catholic.”

A loud-mouth taxi-driver uncle of mine held me in visible contempt and even ridicule because I dared to have ambitions beyond his attainments.

The secretary of a so-called cultural foundation, himself a writer and teacher, once screamed at me: “How dare you criticize us? Just who the hell do you think you are?”

In recounting these very few but representative anecdotes, my aim here is not to preach mutual respect – that would be highly premature – but to provide an objective assessment of our present situation that may lead to an enhanced awareness of where we stand as a community and as a nation.

To those who tell me I write about our problems but fail to provide solutions, I add the following solutions to this particular problem: If you want to be loved, don't make yourself hateful; and if you want to be thought of as a smart Armenian, don't behave like a damn fool.

#

Saturday, April 18, 2009

********************************************

MY FAVORITE BIBLICAL ONE-LINERS

************************************************

“Where there is no vision the people perish.”

*

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

*

“The Kingdom of God is within you.”

*

ON CONTRADICTIONS

*************************************

There are two kinds of contradictions: (one) the kind that leads to compromise and synthesis, and (two) the dead-end, dogmatic, or Armenian kind that arrests progress because reason is replaced with ego. Result: no vision, a house divided, death and destruction – that is, the Kingdom of the Devil.

*

HEADLINE

*******************************

“I am proud of my Armenian ass,” reads the headline of an article about an attractive wench in one of our weeklies. This vulgar boast is preferable to me to still another headline by one of our Turcocentric ghazetajis.

*

QUESTION

**************************

What is the difference between pride in one's ass and pride in one's ego?

*

ANSWER

***********************

One way to sum up the plot of Homer's ILIAD is to say it is about a war of egos over the abduction of an ass that resulted in the destruction of Troy and the death of countless “esh nahadags.” Because he was blind, Homer could not see this aspect of his story. As a result, he glorified militarism and heroism.

#

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, April 19, 2009

********************************************

ON RECEIVED IDEAS

************************************************

At a time when I didn't know who Shakespeare was, I heard an adult say, “HAMLET is Shakespeare's greatest play.” I immediately adopted that line as dogma and repeated it whenever Shakespeare was mentioned, until I heard someone say, “I prefer MACBETH.”

If all ideas are open to contradiction, received ideas are doubly so.

“Notwithstanding what the Good Book says about divided houses,” a reader tells me, “there are benefits to being divided. If one part is defeated and perishes, the other survives. Perhaps that's the secret of our survival."

Maybe so, but what kind of life is it whose sole aim is survival? No doubt to survive is better than the alternative, but I believe, and I hope you will agree with me when I say, there are greater goals in a nation's life than mere survival.

Such as?

Such as creating a new civilization.

We did that once.

Which means we can do it again.

And how do we do that?

We begin by questioning the validity of all received ideas, one of them being that since to endure is one of our greatest achievements, we can now relax and say “yes” to whatever we are told by our “betters,” who on closer inspection may well be nothing of the kind. They may even be our worst!

#

Monday, April 20, 2009

********************************************

REFLECTIONS

************************************************

The fascist mind comes in two parts: the ideological and the criminal; and the function of the ideological is to camouflage the criminal.

*

Politicians who profess family values see nothing morally inconsistent in screwing the nation.

*

Because our enemies won, we were not allowed to name our traitors.

*

Like most Armenians, I have followed many controversies in our media, and I have witnessed many more, but I have at no time heard an Armenian say: "I was wrong!" or, even better, "I was dead wrong because I placed my own ego, interests, family, political party, church, or tribe above the interests of the nation."

*

A power structure that has all the answers will view questions as subversive.

*

A woman raising her skirt in public will attract a bigger audience than a writer spilling his guts out.

*

At one end of the spectrum we have decent human beings who happen to be Armenian, and at the other, carcinogenic agents who wrap themselves up in the flag in order to hide their true colors.

#

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

********************************************

VARIATIONS ON A FAMILIAR THEME

************************************************

We are told sex and violence in movies lower the moral standards of a nation. What we are not told is that intolerance in organized religions and ideologies, in addition to lowering moral standards, it claims many more innocent victims. Intolerance also divides a nation thus making it more vulnerable to rape and massacre (of the “red” as well as the “white” variants). Don't get me wrong. I am not advocating for more sex and violence in movies. What I am doing is exposing the double-talk of religious and political leaders who speak with a forked tongue and are believed by dupes.

*

The guiding principle of all men at the top is, if the truth will harm your power, prestige, and integrity, it's okay to lie your head off. But the problem with lies is that they invariably create a chain reaction of more lies until the truth is buried beneath them like a needle in a haystack. Case in point: If the Turks are bloodthirsty savages, why were we their most faithful subjects for six hundred years? And if we are smart and they are dumb, why is it that it took us six centuries to unmask them? And even more to the point: if they are pathological liars and we speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, why are we against dissent and free speech? What are we afraid of? And if we have produced more heroes per capital than any other nation on earth, allow me to pose the following question: What could be more cowardly than fear of free speech?

#

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

********************************************

WHY HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

************************************************

History repeats itself for the simple reason that the men at the top are bastards and the people are as gullible as children. Thoreau was right when he said Egypt would have been better off if the people had drowned the pharaohs in the Nile like dogs instead of building pyramids for them; and Shaw was also right when he said we would have no more wars if soldiers took aim and shot not at the enemy but at their own sergeants. One reason he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Soviets is that Russian soldiers in World War I did exactly that.

*

Homer was dead wrong when he decided not to quote Greeks who said they resented killing and dying in defense of the non-existent honor of a slut who happened to be the wife of an impotent fool.

*

I once heard one of our notorious bloodsuckers say, if he were to work for an odar organization, he would make twice as much. In nature, parasites do their work in silence; among us, they demand our gratitude.

*

Among my readers, I have critics (which is understandable), enemies (which is less so), and mortal enemies (whose hatred of me is so visceral that it might as well be Ottoman).

#

[arabaliozian]

Thursday, April 23, 2009

********************************************

ON SHRINKS

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After the composition of his First Piano Concerto, Rachmaninoff is said to have experienced a crisis during which he became convinced he had lost his creative impetus permanently. But after seeing a psychiatrist he recovered his creativity and composed his Second Piano Concerto, or so we are told by his biographers. What we are not told is that if he had not seen a shrink, maybe he would have composed nine symphonies. Marlon Brando was under constant psychiatric care and instead of getting better, he got worse, in addition to making an unholy mess of his private life and his physique. Neither Tolstoy nor Dostoevsky were ever treated by a shrink, and my guess is, their problems were worse than Rachmaninoff's and Brando's combined.

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Once upon a time, in the Middle Ages, we were celebrated for being good fighters. We still are, but only against the wrong enemy: ourselves.

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I write for two totally non-literary reasons: to fight boredom and to acquire friends; and with every book I have published, I have acquired a new friend; also (alas!) twenty-two enemies.

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There is no evidence to suggest that the average Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, or Jew is a better human being than the average agnostic or atheist. Which amounts to saying: all organized religions are more or less alike and very often they succeed only in legitimizing prejudice, promoting a false sense of moral superiority, and dehumanizing a fraction of mankind with such labels as pagans, heretics, infidels or giaours.

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Friday, April 24, 2009

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ARMENIAN MANIFESTO

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What choice did we have under the Ottomans and the Soviets?

Wrong question.

When we had a choice, we failed to present a united front to the enemy.

And what made our enemies invincible was their solidarity.

Let's not lose sight of that fundamental fact, which our dividers do their utmost to cover up in order to appear

(a) to be blameless, and

(b) to continue dividing us.

Blameless?

Why do you think General Antranik wanted to see them hanged from the nearest tree?

Why do you think Zarian called them “cannibals”?

And please,don't tell me our sermonizers, speechifiers, and Turcocentric ghazetajis know better than Zarian, the General, and Charents, whose final “Message” mentions neither Turks nor Russians.

Let's not have any illusions about our men at the top, who like Wall Street chief executive officers, care more about their powers and privileges than the welfare of the nation. Which is why, at the risk of repeating myself, I will say again:

Armenians of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your dividers.

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Saturday, April 25, 2009

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MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

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It is not easy writing for readers who already know everything they need to know, even if what they really know happens to be recycled mumbo jumbo.

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Work hard, but not too hard: you may be digging your own grave.

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Authority thrives on ignorance. Where there are leaders (as opposed to public servants) there will be spin doctors, cover-up artists, an uninformed community, and dupes.

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From nature’s point of view, chastity is a far more dangerous sexual perversion than all the others combined.

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Venetian saying: "The priest’s friend loses his faith, the doctor’s his health, the lawyer’s his fortune."

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Schopenhauer: "We pay an attention to the opinion of others which is out of all proportion to its value."

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When midgets are in charge, giants become outlaws.

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Ara Baliozian reads the Armenians, yo’

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by Christopher Atamian

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Published: Saturday April 18, 2009

"Lying is done with words and also ­silence." -Adrienne Rich

The poetic genre known as the aphorism goes back at least to Hippocrates, in 5th-century B.C.E. Greece. The word aphorism derives from the Greek aphorismos and denotes an original and easily remembered thought, expression, or witticism. Popular aphorists of the past include Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, and Erasmus. Armenians have a practitioner of this rarefied art as well, and he goes by the name of Ara Baliozian.

The author of some 20 books of prose, poetry, and plays, as well as translations of Armenian writers such as Zabel Yessayan and Kostan Zarian, Baliozian was born in Athens, attended the now-­defunct College Moorat-Raphael in Venice, and currently resides in Kitchener, Ontario. His newest work, a slim volume (56 pages) titled Pertinentes Impertinences, is a series of reflections and aphorisms in French translated from English by Denis Donikian, Mireille ­Besnilian, and Dalita Roger, and published last year by Arvesd Aysor in Yerevan.

Baliozian writes about a wide range of topics and people, though he seems particularly at home when perhaps justifiably lambasting Armenian politicians and leaders. Baliozian takes no prisoners - intellectual or otherwise. This hasn't necessarily made him the most popular writer in the Armenian diaspora, though an increasing number of people now read his work with passion and a deep-seated sense of appreciation for his daring to say what so many others think. Whether Baliozian's views represent those of an enlightened minority or of a silent majority, his work should be read by every Armenian, especially when they are young and in their formative stages, as a means of opening their minds to different ideas and ways of thinking about their culture.

In a sense, Baliozian is heir to the Armenian writers before him who dared to analyze and constructively criticize Armenian society. The Armenian mind that Baliozian deconstructs so ably is a direct descendant of the mentality that Hagop Oshagan describes in novels such as Mnatsortats and Haji Murad and that Constantinopolitan writers such as Krikor Zohrab wrote about before the Catastrophe of 1915. "If you want to understand Armenians," Baliozian writes, "don't read their nationalist historians; read instead a history of Armenian literature. The only reason we don't burn writers the way Indians burn widows is that we prefer to ignore them, which amounts to burying them alive." Baliozian on the sacred cows of Armenian culture: "Because I refuse to share their obsession with massacres and money, they call me negative. One way to be positive in their eyes is to adopt ‘Yes, sir!' as a mantra.'" (Both quoted from baliozian.blogspot.com. All quotes that follow are from Pertinentes Impertinences.)

Baliozian's oeuvre is in point of fact rather subversive. He uses repetition to his advantage and hammers away at his iconoclastic thoughts and ideas in the same way that the Armenian press and powers that be have drilled their own propaganda into Armenian minds and hearts for centuries now. It's a welcome counterbalance. While no one would deny, for example, the terrible suffering that successive Ottoman and Turkish governments have inflicted on Armenians and on the Armenian psyche, Baliozian is quick to confront the type of knee-jerk anti-Turkism that portrays Turks as somehow more cruel or barbaric by nature than others: "Our magazines regularly publish so many anti-Turkish commentaries that if our editors were to define what it means to be Armenian, I would imagine they would define it as hating Turks. And to think that these are the exact same people who criticize me under the pretext that I am a repetitive pessimist." (p. 18)

Baliozian's writing is also an intelligent and sometimes humorous call to introspection and societal self-criticism: "An Armenian-American composer admitted to me one day: ‘I hope that Armenians won't support me. I'd be grateful if they spared me their hostility.'" (p. 49) When analyzing the current Armenian craze for all things Gorky, Baliozian recalls the following: "Speaking of Arshile Gorky, one of our elder statesmen once told me: ‘Not a single Armenian bought a painting from Gorky while he was alive.'?" (p. 49)

The author is at his most incisive when taking on taboos in Armenian intellectual history and commenting on the behavior of certain contemporary leaders: "Our charlatans tell us that our patrons, bishops, and do-gooders know better than we do because they speak in the name of God and Capital. And when God and Capital speak, the scribblers are meant to shut their mouths and listen. Otherwise their mouths must be shut for them, that is to say, cut their tongues cut out, in good old Ottoman fashion." (p. 27)

There is isn't much to criticize about Pertinentes Impertinences apart from the fact that Baliozian, perhaps weary of repeating the same mantras that go unheeded, may indeed at times begin to sound repetitive. Baliozian's observations, however, are about as close as any contemporary Armenian writer comes to getting at the truth of things. And as the commonplace aphorism states, the truth will set you free. A fitting coda to this piece and to Baliozian's work comes from Kingsley Amis, whom the author quotes as saying: "If you don't disturb anybody with what you write, then I think there's no point in writing." (p. 47)

All (re)-translations of Baliozian's writing from French to English were made by Christopher Atamian.

[arabaliozian]

Sunday, April 26, 2009

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ELEGY

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An American chief executive officer – young, handsome, healthy, fabulously wealthy – has committed suicide. One down, ninety-nine to go.

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Two American governors, Spitzer and Blogojevich, were caught red-handed. One resigned, the other impeached. But to me, the greater scandal is the fact that several of Obama's financial advisers are former Wall Street chief executive officers. If it takes one to catch one, how come no one has been caught yet? Bernie Madoff? If he is in jail today it's because he confessed. And then there are the senators who deny the reality of the Genocide not because they are convinced that to be the truth but because they are being handsomely compensated by Turkish lobbyists.

*

The rich are swine. Even as I curse my fate, I thank God for making me poor.

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What is the penalty for being wrong? If nothing, anyone can say anything he wants.

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To be easily satisfied with one’s own arguments is an unmistakable symptom of advanced cretinism.

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Monday, April 27, 2009

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LIVE AND LEARN

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When it comes to learning about oneself, friends are useless, enemies more valuable.

*

Repeating oneself and being consistently negative are not mortal sins; being dishonest is.

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A hundred years ago our political leaders were naïve daydreamers. Today they are – or rather they think they are – pragmatic operators. I have trouble deciding which is worse: being at the mercy of fools, or idiots who think they are smart?

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Let others speak of the American dream, we can speak only of the Armenian nightmare.

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What kind of loving Father is He that needs to be constantly reminded to “give us this day our daily bread,” after which He lets millions die of malnutrition and starvation.

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You begin to learn only after you unlearn what you have been taught. Likewise, you begin to write only after you give up all literary ambitions.

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I am grateful to readers who don't think highly of me. The temptation to believe sycophants can be overwhelming.

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When experts disagree, prejudice casts the deciding vote.

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Because the prodigal son returned, the fatted calf was butchered. Good news for the guilty son, bad news for the innocent calf. Why couldn't they have a vegetarian feast?

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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

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FEEDBACK

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Do not bother reading what follows because I have said it before, and many others have said it before me.

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Some readers tell me I make them laugh. Others say I depress them. I suggest it's not me they are talking about but our reality.

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I wish I were a comedian. The ability to make people laugh at themselves I consider one of the rarest of all gifts.

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We all have our share of failings, limitations, and blind spots. In religious parlance, we are all sinners, including saints. That's Naregatsi's message, in case you are not willing to take my word for it. With one difference. Some of us pretend otherwise, and they happen to be the worst, and it's their awareness of their condition that makes them compensate by assuming a holier-than-thou stance.

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To my critics I say, criticize, if you must, the incompetence of our political leaders, the values of our merchants, the dogmas of our bishops, and the double-talk of our superpatriotic bloodsuckers. Do not shoot our critics, who like piano players in western saloons, are doing their best.

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AMERICANISMS

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“What's your racket?”

“I am not a crook.”

“Do bears shit in the forest?”

“Does the Pope speak Latin?”

And the other day in a movie:

“Does the Pope shit in the forest?”

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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

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SKELETONS IN THE CUPBOARD

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FIRST NATION?

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Love our enemies?

We can't even stop hating one another.

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EITHER / OR?

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“Do you think of yourself as a success or a failure?”

Very much like the overwhelming majority of my fellow men, I think of myself as a working stiff.

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MIRACLES

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There are two kinds of miracles:

(one) useless – like walking on water; and

(two) dangerous – like promoting alcoholism by turning water into wine.

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MEMOIRS

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One reason I went into writing is that I hate working for nonentities who expect you to behave like a lesser nonentity – and all for minimum wage. I know now that writing for Armenians is no different – minus the minimum wage, of course.

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WINNERS AND LOSERS

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“Just because you are a loser, it doesn't follow so is the nation. Stop projecting!”

I think of myself as someone who speaks of reality in an environment dominated by propagandists who speak of fantasy, which allows them to see moral victory in military defeat, and a Higher Truth in a Big Lie.

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