Anthologist: Hasmin Simonian
Preface: Thanassis Moussopoulos
Translator: Stergia Kavvalou
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Anahit Hayrapetyan, Anna Davtyan, Eduard Harents, Hasmik Simonian, Karen Antashyan, Karén Karslyan, Lusine Yeghyan, Tatev Chakhian, Vahe Arsen, Artur Mesropyan.
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Speech and silence: a poetic link between young male and female Armenian creators
My neighborhood in Xanthi, the town where I grew up, had a lot of Armenian men and women. My mom had friends, and I knew a few kids. There were also a great number of Armenian shops in the town market. Growing up, I learned their history and the suffering they were forced to endure. Later on, I read their texts and mainly their poetry, which goes a very long, long way back.
I came to love and admire the poets of Armenia, of the diaspora, of decades of decimation and genocide. For nearly four decades now, I have lectured and written about Armenian poetry. I will repeat a fragment from one of my past articles: “The so-called conquerors, no matter how extensively they tamper with the material elements of a culture, be they temples, statues and icons, are incapable of erasing the song, the fable and the verse from the common people’s lips overnight. Armenian poetry exists and continues to travel its path throughout the entire planet, serving as an honest witness of the plight of a people whose rights are either silenced or undercut in favor of interests”.
Nevertheless, I will set history aside and return to the present, since I know all too well that the present embraces not only the past, but the future as well.
I was particularly pleased to see a translation of poems from ten young Armenian poets. I very much enjoyed the translation produced by Stergia Kavvalou.
This anthology features ten young creators, five men and five women, whose average age is 35 years. The women in this anthology are on average younger than the men (32.4 years and 37.6 years, respectively). If I was to provide a crude interpretation of this phenomenon, I would suggest that maybe women compose and publish poetry at an earlier age than men. The youngest female poet is 25 years old; the oldest male poet is 41.
Although Armenian poetry is loaded with so many things, in the works of contemporary creators we breathe the modern air of life, nature, city and soul.
Let us attempt to take a short poetic stroll amidst the verses of the men and women featured in the anthology.
One theme of vital importance is poetry itself:
Write a poem to live more softly
I translate poems
when I desire to be different than my other self
the one who writes.
The new poems creak
the old poems remains silent.
Poetry is dead
they say
If poetry is dead
I am a necrophiliac
Contemporary creators are also very much interested in communication, love and romance:
A hand slowly cuts the vein
that unites my body with yours.
The circumstances in which people touch one
another
become rarer and rarer.
I loved you madly in each and every moment
and nothing could sway me,
[…]
and my love could stay in the imagination,
as fresh snow underneath my naked feet
I love the warmth of your hands
Nature and mankind constitute as a highly sensitive subject for Armenian men and women:
The lake is gleaming behind the snowless trees.
Find a way to speak, it says. There is some way.
Now that I cannot detach myself from the earth and I am unwilling
to come down from the sky
I love the hands of villagers as much as myself…
The city in poetry stands as a symbol for compromise, departure and problems:
We are eternally nested
within empty folds, we never loved the bodies
and the flesh
Every so often they bomb the sky
With a thousand tons of laughter
[…]
The siren was screaming
while I was googling
[…] this city reminds you
That for love, the age of despair begins…
Away from all complexities, which force us
to believe, that the base of the volcano is the best
place to lean on and think about the meteorites
Another aspect is a philosophical and political mood, whose ultimate aim is peace and creation:
The truth comes from two sides:
One is mine,
The other is yours.
I don’t know where the two must meet.
War is shattered
Peace is a collage made from all these splinters
The blank page runs
The risk
Of becoming
The monster
That makes war
In poetry, and generally in art, what’s really important is not only speech, but also silence. Tatev Chakhian declares: I will always have the privilege to silently agree. Anahit Hayrapetyan, on the other hand, objects: when I burst into tears, I will feel complete / I will open up my insides to show it to you. Arthur Mesropyan, in turn, argues: We are young and miserable. And Vahe Arsen’s powerful remark commands: Seize the moment. The music of speech and silence:
Let the prelude play, when the words end
and turn into a meaningless repetition,
the lips begin to whistle
and could this by any chance mean that the revolution has already began?
I love you, like the violin loves the thin shoulder of a young girl
In closing, I would like to express my joy for experiencing a fresh poetic view with people who, despite being far away, are nevertheless very close to us. They are connected by a link that is very old and very contemporary at the same time. Because:
My grandfather left two fables behind
(I remember the beginning of the first, and the end of the second)
and this damned headache.
Oh God, I am pregnant, pregnant, pregnant
with the revolution
Thanasis Mousopoulos
Philologist, writer, poet