On the occasion of the 75th anniversary
Summary
Tadevos A. Khachatryan
Key words – Poetry, ontology, classic, text, culture, language, essence, reading, orientation, time, philosophy, modernism, science.
Unfortunately it can not be stated that the Armenian poetry is widely recognized outside Armenia, at least as far as we would like it to be, and thet fact makes our suggestions somehow conditional. In the Armenian poetry of the last century, there are three key changes in discourse, which are much more significant than ideological dissension. Thus, Teryan and Metsarents finally resolved the conflicts of the 19th century between history and poetry in favor of poetry. With the advent of Sevak the conflict between the individual and the collective was resolved in favour of the individual. And the third change concerns postsevak period when the “ego” is rejected in favor of the essence, that is when, according to Agamben – the subject, not the person creates poetry.
For Henrik Edoyan literature is primarily a discipline, a way of life, a ground, the only way to confront the chaos of life. For him, language is a new city, but with no mazes and old buildings. It’s not the century who speaks in his city, but the time.
The origins of Edoyan’s poetry are different. His poems often refer to the sources, that cover virtually all the areas of cultural map. His poems are very rich in overtones, so that sometimes it seems that the text disappears. Edoyan’s cultural orientation toward the West could become the cornerstone of his poetry, if the West was not so materialistic. As such could be considered the East, if the immateriality of the latter would not lead to abstractionism. In short, the East and the West intersect in his poetry as a cultural dimension, where the only link between them is the Word. Edoyan does not accept a linear concept of time and its irreversibility. “Endless pattern of eternity” that exists outside of time.
Edoyan is an exceptional urbanist, which is another feature that makes him different from pantheists and dialects’ enthusiasts living in the city.
Edoyan created himself as a thinker and personality. His poetry is of great importance for the understanding of contemporary poetry’s epistemology. Many of his poems are a kind of meditation.
At the moment when pseudo-modernism becomes dominant, the real modernism represented by Edoyan becomes classics.