On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the poet
Summary
Suren S. Abrahamyan
The poem “Requiem” published in 1969 is the most significant work in Razmik Davoyan’s poetic legacy. That is one of the masterpieces of Armenian poetry of the last half-century which expresses the way of development of the poetry of the post-Sevak period whose worldview, poetics is extremely complex and has not yet been analyzed. Therefore, this analysis is the first literary attempt that offers a unique starting point for interpretation.
In general, Davoyan’s way of poetry, starting from the 60s of the last century, is the search for the song that is transformed into a melody. The word corresponds to the song that is born before things and is not a metaphor, and the melody corresponds to the spirit that expresses the substratum of the word. That is why the word bears the echo of the melody which is embodied in things, “fills the universe with life”, jingles in the depths of the melody that lives forever, like the instant in cosmic peace. Therefore, the poet’s word has an ontological substratum that seeks the purity of the poetics and the melody. The loss of the word is therefore the loss of the melody, and the loss of the melody is the destruction of the word, the elimination of the meaning that is probably the loss of life. Consequently, the poet’s reliance is the word that is reborn within the melody, lives with it, is resurrected, as below, above. But the melody is above, the word is below.
The substratum of the song, then, descends from the top down, embodying the word that radiates the meaning of existence. Davoyan’s “Requiem”, which sounds like a melody, mourns the song and the loss of the word. Figuratively speaking, it is like the mystery of the cross that descends from the top down as a melody to connect the word with the upper sphere. And below strives up to sound like its
melody. Thus, in the poem “Requiem”, Davoyan is looking for the prototype of the word, the soul, the antecedent song, which contemporaries call poetry. The tragedy and tragical, however, lies there that the distorted song, like a tortured woman like a ghost, wanders from heaven to earth as a pillar of light leading to Golgotha, looking for itself in chaos. That is why God has become a probable god, a probablespirit, like a ghost of a true song. But our spirit struggles. The yearning for the song has made us sick. But the roads do not save us, though our souls sing the song of the road. A faithless nomad, strange and horrific, appears on our way again and says, “Your song is sung”. Not only the person but also the song is a martyr that has been persecuted as much as our way has persecuted us again.