Category Archives: LITERARY CRITICISM

Hrant Matevosyan and Sergei Dovlatov

Summary

David V. Petrosyan

Key words – civilization environment, bells lettres, H. Matevosyan, S. Dovlatov, totalitarianism, literature, freedom to create, author, narrator, F. Braudel, archetypal symbol.

Based on the novels “Hangover” by H. Matevosyan and “Reserve” by S. Dovlatov, the article discusses the relations of political environment and narrative art, which develop in a very interesting way in parallel to the creation of the text. The comparative study was conducted in the context of civilizational time. Both stories are built around the principle of fragmentation, full of events (in a short period of time) that lead the story to the impasse. H. Matevosyan and S. Dovlatov overcome this problem by means of metaphysical self-contemplation: the narrative ends with the help of the archetypal symbols in the territory of a long civilizational duration.

The subject of the relation of civilizational environment and narrative art, represented by H. Matevosyan and S. Dovlatov, also has the possibility of other hypertext analysis that can lead the researcher towards new discoveries.

The story of “Our Clan of the Fools” in parallel with the novel “The Lord”

Summary

Ala A. Kharatyan

Keywords – Hrant Matevosyan, M. Bakhtin, “Our Clan of the Fools”, fool, trickster, master, essence, collective memory, metaphor, discourse, text, metatext.

The article explores the development of the metaphor of the Fool in Hrant Matevosyan’s works. The metaphor of the Fool is interpreted as self-identity in “Our Clan of the Fools”. The article observes the transformation of the Fool into a cultural hero, in the context of the self-identity, which has brought to the perception of the character as the trickster mythologeme. The article has scrupulously shown that the carnival image, provided to the public, is only a surface of the Fool character. Another novel by the writer, “The Lord”, is analyzed as the sequel of “Our Clan of the Fools”, where the hero’s personality makes efforts to transform into master. According to Hr. Matevosyan’s concept, the Fool expresses the collective identity, he is a king player, the inverted king, not the king or the authority or the lord, but the artist. The peasant embodies the identity of “we” and the longing to become a king always makes the base of the existence of the Fool, who would never become a King or a Lord. The author comes to a conclusion that “Our Clan of the Fools”, as the recreated image of the history, is Hr. Matevosyan’s discourse about the history, where two different invisible formations and times are compared.

Summary

Vazgen H. Safaryan

Keywords – time-space, the ratio of strength and weakness, nation-state and imperialism, local and universal civilizations, cultural unity and continuity.

With the perception of history as a chronological unity, Hrant Matevosyan views the artistic completeness of the human image in the general dynamics of national characteristics and its development. In this context some personal features such as strength and vulnerability are being exposed, which relates to the nature of the civilizations, its political-military and cultural essence and in the context of the complexity of assertion of Armenian identity. The historical philosophy acquires artistic qualities in the depictions of the wanderings of blind King Trdat, the mythology of continuous extermination of the enemy by Gayl Vahan, the symbol of political-military failures and the equivocality of cultural eternity which is observed in the characteristics of Bagratuni tiger and the city of Ani, as well as in the strivings of stableman Mesrop for understanding the history. In this respect the history obtains educational role despite the subjectivity of the fact-text qualitative transition, where the issue of statehood and national ideology as well as the connections with empire civilization and primary cultural place of Armenians acquire significant role. In his ethnological pursuits and the movement from the past to the future Hrant Matevosyan, like his predecessors, observes the obscurity always striving to discover the historical– cultural foundation of national existence.

Summary

Albert A. Makaryan

Key words – Zapel Esayan, “Gardens of Silihtar”, “Autobiography”, autobiographical novel, genre peculiarities, contemplation, range of novels, plot, self-portrait, lyricism, imaginal system.

The articles is dedicated to the study of ideological and aesthetic values , as well as, peculiarities of the autobiographical novel ‘Gardens of Silihtar’ by one of the famous masters of Armenian prose Zapel Esa yan. It particularly states the originality of this literary piece in the context of similar works by Gurgen Ma hari, Vahan Totovents and Stepan Zoryan. This literary work stands aside ,first of all, for its dominating lyri cism and the author’s contemplation. The composition structure of the ‘Gardens of Silihtar’ is also very ap pealing: each chapter of the novelette makes an impression of a completed novel-sketch. Besides, while creating the core issue of autobiographical genre, i.e. self-portrait, the novelist outlines rather wide scope of au to biographical materials: in the novelette she includes not only the characters of her family, relatives and fel lows, but also the images of her farthest ancestors, and, thus, finally creates the chronology of several of her native generations.

Summary

Haykazun S. Alvrtsyan

Keywords – Treasury, church, star, moon, bride, groom, Jesus Christ, the High Priest, Collegium, icon, wedding, gold, silver.

The allegorical image of the church of Jesus Christ in Armenian spiritual poems is an unprecedented manifestation of symbolic speech, which in fact was out of scientific attention. In the best case, they deployed such biblical stable and common symbols as the Moon and the bride in order to comprehend the church. The reason is that metaphor is not perceived in this kind of works, and therefore, these poems are interpreted as secular works.

This article attempts to review these works as manifestations of spiritual allegory and interpret them as such. The theory bases of such approach are not only the Bible and theological literature but also theoretical works of the poets of the era, such as the famous interpretation of “The Songs of the Songs” by Grigor Narekatsi, which is not only necessary but also irreplaceable in evaluation of spiritual songs.

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.

Summary

Yervand G. Ter-Khachatryan

Key words – Ara Heryan, Batum, ship, mountain, Yerevan, Sevan, “Albatross”, Zvart, Tumanyan, Miranyan, Kanaker.

The article is devoted to the novel “The ship on the mountain” by Kostan Zarian – one of the major figures of Armenian literature of the twentieth century.

The novel was written just before the Second World War and was published in 1943, in Boston. The novel shows the difficult situation in Armenia and the Armenian reality in 1918-1920. The novel is the most significant work of the author, because it sums up the artistic expression of the sacred and revered idea of a thinker, artist and philosopher, an idea that was developed over decades, the idea concerning the fate and suffering of the Armenian people. His philosophy, his approach to the complex and unresolved issues of the Armenian reality are shown with the help of the main character of the novel – Ara Heryan. For this purpose, the article provides a detailed image of Ara Heryan. This image is the legacy of the writer, his testament for future generations.

The other characters of the novel are also quite significant – i. e. Petros Mark, Peronyan and others. It is extremely important that the readers may feel and see the image of life of Armenians at a concrete historical time – in 1918-1920.

As for the literary and artistic integrity of the novel, we would like to note the author’s artistic thinking, his poetics.

In this article, we took into account almost all the literary material relating to the novel, also some incomplete and one-sided interpretations. The author of the article made an attempt to read correctly the novel by Konstan Zarian and tried to interprete the idea and the implementation of the writer in a right way.

Summary

Romik Kh. Kocharyan

Key words – hermeneutics, understanding, interpretation, openness, lived experience, re-lived experience

This article considers three meanings of the “open hermeneutics” and demonstrates that two aspects of the first meaning are present in Dilthey’s theory in such a way, that the second aspect is in the basis of the first, and, moreover, his conception appears to us as just the embrio of the second meaning, which later was completed by H.-G. Gadamer’s conception of philosophical hermeneutics. In Dilthey’s conception the possibility of being of human sciences is self-understood by epistemological inquiry, and his conception of hermeneutics is formulated as the universal methodology of human sciences. The goal of Diltey’s methodological reflection is to understand and interpretively explicate the calling and truth of human sciences. He defined the own subject, experience and method of these sciences, in contrast to natural sciences. In his viewpoint, the goal of human sciences is not the establishing of general laws and concepts, but the understanding and interpretively revealing of the uniqueness of the individual phenomena as such. The subject of understanding is composed of three classes of expressions of life: the first is presented by concepts, judgments, and more complex structures of thought, the second class consists of actions, the third – of expressions of lived experience, the latter is just the preferable subject of understanding, and according to these classes there are elementary and higher forms of understanding.

Based on the novel of the Romanian-Armenian writer Varuzhan Voskanyan “Book of Whispers”

Suumary

Ala A. Kharatyan

Key words – Varujan Vosganian, novel, the book of whispers, allusion, genocide, avenger, nemesis,voice, memory, Dro, Misak Torlakyan, M.Bakhtin, word, discourse, history, magical, myth, hyperreal

In the article “Allusion of the Voice in Whispers” the author analyses the reflection of Armenian Genocide in the “Book of Whispers” by the RomanianArmenian writer Varuzhan Voskanyan. In particular, the article analyses how the theme of Genocide is reflected in an entirely new way. This new way is here viewed by means of an analysis of the tone of voice, which depends on the contents of the material. Whispering is the intonation, in which the characters of the novel speak, and depending on the situation it either turns into loud voice or is reduced to silence, or it turns into discourse with history. Thus, voice becomes mythologically broad and encompassing, due to which it became possible to analyze and comment on numerous questions of content and ideology in the novel.

in Elgin Groseclose’s novel “The Carmelite”

Summary

Svetlana R. Tumanyan

The Carmelite by Elgin Groseclose is a historical novel that depicts the Persian mission of discaled carmelites in the reign of Abbas the first, dispatched by Pope Clement VIII. Trying to phylosophically evaluate the political, diplomatic and religious aspects of the mission, the American novelist also presents the complicated relations of the Shah with the Armenian colony, forcefully established in Julfa. In part 4, entitled Affairs of Empire, the Armenian religious holiday, the Khatchaturan, commemorating both the Lord’s baptism and His manifestation to the Jews, is portrayed in all detail, based on historical facts. The letters of the Carmelites edited, translated and published by Herbert Chick in A Chro¬nicle of the Carmelites in Persia and the Papal Mission of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries (1939) provided authentic material for the historical events described in the novel. Fray Juan Thaddeus, the protagonist of the novel, was a historical person as all the other characters in the novel, who was so well revered by the Armenian community of Julfa, that when he left Persia, Armenians sent a letter to the Pope beseeching Him to send the Carmelite back as the Bishop of an Armenian Church in Julfa.