Monthly Archives: March 2013

THE OVERCOMING THE VICTIM OF GENOCIDE’S COMPLEX IN THE PERIOD OF KARABAKH MOVEMENT – 2013-1

Summary

Harutyun T. Marutyan
In the coares of soviet power not any attempt was made to overcome the complex of genocide’s victim, buy also the government’s actions had some intention to cultivate that consciousness. The situation change by the beginning of Karabakh movement in February, 1988, which was the first one in the series of national-democratic movements formed on the territory of ex-USSR. It had some peculiarities inclusive of the fact that after Sumgait Events the “sleeping” memory of the Genocide “woke up” immediately and gradually became the most significant and decisive factor. The attempt to overcome the crisis of the end ok 20th century was combined with the struggle for the overcoming the crisis of the beginning of the 20th century, one of the displays of which was that the symbol of the victim asking for justice and compassion conceded its place to the image of warrior, who had come to the realize that the national goals are to be carried into effect only by standing on the path of struggle.

The release of Ramil Safarov who murdered Gurgen Margaryan, and the fact that he was honored to become national hero of Azerbaijan did not contribute to revive the “victim complex” (though the ones who had taken those measures probably expected that it would do), nut only strengthened the change that had occurred twenty years ago in Armenian self-consciousness. It’s also remarkable that the activity channeled to the recognition and condemnation of the genocide has been recently supplemented by demands of recompense and consequently by actions directed to it, which represent the problems in a more systematic way. The latter is also considered to be one of the signs of overcoming the “victim complex”

IRANIAN WOMAN’S CHARACTER REFLECTED IN FINE ARTS – 2013-1

Summary

Mandana M. Sepasi
Aim of the study is the comparison of woman’s portrait in the paintings of Iranian women or men. The study shows that the pictures of women in men’s works are desirable, descriptive, and figural; whereas women painters are more meaningful, allegoric and fictional; they paint females’ characterizations and implicit and mental meanings as beauty and elegance. But the women paintings are based on female experience and view; women painters try to show main problems of women’s life; however, men without paying attention to these matters present women in imaginary and fantasy atmospheres. The study of women paintings shows that they try to decrease visual views of male standpoint. They resist on becoming the subject of men’ paintings and they use new techniques in paintings to create gaps in male mental effects and functions in culture.

AS A MIRROR OF THE ARMENIAN ENGLISH SPEAKING WRITER’S BIOGRAPHY – 2013-1

Leon aven Surmelian’s “98.6°”

Summary

Arpi S. Muradyan
The novel of L. Z. Surmelian “98.6°” that we are going to discuss in this article has been published in the USA in 1950, and in Armenian – in 2005, in Yerevan by Aram Arsenyan’s translation. The title implies human body’s normal temperature, and the novel is the artistic reflection of the writer’s illness and the process of his painful treatment of four years.
Practicing literary criticism’s contemporary achievements and making synthetic analysis of some facts of writer’s biography, the author of the article substantiates that despite the absence of Armenian entourage and Armenian characters, the novel is psychological – autobiographical by its genre. The novel’s central character – Irishman Daniel Moore’s prototype is the author himself, who has been in some marginal existential state, but overcame the death threat with stubborn commitment. The novel’s structure, actions, the systems of characters and images performing them, artistic peculiarities are examined with the wide application of thesis of the author’s theoretical work “Techniques of Prose: Measure and Madness”.

ELGIN GROSELCOSE AND HIS “ARARAT” NOVEL – 2013-1

Armenia of the beginning of the 20th century through the eyes of the American writer

Summary

Albert A. Makaryan, Svetlana R. Tumanyan
The present article is devoted to the novel Ararat by Elgin Groseclose, which was published just the week before World War II broke out, and which, as Warren French put it, “provides the best epitaph fr the tarnished age of modern Imperialism”. We have tried to reveal the peculiarities of the seemingly complicated plot, to analyze the author’s intentions in the depictions of the Armenian Genocide and the Russian Revolution, to disclose the symbolic meanings of the biblical mountain and to expose the way to salvation that the author offers the humanity.

HISTORICAL-CULTURAL PECULIARITIES OF THE PROCESS OF ETHNIC CONSOLIDATION OF ARMENIAN PEOPLE – 2013-1

Aleksan H. Hakobyan
The migration paths of Hayk’s descendants on Armenian Upland as described by Movses Khorenatsi vividly remind the routes of the first Biaynian kings who conquered the territory of the future Biaynili (Urartu) kingdom in a few decades. This is a new argument to support the hypothesis of H. Karagyozyan and M. Katvalyan, according to whom the formation of the Armenian ethnos has happened bt ethnoconsolidation-ethnomixation of all the various Indo-European and non-Indo-European tribes that inhabited the kingdom of Urartu-Biaynili (=Armenian Upland), and not by ethnoseperation (immediate separation of Armenian language carriers from the Indo-European language community) or by ethno evolution (which means gradual absorption of other inhabitants of the Urartu kingdom by the small Armenian-speaking tribe). The process of ethno consolidation of Armenian people was a result of ethno integration of multi-tribal Urartu kingdom and was completed in mid-7th century B.C. The later formed Armenian legend about the descendants of Gayk shows that a leading role in this process was played by Biaynians themselves, although the language of the newly formed ethnos (with the self-designation – endonym of Hay- Hayo- Armenians) was an Indo-European one namely, the Armenian language spoken by the relative majority of the population of the multi-tribal Biaynian kingdom. Combined with other evidences in historical sources, this legend also shows that the kingdom of Urartu was not “destroyed” by anyone; rather it continued to exist as ‘Eruandean Armenian Kingdom”, which was conquered only by Achaemenid Iran.

HISTORY AND MEMORY – 2013-1

The problem of hierarchization of genocides according to Pierre Nora

Summary

Smbat Kh. Hovhannisyan
The article is an attempt to analyze in general outline and by some main accents Pierre Nora’s concept about the bill of criminalization of Armenian genocide’s denial in France. On one hand it is considered in the overview of his theory about “memory and history” and on the other hand – in the general overview of theories about history and memory.
It’s notable that P. Nora makes reasonable connections between the idea of freedom and the freedom of history (consequently also historiography), where this principle is very important and perspective. Though, some of his approaches impede the structural discussion concerning memory and commitment. First of all, we mean not only the weakness of his arguments on the bill of criminalization of Armenian genocide’s denial, but also the denial of the genocide as history, moreover, the contrasting of Armenian genocide with Holocaust and the determination of gradation between them, even in the case when Armenians were not only subjected to Genocde in 1915, but also to Patricide (depatriated).