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THEY’RE LOOSELY KNOWN as Era Independence. This cohort of splendidly vibrant, experimental Armenian writers, now all of their 30s and early 40s, are thrilling as a lot for the lyrical and literary qualities of their work as for what they need to say about conflict and peace, love and sexual relations, on a regular basis life and the human situation. These younger skills — Aram Pachyan, Anna Davtyan, Hovhannes Tekgyozyan, Armen Ohanyan, and the others touched upon under — had been mere kids when Armenia gained independence; thus, Soviet rule by no means had a serious influence on their writing. Linguistically experimental, they efficiently play with each type and content material. Half Beat, half Nouveau Roman, half feminist lit, their work is commonly vital towards the state, touching upon beforehand banned subjects similar to sexuality, conflict, and crime, in addition to extra private points such because the seek for identification and self-discovery.
When Armenia declared independence from the USSR in 1991, feelings ran excessive each at house and among the many far-flung Armenian diaspora, but a puzzling silence reigned on the earth of letters. In a rustic with nearly common literacy, the place books are revered, the financial disaster and the First Battle in Artsakh (1988–’94) appeared to have quieted the pens of younger Armenians. Works of notice had been printed, after all — Vahram Martirosyan’s social critique Landslide (2000), the edgy feminist poetry of Violet Grigoryan, the excellent neo-Gothic quick tales of Karine Khodikyan — however no younger voices of revolution appeared. Some questioned the place the Václav Havel or Czesław Miłosz of Armenia was hiding out. There have been nonetheless old-style Soviet writers similar to Hrant Matevosyan, now of their 70s principally, who wrote about village and fireplace, however no new voices that spoke urgently about modern themes or issues.
Then immediately, out of the literary mists, a brand new technology appeared within the late aughts that swiftly morphed into some of the fascinating in Japanese Europe. The publication of Aram Pachyan’s 2012 novel, Goodbye, Hen, was an explosive success: this tough experimental story of a soldier getting back from conflict to civilian life turned an on the spot finest vendor and nonetheless sits atop the “most learn” lists within the nation. (An English translation, by Nairi Hakhverdi, was printed by the British press Glagoslav in 2017.) Pachyan and a small cohort of writers his age expressed themselves with uncommon stylistic and ideological freedom. Decrying life as they noticed it, they took on beforehand taboo topics similar to intercourse and political corruption with gusto, profitable reward and prizes. Most just lately, Pachyan obtained the 2021 EU Prize for Literature, a primary for an Armenian author, for his second novel, P/F. One thing was clearly brewing, however how would these new writers make their title in a small nation with a longtime — learn: intractable — intelligentsia of older gatekeepers, typically resistant to vary, and a wealthy literary custom just about unknown exterior its personal borders?
The reply got here largely from the primary literary agent in Armenia, Arevik Ashkharoyan. She sensed that this new technology, led by the indomitable Pachyan, was in some way qualitatively completely different. The writers “had been extra open, existential, trustworthy, vital towards the state, the military, and our father or mother’s technology,” Ashkharoyan instructed me. Pachyan, whose surgeon father operated on the injured through the first Artsakh conflict, writes scathingly of the consequences of conflict on the human soul. Anna Davtyan writes explicitly about sexuality and the feminine physique, whereas Hovhannes Tekgyozyan is among the first overtly homosexual writers within the nation. Maybe not surprisingly, he now makes his house in Strasbourg, France, and never Armenia, which stays somewhat homophobic. Ashkharoyan represents these writers with fierce devotion, attending guide gala’s and commissioning translations — a one-woman present whose company, ARI, has signed up many of the main younger expertise. Slowly however absolutely, she is spreading the gospel of Era Independence.
Brokers are famously busy individuals, and Ashkharoyan’s schedule is a whirlwind of exercise: discovering, signing, and guiding her younger writers; judging which translators are most apt to render their works vibrantly; coming into her protégées into main competitions; and discovering publishing homes to place out their work in English. Requests for books to assessment or for creator bios are answered inside 24 hours, as this critic can attest. Mix all this work along with her many journeys to the USA, United Kingdom, Russia, and the previous Soviet republics, and you start to get an concept of how busy Ashkharoyan could be — all of the whereas seeming to like each minute of it!
Ashkharoyan additionally based the ARI Literature Basis to assist the event of a neighborhood guide market and thus deliver Armenia into the dialogue surrounding worldwide publishing. “There was no institutionalized illustration of Armenian authors worldwide,” she instructed me. “Translations had been uncommon and primarily the results of the writers’ personal efforts, or state-funded anthologies, which by no means discovered their readers.” Previously three or 4 years alone, this one-woman literary powerhouse has signed nearly a dozen worldwide offers, which is exceptional given the dearth of curiosity in small-language literature generally. Slowly, these Era Independence writers are gaining a stable world status. Pachyan has change into a widely known title in European literary circles, and it received’t be lengthy earlier than these younger literary superheroes, guided by one indomitable super-agent, all make worldwide names for themselves. The next is an summary of 4 of probably the most distinguished of those writers.
Pachyan is the Superman of the group, or Captain Armenia if you’ll. Born in 1983 in Vanadzor, this literary wunderkind studied legislation at Yerevan State College earlier than deciding to dedicate himself to literature. Whereas his work covers many points, such because the relation between the sexes and on a regular basis human cruelty, he has most notably taken on the difficulty of conflict — its impact on troopers but additionally on a complete technology affected by PTSD after three successive wars with neighboring Azerbaijan and Turkey. In his 2020 essay “Battle Useless or Alive,” he writes: “I don’t know methods to write about conflict. What to put in writing, maybe.” And in a paragraph value quoting at some size, he summarizes the Armenian state of affairs to a tee:
Lengthy earlier than September 27, lengthy earlier than the bloody navy actions, with Turkey’s open and direct participation, erupted alongside your complete Azerbaijan-Artsakh border, everyone was there: the “civilized world,” the UN, the UNESCO. They had been all there to observe because the Center East was devastated in actual time, when Syria was leveled in actual time, when “freedom fighters,” supposedly performing on behalf of whole nations, slayed authoritarian rulers, when Yezidis had been slaughtered on Mount Sinjar, all in actual time. […] Bereft of a solution to defend themselves, the Armenians waited in useless for the “civilized world” in 1915 and had been slaughtered of their houses and cities, left with nothing, alone with their expectation. 100 years later, Turkey is making an attempt to perpetrate one other genocide, this time utilizing the “temple” of Armenophobia erected on the state degree in Azerbaijan.
In Goodbye, Hen, a page-turning thriller that follows a soldier getting back from necessary navy service with a depraved case of PTSD, Pachyan describes the horrible situations endured by conscripts within the Armenian military:
It’s forbidden to the touch something that has fallen in human waste in a grimy space I don’t know within the toilet within the different areas adjoining the bottom’s arsenal below the gate of the mess corridor within the woodshed the place Mickey Mouse sits courteously Nar our unit’s untouchable the cleaner of soiled areas the king the savior of troopers is coming with a brush […] he’s the one soldier who hasn’t held a gun or grenade in a yr.
The hero witnesses loss of life and close to hunger, in barracks the place abusive generals and excrement-filled loos take a look at human mettle. Pachyan’s message is evident: conflict is a recreation by which there are solely losers, and the degradation it perpetrates scars a society for a lifetime. Pachyan’s newest novel, P/F (English translation but to return), represents much more of a stylistic break. Written in actually experimental prose, it performs with the house of the web page because it decries the lack of historic sense in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, and the closing down of town’s as soon as fabled tramway. It additionally presages extra good issues to return from a younger author who has but to succeed in the age of 40.
If Pachyan is the Superman of Era Independence, then Anna Davtyan might be its Marvel Girl. Born in Artik close to Giumri, Davtyan brings the experiences of her native Shirak province to the studying public, a lot as Matevosyan and different extra conventional writers did for his or her house areas a number of generations again. Davtyan is a gifted translator, quick story author, and poet, and her first novel, Khanna (2020), will probably be popping out in English translation in 2022. Khanna tells the story of a girl who longs for freedom — sexual, monetary, and in any other case — after which reconciliation, as she tries to transform a property of her uncle’s right into a guesthouse. The eponymous heroine is in love along with her cousin, Abgar, whereas within the meantime having a sexual encounter with Atom whereas additionally being married to an unnamed “husband.” The prose is easy and racy, particularly within the context of Armenian literature.
But, to my thoughts, it’s Davtyan’s flexibility as a author that impresses most. Her delicate poem paints a scene of nature in concord with human feelings:
When one departs up to now in the direction of their dream,
The return turns into tough. A lonely tree is hanging from the moon.
It’s not as a result of say,
However there’s a lot suppressed intercourse in right here, […]
The guts continues to leap from one second to a different,
Sparrows cross the sky. However you don’t know why, it’s February.
In “Autumn: The Late. Winter: The Stones,” she writes elegantly of
[w]hite partitions amongst whispers, and doorways,
Outdoors winter is ending below the vehicles with out snow. […]
A white home with out shortcomings.
The silver sound of the gravel is heard from the yard.
It’s not you. The wind blows the home in the direction of the unseen lake.
It’s as spooky a picture of nature as one finds in Frost and even Poe.
Lastly, Davtyan’s quick story “It Will At all times Be Sung,” printed in English in LARB this previous March, presents a wondrous cinematic mélange of scenes. Like Marguerite Duras, who typically used easy pronouns to explain her foremost characters, Davtyan doesn’t title all her protagonists. Is that this a love story gone bitter or one but to occur? Are the characters straight or homosexual? The quick story was written earlier than the current 44-Day Battle, however one may simply think about it being a few soldier coming house or leaving for the entrance. The story’s unspecified “state of emergency” is definitely pleasing to one of many foremost characters, Mariam, because it offers her time to assume, to easily be. Elsewhere, a 3rd protagonist, referred to easily as “she,” displays upon the month of March that she in some way had promised him, when occasions had been blurred in her consciousness:
She remembers him now in serenity, with out convulsion, with an atypical, clear gaze, with eyes that look. The music lingered on, however one thing wasn’t occurring; the three of them had been merely sitting. They had been most likely pleased. Mariam was uneasy in regards to the state of emergency — she was feeling responsible. She spoke on the cellphone and stated: sure, sure. Then turned off the cellphone and positioned it on the desk subsequent to the ashtray.
Davtyan ends the story powerfully:
Ought to she keep in his reminiscences, or let him go, too, to change into clay within the trenches? My journal is loaded, the fourth one would say. It’s actually lovely.
To have fired bullets in a single’s head.
Outdoors, the crows caw on swollen poplar timber. Rustle by rustle, the branches jut out straight, upward.
It’s a haunting picture, one which anticipates extra conflict on the horizon and, maybe as nicely, the sterility of the human situation. Ominously, Davtyan’s shut pal, Alen, to whose reminiscence she devoted the story, died on September 30, the third day of the conflict.
Using the crest of worldwide curiosity in LGBTQ literature are two homosexual Armenian writers, Hovhannes Tekgyozyan and Armen Ohanyan (a.ok.a. Armen of Armenia). They might nicely be the Batman and Robin of Era Independence, although I depart it as much as the reader to determine which is which. To offer an concept of how delicate the subject of LGBTQ writing could be in Armenia, Harvard professor James Russell’s evaluation, in his contribution to the 2003 guide Yeghishe Charents: Poet of the Revolution, of homoerotic themes within the work of the revered poet laureate was derided by the Armenian literary institution when it appeared. Charents’s homosexual cred has since been amply documented, most just lately in Arpi Movsesian’s superlative translation of the 1936 poem “Erotic Music” in The Hye-Phen Journal. Being homosexual isn’t straightforward in Armenia, a rustic nonetheless staunchly patriarchal and macho, with every little thing that means. As famous, Tekgyozyan now lives in Strasbourg, the place he’s freer to precise himself.
Tekgyozyan’s grandparents hailed from Lyon and Beirut earlier than repatriating to Armenia, the place the creator was born. The creator first turned identified for his novel Fleeting Metropolis, printed in 2012 on the heels of two collections of tales, Picket Shirt (2003) and Glass Solar (2006). His performs Metastasis and Non-Folks had been staged in Armenia and, in 2012, on the Chekhov Worldwide Theater Pageant, whereas his second novel, Pores and skin Ache, was awarded the 2012 Orange Guide Prize. His 2019 novel, The Third Intercourse, which got here out in French in November, was written in mild of the 2011 Istanbul Conference and the liberty it theoretically accords transgender individuals. The language is splendidly crisp and experimental, as on this excerpt (translation mine) the place one of many 4 feminine protagonists, Evelina, survives a bogus KGB-like trial:
“Expensive Evelina,” an American accent seems in Jazoyan’s speech. “What’s it that you just don’t perceive? Your trial has been suspended, sus-pen-ded? Since everybody on the aircraft on the time was a citizen of the USSR and the USSR now not exists as such. You perceive? Mrs. Yessayan…”
A blue passport immediately seems in N. Yessayan’s palms.
“Thanks,” a smile stays on the lady’s face, “Expensive Evalina given all the issues that we’ve brought on you, we wished to personally hand you your Armenian passport. Congratulations.”
A recreation? A recreation, an emphatic piece of theater.
“Let me congratulate you as nicely,” Jazoyan instantly backed up N. Yessayan: “I’m actually pleased. I hope you’ll perceive our predicament. We’ve all the time held you in excessive esteem, however what can I say, it was one massive shithole of a rustic, the Soviets. An actual shithole.”
Me, an Armenian citizen? The nation, a shithole? Surprised, I stroll in the direction of the leather-covered door.
In his new novel (but to look in English), Tekgyozyan writes a few Black man who by no means sees his roommates — a intelligent metaphor for the 2 Frances that not often overlap: one inhabited by French residents, the opposite by the so-called “sans papiers” (undocumented immigrants). With this newest effort, Tekgyozyan widens his attain to change into a author of actually European scope and significance.
Born in 1979, Armen Ohanyan writes below the pen title Armen of Armenia. A fiction author, essayist, and literary translator, he’s additionally politically energetic within the nation, having served as president of PEN Armenia since 2017. Armen of Armenia is the creator of the novelistic trilogy Mommyland (2015) and the quick story assortment The Return of Kikos (2013), a splendidly unique tackle conventional fairy tales. One story, “Redhood,” narrated briefly takes like a TV present or movie, conflates the story of Little Crimson Using Hood with that of a panelist confused as to which actuality present he’s on. One other, “Kikos,” is a fancy autobiographical meditation that divides up Armenian historical past in accordance with quick tales by the beloved author Hovhannes Tumanyan. “For a very long time, after him, I had been in search of any person to inform the actual story of my life and I discovered him ultimately. His title is Armen and he’s the creator of those strains. Now we have an advanced relationship. We don’t get alongside nicely collectively.” On the finish of the story, Armen addresses Tumanyan himself: “Oh my God, Hovhannes Tumanyan, I’m on prime of my tree, I’ll die from happiness now, and that will be the second loss of life of Kikos. Then who would write about that?”
The remaining writers of Era Independence all present an identical promise as these Improbable 4. They embody the novelists and quick story writers Sargis Hovsepyan, Hrachya Saribekyan, Arpi Voskanyan, and Hambardzum Hambardzumyan, and the poets Hasmik Simonyan, Karen Antashyan, and Vahe Arsen, who comply with in an extended custom that stretches again to Vahan Teryan, Yeghishe Charents, and different nice Armenian bards. Some authors, similar to Anush Kocharyan, Nara Vardanyan, and Lilit Karapetyan, have but to look in English translation, although hopefully the worldwide success of Pachyan and others will quickly rectify that neglect. Let’s name these remaining superheroes the Avengers of Era Independence. Whoever’s work you select to learn, you’re unlikely to go incorrect.
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Christopher Atamian is a New York–primarily based author, producer, and director who has been awarded two Tölölyan Literary Prizes. Christopher is presently ending a novel, Manhattan Boy, and dealing on a number of movie and theatrical initiatives.
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Featured picture: “Aram Pachyan” by Անի Տագեր is licensed below CC BY-SA 4.0. Picture has been cropped.
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