The famous speech made me take Ashot Voskanyan’s voluminous work, “The Time of Charents,” from the shelf. The first essay, “History as Self-Overcoming,” begins: “Charents is a genius. This simple protocol is necessary to remind us that it is impossible to exhaust the poet by analyzing the individual aspects of his writing and defining him based on the turmoil of the political conjuncture. And enumerating the many labels usually attached to the great poet, the philosopher mentions one: “national nihilist.” That definition, which can, of course, be only one of a thousand, corresponds to the plans of today’s government in Armenia.
The official propaganda is the following. Artsakh is still lost, we can’t do anything, and Armenians won’t be able to live there anyway. Let’s think about keeping the Republic of Armenia at 29.8 thousand km. And as a confirmation of that, to put it mildly, not so mature mind, the work of Charents “Yerkir Nairy” is brought. With such a primitive understanding, Artsakh, Syunik, Sevan, and Yerevan will become “brain distress, heart disease.”
Naturally, I will not analyze the poet’s work within the limits of one computer page. I want to draw attention to another circumstance; Politicians, especially those with not a high level of education and with just such electorate “servants,” like to find “allies” of their ideas in the past: especially when these so-called “like-minded people” enjoy prestige among the nation and are great people.
The German National Socialists chose Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy as a “basis” for their cannibalistic ideas. Karl Marx would have turned upside down in his London tomb if he knew what the Russian Bolsheviks were doing, swearing in his name. The brilliant Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky would be amazed to know that Putin’s propaganda is using his ideas to unleash a war that will cost tens of thousands of lives.
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Even now, the government of Armenia is “bringing Tumanyan and Charents” as witnesses for their national and, I would even say, human nihilism. It’s okay; the classics won’t be offended.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
