Translated by Shant Norashkharian from the original Armenian which was reprinted in Beirut, Lebanon, by Sevan Publishing House in 1981. The original was written from November 1927 to January 1929, and published in the Parisian Haratch daily newspaper from May 28 to September 3, 1929.
"The Armenians have a book. It is their worst, disgusting, all-wrong, unhealthy, and the most immoral book. The Nareg. I indict it as the greatest enemy of the Armenians, I indict that miserable being who spat those sentences. And to say what a glorious fate that poisonous volume had! The Armenians accepted it, made it their own, embraced it. Not one generation thought of eliminating it, because, being deceived by its various linguistic and poetic qualities, they did not notice the disguised poison within. On the contrary, they transferred it from son to son, from blood to blood, and it came down all the way to us. We were poisoned. Nationally poisoned. This is why we are losers. We are losers because like that monk's crippled spirit we despised and became unaware of our selves, our power, our will, our individuality; we did not fight, we did not bite, we did not struggle. By accepting its wrong and imperfect interpretation of the Christian doctrine we became foolishly passive, conforming, begging, unaware. We did not come out of our own persons, we did not have a purpose; we did not collectively charge forward toward the possibility of the impossibility and a great ideal did not knead us in its claws. I accuse that miserable being who...".
When he was talking about pornography, this was the way that one day Souren expressed himself to Pierre.
And after making this first reverberation while he had thrown himself on the down slope of contemplations, he continued softening the fire of his voice, having rediscovered the brightness and the peace of cognition:
"As strange as it may seem, my style of explaining the causes of the weaknesses of a nation, one must not deny the truth which is disguised therein. Whether Naregatsi is considered the primary cause or not, it is a fact that many things come forth to fully justify my audacious thinking, which, in its suffering from the love of the nation, definitely wants to throw someone on the chair of the accused. Every nation, in every century, in every era has had, beside the unrefined and illiterate peasant crowd, 'small people', even in the so-called 'chosen' class. But among Armenians their number takes stunning, superabundant, discouraging proportions. That is why, I, Souren, want to neglect the small number of exceptions, and consider all Armenians poisoned by Nareg, invalids. And yet, yes, it's enough to know how to look around, it's enough to look at the living generation and in it we shall meet a glance at which we could boldly shout: Unfaithful. It does not have faith; the faith, that is written with the red vehemence of lust; the faith, that forms the great spirits, which is born of the nations that have the yearning for the highest. This Armenian does not make anything his ideal and does not fight for it. He does not dedicate himself, with body and mind, to the realization of an idea; in the haste of giving more he does not madly come out of himself, and his being does not subject itself to a constant ascent. The divine lust is absent from his thoughts and feelings which slumber in an endless monotony. In spite of being the child of an intelligent, witty and productive race, he puts those qualities only at service of the interests of his own skin. The indifference that he maintains toward the community, like a thick and impenetrable fruit skin, comes to neutralize his soul, to fester it. What intolerable rottenness, specially when he gets an education. As soon as he gets away from school, he sees the abyss separating the school life from the street life, and his first concern becomes forgetting whatever he has learned, as improper, useless, superfluous. If he can forget it, he does not replace it with anything; he only tries to cover his emptiness with gold. Leave him alone, he will be a goldsmith! If he does not forget, he will continue reading, getting interested, although without resigning from his neutral role. Leave this one two; again a fraudulent goldsmith, this time of the word.
This despaired, weak spirit which had been an island even before the deluge, after the events which fundamentally shook all Armenians, differs from the previous generations by only two characteristics. It believes less in independence, and hates the Turk less. It hates him less, because he recognizes his progress, just like he recognizes all the important expressions of the human mind, always judging them from his isolated smallness, without a cry, without an embrace, without a destined journey. He recognizes all the philosophers and doctrines; he has read a few. But he has never said in front of any of them; 'That's me, that's how this is!'. He recognizes that God and religion are understandings, sometimes consoling forces which will die with humanity. He recognizes that the homeland in the present days is a bad obstacle in the way of ideas of internationalism., but his own homeland, is an inextricable Kortian Knot. He recognizes that good, bad, ugly, beautiful, moral, immoral are all relative things, that art is only the privilege of the great nations, because it requires a lofty environment and a long time. Finally he recognizes that love is a misfortune, the woman is money and money is everything. He has admiration and abundant praise for all the values of the foreigners, their virtues, their things of greatness. Many times he blindly glorifies them; but when he makes the favor of turning his glance to his nation, he immediately becomes transformed to a critic full of doubt and skepticism; he considers it smallness to share his thought with another, then to unite and cooperate with him, when he is not the one in command. He is himself and he is nothing.
But what's the use, what's the use of saying all this when it already has the discoloration of having been repeated so many times. What's the use, specially, to concern oneself with circumstances, for which the best cure can never be formed by the power of words and phrases. Yes! This model is not incidental, it's not just born of a certain time; but while it was possible to partially ignore him in the past, to neutralize his unhealthy feebleness, to let him perform his only role of multiplying the nation, now it becomes impossible to remain indifferent toward him. Not because there is now war and fighting, not because now there is a battle and struggle for life, but because there is something more crucial, more non-forgiving, there is something terrible, irresistible which roars its name from all the crossroads; that is the retreat. The retreat, the retreat of the Armenians. The fight is a sacrosanct thing, the battle sometimes even useful; from them a nation comes out defeated or victorious, but in both cases it comes out. But the retreat of the spirits, on this nauseating down slope this retreat erases, assimilates, eliminates everything. Really, this kind of educated indifferent types are not numerous, but over there, there are the mobs of unrefined, mindless and alienated men, who, as if instinctively, as if by blood and marrow, are exactly like the former. Like them they are the first to cower, to forget, to deny. And then forms the horrible mass of those who retreat and push into that great current others as well, the scattered exceptions as well.
Retreats the family, the son, the uncle, the son-in-law, retreat traditions, comprehension, morals, love. Retreats the language, retreats the language, retreats the language. And we still retreat by word and by action, willingly and unwillingly, aware and unaware, forgive our sin, forgive our sin, Ararat!
There have been Armenians who paid gold to save their skin; there have been others who gave faith, virginity; there have been those who have abandoned home, place, sky; there have been as well the bad who denied nation and language, and heroes who gave blood, life, day and sun. Yet we pay as last price of salvation children who could have grown up, future generations which were to come after us. Because whoever comes will be a foreigner, by word and by action, willingly and unwillingly, aware and unaware, forgive our sin, forgive our sin, Ararat!
Translation Copyright 1996 by Shant Norashkharian