Translated from the Armenian by Shant Norashkharian.
Dinner was over, most customers had left, but Herian and his friends still remained seated.
Thoughtful and silent.
"Even Tbilisi, which is so close to home, has colonial mentality. I have observed during my travels; when the Armenian leaves the mountains, he becomes diminished, smaller, demoralized...he changes...loses a certain secret, a certain mystery. One day we must draw definite borders, and differentiate. Let us be few in numbers, that has no importance, but let us totally be what we really are...Let them leave, assimilate, and not say that they are Armenian..."
Herian said that with eyes full of anger.
"These are difficult problems", thought Beronian loudly. "One day, life itself will solve these problems...Of course, at least we, for our true edification, must realize that, and as you say, draw definite borders. Let us differentiate the true Armenian from the Levantine types, from those distorted elements with whom we are only related by our language.... However, let us not forget, that if tomorrow the creation of a stable state becomes possible, they will come in droves and will be the loudest and the most demanding for privileges..."
"That's alright, let them come, the air of the homeland will wash and clean them", said Shoushan.
"Are you sure...?"
"Complicated matters!" Exclaimed Sultanian, "complicated matters...! Our race, like all the races in the world is mixed. Over the centuries, a thousand and one events have taken place; a thousand and one peoples have come and passed through; naturally, they have left their traces in our blood. A kind of chaos has been created. Blood, heredities, the darkness of the distant past, the peoples, the races...over all that a great mystery prevails..."
"That is correct", agreed Beronian, "even physically we are different; take for instance our different provinces, I do not even speak of Istanbul, Smyrna, and other distant places..."
"That does not matter", continued Sultanian, "After all, what distinguishes a race, particularly a nation, is not the physical, but the mental. There are no pure races, but there are purified, dominant mentalities. The wholeness which dominates the psychology. There have been fortunate times, when the Armenian spiritual potential reached its wholeness, discovered its golden harmony, its light; and that, to the extent that it could, it spread that light - through religion, architecture, culture - over the four corners of the world."
" It is enough to look around right here in Georgia, to be convinced of that."
" It was, and is no more".
"Yes".
Sultanian put his hands on the table, leaned his head sideways, and fell silent. It seemed, that an interior struggle was taking place within him. The issues that he touched on had tormented him for a long time, as they had tormented many conscious and mentally proud Armenians, who could not adapt to the existing situation.
They wanted to look within with plain and kind eyes. To put reality under the lights of consciousness. To not be passively subjected to events and to subject everything to ruthless analysis.
To refuse, to deny the nation's collective faults, and by the way of denial, to rediscover that never-dying flame which burned at the spiritual center of the race, which was veiled throughout history with a thick night.
To rediscover those positive energies, which could provide impetus and flight to the new life which was being reborn.
"Complicated matters!" said Sultanian, "so complicated, they boggle one's mind...Often, after a lot of searching, it seems that you have finally found the fundamental, that omnipotent key, which would open all doors, enlighten you, escort you through tiny hidden passages to the center....A little later, after examining well - after measuring the idea against the scale of life - you suddenly see, that it was not so, that other unaccounted forces are now facing you, other influences, other underground currents...you become subdued, disappointed. The problem is that we consider the individual as a unit and we subject him to our expectations. We forget that the daily man - the one who is number, quantity, majority - is nothing but a fragment...The daily man is a fraction, a part, a being without center. He is not a whole individual; a self-sufficient, autonomous individual, who is able to create and establish his own mutual relations with death, love, and the universe. And the fraction, whether it wants or not, will become institutionalized by the ecclesia, nation, state, party..."
"Also there is the language..."
"Yes, also the language. But when there is no center of gravity, when that force is not powerful, always-renewing, always-creating gravity, the fragments that are pushed out of the land will constantly become less, lessened, and finally, pulverized...The elements which have escaped from the center distort everything: The language, the religion, the understanding of nation and homeland. Reality becomes disguised with empty words. Circumstantial scenes are created, void of growing potential and flowering sap...and even more happens; the centrifugal force no longer governs the parts, and the parts themselves adapt that force's fundamental ideals to their immediate, local conditions, they degenerate it, they derail it from its ordinary flow, they obscure the mystery of its essence. Therein is the real tragedy..."
"The colony is created..."
"Yes. The nation ceases to exist, and instead of it, a certain pseudo-nation is established. The language is transformed into many languages, the style is lost, and meanings are replaced by words."
" They write with dead letters", added Haig Shoushan. "Bastard, fake, inanimate languages are created."
"Artificial, deceiving! Apovian's greatness is in this; when he returned from Germany to his own people, he threw aside his enormous cultural supply, his mental sensitivities, and baring himself, approached his people and spoke to them with the rough and crude words that he had borrowed from their own mouths. Not one insincerity, not one lie, not one unnecessary ornament. And he created magnificent literary works, fundamental and essential...The poor peasant does not plant roses on his land, but he plants wheat...Our Mkhitarians of Venice and the gentlemen of Istanbul and other places, did not have land to plant anything, so they built artificial roses; colorful, pretty and paper-made. The consequence was that, the cornerstones were lost...instead of one dominant mentality - we said, that the race is the mentality - different mentalities were created, and that central light which the nation used to enlighten its mystery of being, to establish its universal essentiality, to vitalize the torch of its blood, was veiled..."
"Brother, we have been sitting like this... at least let us drink something", suggested Herian, as he ordered a bottle of wine.
He wanted to show his enthusiasm with something.
"Cheers to you, Sultanian... How eloquently said! The torch of the blood..."
Sultanian drank and paused for a moment, as if to hear the contradictory and sorrowful sounds that were rising within him.
"Man sometimes is afraid to think", he continued, "He is afraid to verbalize that which, like a mute wave, pounds against the heart... Horrible events have come here. We have entered a new earth-shaking era of history: Horrible new forces have come out, masses have been roused , borders have become distorted, new appetites and new demands have come forward...The world has been shaken by a hurricane, and the heavy clouds accumulating over the horizon are suggesting even more, fiercer hurricanes... We must have all our energies to go through these hurricanes; to go through them, and to resist them. Yet resistance is possible only with powerful, overbearing spiritual strength...Whether we like it or not, our blood flows, but blood which has flowed is void of meaning, if it does not radiate. Death which is accepted with free will for a supreme ideal, is a spiritual lighthouse which illuminates life; otherwise, it is despair and meaningless..."
"You cannot say, that we did not fight...Our heroic squads, the miraculous resistance of our people, the epics about our volunteers, our army...It is now four years that we have been fighting, and it is still not over...", interrupted Beronian.
"I am not the one to deny that...I am saying, that the world has turned upside down, humanity has lost its equilibrium, new forces from below the surface are invading to subdue new possibilities, the seemingly-permanent foundations of societies are cracking, states are changing and peoples and races are being reclassified...This is not new to us: Our history has always been horrible and yet grand, and we have always lived a dangerous life. If we did not disappear, it is because in the hours of danger we rediscovered our essence, our unity, our spiritual countenance...That is it! Those peoples who are deprived of a strong spiritual countenance, who have nothing to say or contribute, in whose hands there is no flame to enlighten that general chaos, are doomed to disappear."
"Brother, your are drinking nothing", complained Herian.
"We are drinking, aren't we?"
"If only the glasses were full..."
"Cheers..."
From the next room, a group of people were also seated and drinking.
One was singing with a half-voice.
A sad, Eastern song. As if it was a mourning from a deep heart.
"He is singing Payati " , said Beronian.
"What?..."
"Payati. . Persian..."
They all listened silently.
"We interrupted you", said Haig Shoushan referring to Sultanian.
"I said what I had to say..."
"That is not the question; the question is ", interrupted Gara, "that unity, about which you speak; how can one bring it about? The Armenian nation is composed of various elements...Let us take, for example, an Armenian from Istanbul and put him in front of an Armenian from Karabagh...even the language..."
"A quail and a hawk..."
"You said it well..."
They laughed.
"That is not a serious objection...those differences exist in all peoples; the Sicilian and the Venetian, the Cossack and the white Russian..."
"Naturally. That even constitutes a people's wealth...different types, different dialects...'David of Sassoun' is sung in all provinces, all dialects, with local improvements..."
"But 'David of Sassoun' is not sung in Istanbulian Armenian..."
"But no! Can you imagine? Istanbulian Armenian and 'David of Sassoun'...?
"Those people have lived there for centuries; during the Byzantines they even ruled the city, however, they did not build one church in Armenian style..."
"That is very remarkable..."
"Istanbul was a colony."
"Lvov was a colony too, right?"
"But no!" Said Sultanian, "but no! Let us leave Istanbul...Our national epics have been sung by the provinces in different dialects, but they have been sung and inspired by the same central motifs. That is what counts.The heroes of poetry have raised in the heart of the race the same powerful and dominant sound. The spirit has been the same everywhere."
"I even believe, that the Armenian spiritual geography can be defined by 'David of Sassoun'; wherever it was sung, it was Armenia, and wherever it was not sung, it was colony."
"If you like..."
"The race is formed from various spiritual currents, different myths, different deities. If we excavate our lands, Armenia will be filled ghosts coming from far, very far distances."
"The mountain man, the valley man..."
"Thrace, Urartu..."
In the nearby room they were not singing any longer.
They were silently drinking.
"The fundamental prototypes have remained", continued Sultanian. If we wished to distinguish with broad lines, we could approximately ascertain and identify them. First, the Thracian Armenian. They had crossed over Asia Minor like a hurricane which turned everything upside down. Tall, strong, agile. Fierce warriors, ruthless conquerors. Their gods were drunk with happy, complex visions; they were gods nourished with wine and blood. Archers, stone grinders, movers of rocks, dancers on ropes, taking spirit from awe-inspiring worships, swift-moving and fast-running people. They worshipped the heroes, the fire, the mountains. And they were like fire and like the mountains."
"Their traces can be seen until today in Ticor and Bakaran. Truly the rocks have been moved...a gigantic enterprise..." added Beronian. " When you look at them, they make you dizzy..."
"Yes. Then there are the others...let us conditionally name them the Urartian prototype. These are by their nature clerks, bookkeepers, merchants, travelers, and sometimes artists, writers. This element was occupied with trade, yearned for the modern, imitated the foreigners, maintained and decorated the temples, the churches."
"Good diplomats..."
"Peace-loving; Prosperity, charity. Without flight, without sacrifices, non-heroic. Without daring. In fear of deities, kneeling worshipers. Slave-minded and cunning. The Gulf race..."
"The tragedy is that, when the land became a place full of dangers, they fled and scattered everywhere..."
"And foreigners judge our people by them..."
"Yes. Try to make those foreigners understand, that they make up a negligible part of the Armenian nation, that our real people have always remained on their lands, in their mountains, worked, fought, and built..."
In the nearby room they were singing again. They were singing a dance song.
Those seated around the table were hitting it with their fingers, as a large and tall man - with Circassian clothes collected around his belt - danced.
Dam li di bel Bel li di dam Di bel li dam...dam-dam-pedam...
As they said these words, they hit on the table and danced.
The dancer was an aged, bearded man...
For a moment they all looked there. "The Caucasus!" Said Gara smiling.
"O yes, what were you saying?"
"The Gulf people..."
"That is what I wanted to say", Sultanian said after thinking for a moment, "let us leave the foreigners...Even for us the time has come to differ, to differentiate, to choose. We must draw a ruthless border between us and them; we must promptly cut and throw away that darkness with a mental knife..."
"Easy to say..."
"It is not easy. What I am saying, is directed, naturally, to that elite which must carry on itself all the responsibilities. Let us look at our past and have the courage to be accountable to ourselves. This morning we were talking about the necessity to return to primeval spirits. Who are those spirits?..."
"Our history is a closed book..."
"But if we did not understand it, who will? The past, doubtless, is a series of mysteries and it is difficult to comprehend everything...Our Christian historians have distorted everything and even deceived us to push forward their biblical world-view which was foreign to us..."
"That was a crime, such a...such a...such a..."
And Gara, with bitter and hissing words, lashed the clerics.
"Let us leave that", continued Sultanian, after listening to Gara patiently,"that is not important now...When we look at our past, one thing is clear, that over a period of more than thirty centuries, the Armenian nation has made superhuman efforts to create a great culture; but, every time it had to remain unfinished, and we could never reach our true goal... Assyrians, Romans, Byzantines, Tamerlanes, Genghis Khans, Persians, Arabs, Turks have destroyed what we had just begun to build, they robbed us, they took the best of us, they usurped the creations of our race..."
"The political slavery of foreign so-called scientists has come to such an extent," added Haig Shoushan, that when they make excavations in Turkey, that is in Armenian provinces, they are afraid to even mark the map with the name Armenia."
A large noise was raised. Everyone present was putting forward proofs of malevolence, and getting angry about it.
"The Byzantine, during its best period, was three-quarters Armenian..."
"The Armenian architecture of the first centuries of Christianity may be considered the second Renaissance of the Classic age..."
"They talk about Turkish art...it is laughable..."
"Not that! I want to say..."
"...It is laughable..."
" The trip of Leonardo Da Vinci to Armenia and its consequences..."
"That is one special enmity..."
"...In Tuscany, Christianity was introduced by Saint Mineado...".
"Silence! Silence for a minute...!"
"Brother! Let us see what Sultanian wants to say".
"First, let us drink...Let us drink this cup..."
"No, it really is laughable!..."