Khent-the Fool

[Arpa]

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.

The following is from the site I aired a few days ago.

Credits go to Raffi K. of Cilicia.com

 

Khent;

http://www.cilicia.com/armoz.html

 

 

Corruption.

Chapter XLI

 

Melik-Mansoor, filling the glasses, drank one himself and, giving the other to Vartan said, "I am glad that our Vanks are usually built far from the habitation of men, among mountain villages or in wildernesses. There are not so many rascals and villains anywhere else as there are in Vagharshabad. Nowhere are there so many loose women as there are here. See this fair woman who entered in so modest and bashful a manner, and immediately retired. She is the mistress of a monk. The Vank, I thought, would at least preserve religious zeal, but here men believe nothing. The conduct of the monks has occasioned scandal and lack of faith in the people. Protestantism has already begun to rise up here. Passing through the streets, you necessarily saw some fine houses. If you were to inquire who are their owners, you would learn that they belong, usually, to some near or distant relative of monks who were formerly poor, but who have become rich, thanks to the Vank.

 

"To tell the truth, I cannot bear it, when I see hundreds of thousands spent here when every kopeck is so needed by us. We have a thousand and one needs, and we need money for them all. The national treasury in Constantinople is empty. The Patriarch hasn't money to pay his necessary expenses. But he is not burdened with business, which if delayed, will be a great loss to the nation.

===========

 

Anti-Cleric?

"It isn't right to speak like that."

 

"To speak how? I only know this, that whatever nation places all its hopes on the clergy, the beginning of that people's destruction is near."

=========

 

Was Raffi a Paulician?

Chapter XLIII

 

It was morning. Children were coming out of their homes in groups, happy and well clad. Boys and girls together, with their books hung over their shoulders, hastened to school. Vartan looked at them in astonishment. How well-cared for were those lovely children, how happy they were! School and teacher did not frighten them, it seemed. Was it possible that these were those half-naked, sickly children whom Vartan had seen before?

 

Vartan was standing alone in the street, looking around him in astonishment not knowing which way to go. A sweet sound reached his ears. The sound of the church-bell. The morning service had begun. From the day he left the monastery and fled from the brotherhood of Monks this was the first time that sound which called to the house of God, had sounded so sweet to his ears. His hardened heart was softened. He turned towards the church on whose threshold he had not set foot for ten years.

 

He was amazed. What a simple, unpretentious church! No platform, no altar, no decorations, no gilded pictures. It had none of the tawdry splendor of the Armenian church. No readers, deacons or choristers appeared. He saw only two pictures there, one of Jesus Christ, the other of Gregory the Illuminator, each in a plain dark frame.

 

The people were seated on long benches, men and women together, each holding a small hymnal. The priest stood at a pulpit with the Bible before him and read a sermon. His dress did not differ from that of ordinary people. His sermon was so simple, so clear that Vartan understood the whole of it. The word of God flowed from his lips like a stream gushing from a pure and living fountain. He explained the meaning of that scripture, "By the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread." Vartan was astonished at the explanation given by the priest. Until that day Vartan had understood it to mean that it was a curse which God set upon the brow of the first human pair which embraced all their seed. But now he understood that it was counsel rather, which if followed, rescued man from idleness and preserved him in industrious independence.

 

The sermon ended. A common villager stood up in the midst and prayed an extemporary prayer having the same thought as the sermon. He begged God to grant them health, wisdom and strength, that they might be able to work to cultivate the earth He had created, which produces boundless blessings.

 

"What a prayer that is?" thought Vartan. "What seekers after gain these men are! They ask for nothing for the soul. Do they expect nothing on the other side of the grave and so ask only for what is needed by the body; what their temporal life demands?"

 

The prayer ended. The whole congregation, men and women, old and young, began to sing a hymn together. It was arranged like one of the Psalms of David.

 

"Again the same material purpose," thought Vartan. "Nothing spiritual. The laborer sings of the abundance of the earth which he cultivates with his hands, which God has granted to him. It is astonishing how these men have adapted the abstractions of religion to the demands of material life."

 

But what a beautiful hymn that was, accompanied by the sweet notes of the organ. How sweet! How wonderfully it rose from the lips of hundreds of persons in unison. It seemed to Vartan as if the voices of men mingled with the melody of the cherubim's, was borne up to the Eternal Throne. It was the first time in his life be had heard such holy music.

 

The service ended. The congregation began to come out of the church. Now, at the pulpit where the priest had stood, stood the teacher, and on the seats where the parents had sat and prayed, now the children were ranged. Girls and boys mingled in classes, began to listen to the exposition of the teacher. "Is this a school?" thought Vartan. "Has the church joined with the school?

 

========

And to avoid repetition please review what has been said before.

These and possibly more.

 

http://armenians.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=7001&st=0

 

http://armenians.com/forum/index.php?showt...t=0entry39152

Edited April 24, 2004 by Arpa

[Arpa]

Raffi the Utopian Socialist?

Also note his description of the industrial revolution. Steam engines.

Please be advised that all this, practically the entire chapter is Vardan's dream.

 

Chapter XLIII

 

They passed by a mill. where logs were sawed. This mill supplied the surrounding cities with lumber of various lengths and thicknesses.

 

"To whom does this belong?" asked Vartan.

 

"To our town. Whatever mill or factory we have is not the property of any single individual," replied his host. They belong to the community. Each villager has a share in them. The logs are obtained from the neighboring forests, which also are the property of the townspeople." They passed beyond the saw-mill.

 

"Look at this immense structure," said his host to Vartan, "this is a cheese factory. The finest cheese in our province is manufactured here. This also belongs to the townspeople. Each villager keeps a record of the milk he brings and at the time of the division of the proceeds, he receives his proportion, either in cheese or in cash payment."

 

Now they were in the fields. The ripe grain had been gathered, but was harvested, not with the sickle or scythe, but with machinery, one machine did the work of a hundred men. This is what was meant by making labor easy. Vartan understood now.

 

They passed by another great building. It was a mill, here also labor was made easy, and instead of water, steam power was used. The wheat of many villages was ground here and the flour, as white as snow, was sent to foreign lands. This also belonged to the entire community. But one thing which surprised Vartan more was that whenever they met any of the village workmen, they had looked up at them boldly as though their equals in independence. They seemed to have been born and brought up in perfect freedom. They seemed never to have suffered the sword of the Turk and had never feared the spear of the Kurd. He saw that this multitude of workmen was capable when necessary, of laying down the spade and plow and to take up arms instead and use them with equal skill.

[Arpa]

Place names.

From the same Chapter 43

 

"One is a forester in one of these forests you see, and one is a Professor in the University at Garin. The third is an officer in the regiment at Van while the fourth is a teacher in the village school, at New Pakrevantz."

 

Vartan was not familiar with the names, and he said, "I don't recollect any such town by that name."

 

"That is old Bayazid. It bears this name now. Many of our cities, towns and provinces have changed their names. A few have taken their former historical names, while others have taken new names." The host took up his newspaper again and read a paragraph which seemed to disturb him greatly.

[MJ]

Was Raffi a Paulician?

Chapter XLIII

Interesting catch, Arpa. Quite possible. In his era, the Paulicians or, better, Tondraketcis were a major presence in Armenia, to be finally wiped out by the Russian government per Armenian Churches request.

[Arpa]

Raffi the emancipationist?

Woman physician a hundred years ago?

Chapter 43.

 

 

 

Vartan heard all this in astonishment, but when his eye fell upon beautiful Lila it occurred to him to ask where she had studied.

 

"Just a week ago she was graduated from the Seminary at Nor Vagharshagerd, and now she is preparing to study medicine at the University. She is not very strong and I wished her, to spend a few months at home, but we cannot persuade her to give up the idea."

[axel]

Raffi the freemason?

[Arpa]

Raffi the freemason?

Axel, why do you assume that?

Please do not respond in this thread unless you know something that is relevent to the subject at hand, i.e. Khent. Where is there indication in the novel to that effect?

Once again. Do not respond in this thread. If you want to talk about "farmasons" you can go to the next thread about the Masons that I will revive.

[axel]

What prompted me to ask the question is the heavy influence of enlightenment/masonic ideas Raffi was subject to as demonstrated by his novel "Khent". Modernism, secularism, chiliastic socialism, strong hostility towards christianity (obviously Raffi has an extremely superficial understanding of the latter)... all of these are indisputable characteristics of movements inspired (if not directed) by atheistic judaism.

 

Instrumentalization of national identities by freemasonry is a common trend in the late nineteenth century as freemasonry attempts to break down the remaining empires through a divide & conquer strategy. Manipulation is commonplace, and Armenian intellectuals are not immune to it.

 

That said, I will not interfere further in this thread

I do not have much interest in this novel which, in my view, is just a piece of naive revolutionary propaganda.

 

PS: You often attack christianism on the grounds that it was brought to us by the Jews. But you fail to see that most of the intellectuals you revere (Varoujan, Siamanto...) were under the spiritual influence of foreign philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, himself, incidentally, of jewish ascent.

[Arpa]

And I removed mine.

Thanks Sasun.

Edited April 28, 2004 by Arpa

[Sasun]

Arpa, sure I removed. Thanks for reminding to stay on topic.

[Sasun]

... strong hostility towards christianity (obviously Raffi has an extremely superficial understanding of the latter)...

I agree. On the other hand, his view of Christianity was nothing different from the mainstream view among Armenians at the time, and also among Armenians today.

 

But I was a big fan of Raffi nonetheless. I have read at least half of what he has written when I was a teenager. I must say I was quite influenced by his novels, including Khent. Surely he gives the wrong impression of what Christianity is about, but then who is perfect.

[MosJan]

it's next to St Gayane