ara baliozian

LATER [6 February, 2002] ******************************** If you describe a man more or less objectively and accurately, forever after you condemn him to pretend to be someone else – call it the magic of words or the power of ideas, both of which are invisible… but then so is the wind, so is gravity, so is memory, and so is also our perception of reality. Likewise, if you describe a community or nation objectively and in the process you expose its contradictions, something is bound to change, but only under normal conditions – meaning progressive or democratic, or a climate wherein dialogue, compromise, and consensus are given half a chance. After centuries of oppression however, we seem to be conditioned to either oppress or be oppressed, and ultimately to regress, decline, disintegrate and collapse. I hope and pray to be wrong; but after repeated disappointments I can no longer survive on hope, and the last time I prayed was in 1952 or 1953, if memory serves….

Wednesday, February 06, 2002 ********************************** 1. Writing for Armenians I feel like a dogface writing for an army of Napoleons. 2. The hatred of an Armenian for a Turk is rivaled only by the contempt of an Armenian for another Armenian. 3. No one, not even an elephant in his prime has as good a memory as an Armenian whose ego has been injured by another Armenian. Compared to such an Armenian, the elephant might as well be suffering from an advanced case of Alzheimer’s. 4. "Write more like Saroyan!" I am told again and again. Poor Saroyan, who began his literary career by loving all of mankind (and feeling sorry for the Turks) and hating his own children. And poor, poor Zarian! He began his literary career by declaring Armenians to be the real Chosen People and ended it by calling them cannibals.

LATER [5 February, 2002] ******************************** 1. So many false charges have been leveled against me by fellow Armenians that I no longer believe anything an Armenian tells me. Were it not for the fact that I grew up among survivors, I would be inclined to question the validity of our genocide. 2. If an odar writer doubts the reality of our genocide, there is no need to question his integrity. A man who is wrong should be corrected, not insulted. To insult such a man is to make him an enemy for life and not just your enemy but an enemy of the nation. We already have more than enough enemies. No need to make more of them. 3. All of us have been wrong at one time or another – all of us, except of course our self-assessed morally superior experts on any given subject who happen to be a dime a dozen. 4. What could be more morally repellent than to use someone else’s heroism to justify one’s own cowardice, or someone else’s honesty to cover up one’s own dishonesty, or, as Zaroukian once put it, to lament about someone else’s crucifixion even as one nails another to the cross? 5. A wise man is shaped by what he understand, a fool by what he cannot understand. 6. A wise man has twice as many doubts as a fool has certainties. 7. If the facts are on your side, stick to facts. A single fact speaks more eloquently than a thousand arguments and ten thousand insults.

Tuesday, February 05, 2002 ********************************** 1. In my PETIT LAROUSSE (Paris, 1968) I come across the following entry: ALTHEN (Jean): Armenian agronomist (1711-1774) who introduced into France the cultivation of "garance," which is defined in the vocabulary section as a plant whose roots provide the basis of a red dye. 2. Elsewhere we read that POLYEUCTE is a tragedy by Corneille, written in 1641-1642, whose central character, Polyeucte, is an Armenian nobleman, who, despite his wife Pauline’s efforts to save him from his father-in-law Felix, the Roman governor of Armenia, allows himself to be a martyr. "His sacrifice brings about the conversion of both Felix and Pauline and the admiration of Severius, a Roman nobleman, who, without rejecting paganism, acquires an awareness of the greatness of the Christian faith." 3. Arthur Adamov is identified as a French playwright of Russian origin. He was an Armenian, though Armenians are seldom mentioned in his writings. 4. Arshile Gorky and William Saroyan are not mentioned, but Aram Khachatourian is ("Soviet composer born in Tiflis"), and so is Henri Troyat (" French novelist born in Moscow").

LATER / 4 February, 2002 ********************************* Our institutions have been in the business of dividing us since day one. To hope that some day soon they will see the light and change their ways is to engage in wishful thinking. I recognize only one legitimate way of judging the future conduct of institutions and that’s by assessing their past performance. I have lost all faith in ideologies and orthodoxies. I place my trust only in the democratic process. Let the people speak. Let the people decide. And if they are ever allowed to do so they will be unanimous in demanding honesty from their leaders. That’s because no one likes to deal with crooks and even charlatans avoid charlatans.

Monday, February 04, 2002 ********************************* A spirit of contradiction can be a valuable asset if it is directed against oneself. Directed against others it becomes an instrument of polarization, conflicts, and destruction. 2. At all times and everywhere philistines have been in the majority. My guess is, every prehistoric cave painting was interrupted again and again by philistines who said: "Make yourself useful. Go out and kill an animal. We can't have paintings for lunch." When one of our eminent national benefactors said to one of our poets: "Poetry is of no use to us!" he was echoing the very same sentiments of prehistoric kibitzers whose spiritual and intellectual horizons never went beyond hunger and lunch. I respect the benevolence of our benefactors but I loathe the values they legitimize: money is everything, ideas trash. Capitalists are princes, poets paupers. 3. An Armenian is an open wound to another Armenian and if he hates unto death it’s because he has been hated unto death. When a reader threatens to kill me or calls my mother a whore he is settling a score against the Turk and his unawareness is such that it never even occurs to him that his enemy is no longer a Turk but a fellow Armenian. 4. The Turks don't have to kill us in order to exterminate us. All they have to do is sit back and enjoy the spectacle. That’s the only way to explain the irrational forces unleashed by the Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission.

quote:Originally posted by Konya: A question for A. Baliozian... I recall reading an essay you had written in which you criticize A. Toynbee's version of history. Winners write the history, and Toynbee's approach was to focus on large power struggles rather than on human rights, and never holding govts morally responsible...that's what I remember. I didn't know then how much I would need that essay now. I just started a class, "History of the Middle East" through Fresno Pacific University. I am 80 pages into the text, and it seems to be written by a Turcophile. Bernard Lewis is listed in the References. And how is the Armenian Genocide addressed? It is given all of three sentences! "...throughout eastern Anatolia the Turks were threatened by the insurrection of their embittered Armenian subjects, who disrupted communications and formed volunteer groups to help the Russians. Others joined the Russian Armenian forces. The Turks took a terrible revenge by ordering the deportation of the entire Armenian population from eastern Anatolia to northern Syria. Hundreds of thousands were killed, and many more died of hunger, exposure and disease. Between one and a quarter and one and a half million perished. Armenian nationalists still seek revenge against representatives of the Turkish state." That is it. No holding them morally responsible. Imagine writing a book on European history and giving only 3 sentences of this nature, which blames the victims, regarding the Jewish genocide of WWII! I plan to write a reasoned and yet impassioned letter to the entire Board of Regents of the University and request a better history text. But I need your help. What was the name of the article you wrote re Toynbee? And do you have any history texts to recommend for a class of this nature? dear friend: the essay you mention is titled THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AND THE WEST. it may be found under http://www.narek.com or http://www.abrilbooks.com My pamphlet also contains many footnotes and bibliographical information. If you have more questions, i will be happy to reply. / ara baliozian

LATER…[3 February, 2002] ********************************* Lies. I was brought up on lies – lies spoken in the name of patriotism and self-esteem, but lies all the same. I was told being an Armenian was a rare privilege. I went into the world thinking the world owed me something – respect, sympathy, apology, admiration. I soon discovered the world had no desire to bother with me. The world didn't give a damn about me. The world didn't even know who Armenians were. Some went further and confused Armenians with the biblical Arameans and Rumanians. That's when I began to understand why some smart Armenians change their names and assimilate. Others prefer to stay away from their fellow countrymen. Still others of mixed parentage hide their Armenian fraction. What the hell was going on here? Was the world full of ignoramuses and traitors? It took me a while to realize that the world was what it had always been; and that I was the ignorant one in thinking there was something special in being an Armenian. I know now that we are a people like any other people, or we would be, if we didn't try so damn hard to pretend to be better than we are. One could even say that, what makes some of us inferior is thirst for superiority.

Sunday, February 03, 2002 ******************************* 1. Concerned friends sometimes advise me to do this or that, or not to do this or that because it may tarnish my reputation. What reputation? I have none and I wish to have none. I am not a boss or a bishop or a benefactor. I have no desire to make a good impression by pretending to be better than I am. 2. Whenever I go down into the gutter with my critics, I feel I have done an injustice to the situation. When I speak of Armenian critics I mean of course enemies; and when I speak of Armenian enemies I speak of hatred unto death. 3. Exploiting your enemy is infinitely better than revenge. Revenge may be short and sweet, but exploitation is much more profitable. Which is why I prefer to use my critics as sources of inspiration. Where would I be without them? Where would the ARF be without the Turks? 4. Why focus on my critics when there are so many other important topics to discuss? But to discuss anything objectively and intelligently we need freedom of speech; and freedom of speech becomes impossible in the company of bullies who, instead of saying "I disagree with you" call you "son of a whore." And they call you that because they have the blessing of their role models: bosses, bishops, benefactors, and their flunkies who are even more intolerant of dissent than they are.

USEFUL IDIOTS *********************** It takes more than brains to be objective. Not all "useful idiots" have been idiots, if we define "useful idiot" as one who is taken in by propaganda. Plato was so disgusted with Greek democracy, which had condemned his beloved master Socrates to death, that he was taken in by a Sicilian tyrant – a blunder that nearly cost him his life. More recently our own Zohrab hated Sultan Abdulhamid II so much that he was taken in by Talaat -- a blunder that cost him his life. After a brief interview with Hitler Toynbee declared: "Herr Hitler wants peace." A short list of "useful idiots" would have to include such illustrious names as Beethoven, Shaw, Sartre, Gide, Heidegger, and Koestler. It is extremely difficult, perhaps even impossible, for an Armenian to be objective about the Turks, which may explain why some of us are easily taken in by the propaganda of our own political parties. The only reason that prevents me from joining the chorus of our partisan "idiots" is the fact that they have done their utmost to alienate, silence, and sometimes even starve some of our ablest writers, whose sole crime was trying to be objective, which also means, refusing to be taken in by their lies.

MY BRILLIANT CAREER ******************************** The average Armenian reader thinks: "He is an average Armenian writer, an utter failure; so I will share my wisdom with him; I will give him a piece of my mind; the poor fellow can use it." At one time or another I have been told: "Write more like Saroyan," (or Ian Fleming, or Mark Twain, or Hemingway….) "Sex and violence, that’s where the money is." "When you write about sex include details – peculiarities, smells, sounds…the more details the better." "Forget about Armenians: they'll never amount to anything. Who wants to read about failures, victims, and rejects anyway? Depressing! Uch!" "Get an agent." "Travel. Meet people. Press the flesh. Kiss ass if necessary…." "Never mention money. It’s cheap. It’s vulgar. Can you imagine Beethoven discussing money?" (As a matter of fact, in his correspondence, he discusses money more than music.) I once met an old Canadian writer, a veteran of World War II, who said: "There are 43 ways a publisher can cheat a writer." Since most of my publishers have been Armenians, I can truly state that I have been screwed 44 ways. As for readers: 444 ways with no end in sight.

Thursday, January 31, 2002 ********************************* What moves nations is neither truth nor altruism but self-interest. Once you understand this, it will be easy to understand why both the United States and Israel support Turkey. Some day nations may change and be motivated not by self-interest but by principles of right and wrong. If that happens – and I doubt if it will happen in our own lifetime -- we may then have the support of both Israel and the United States. Until then let us not pretend outrage, as if our own regime in Yerevan or, for that matter, our political parties in the Diaspora, are in the habit of upholding the truth (at all times and everywhere) at the expense of their self-interest. Because if you believe they do, you must also believe in Santa.

TO A CRITIC ************************** Just because we disagree it doesn't necessarily follow that you are right and I am wrong. Since neither of us is in a position to assert infallibility, you could be wrong, or I could be wrong, or both of us could be wrong. But in our context, what’s infinitely more important than establishing who is wrong, is reaching a consensus by means of compromise. Let us therefore agree to disagree, if only because a refusal to do so may legitimize and reinforce our tribalism and fragmentation. To those who say: "You don't always practice what you preach, do you?" I say: If it will make you feel any better, I am more than willing to concede that I have been an utter failure as an Armenian, as a writer, and as a human being. If you are in need of a role model, please don't choose me. I reject all such labels and pretensions. About a thousand years ago, one of our most eminent writers wrote a book titled LAMENTATIONS in which he catalogued all his sins. Let us name him our role model and let us reflect on our own failures and blunders before we attack and insult anyone who does not see eye to eye with us. All I can say in my defense is: unlike our bosses and bishops I don't make policy. If I am wrong I harm no one but myself.

Wednesday, January 30, 2002 ********************************** Is what I am doing of any use to anyone? I have no idea. Why am I doing it? I don't know. If I fall silent, will anyone miss me? I doubt it. After twenty years of hard labor have I accomplished anything? I don't think so – unless you consider perforating a few swollen egos an accomplishment…. If I were in a phony-rhetorical mode, I would come up with all kinds of phony-rhetorical answers in which I would portray myself as an idealist dedicated to principles who is doing what must be done and I would sprinkle my prose with quotations from Plato, the Scriptures, and a few other fancy source that would convince no one, not even myself. The truth of the matter is, I am doing what comes easy, that’s the beginning, the middle, and the end of it.

GIVING THE DEVIL HIS DUE ********************************* I am grateful to some of my critics because they helped me to understand what it is that goes into the making of a Stalinist, a Nazi, a fascist, and in general all fanatics who are so sure of their views that they would be more than willing to exterminate you like vermin. I am grateful to these critics because they have also humanized and made accessible to me even Turks, and I don't mean Turks of today half of whom may well be half-Armenian, but Turks of a hundred years ago, and the very same Turks who perpetrated the massacres. To those who say: "You are comparing law-abiding citizens to cold-blooded killers!" I say: Once upon a time all cold-blooded killers were law-abiding citizens. Killers are not born but made and what makes them is the total absence of all doubt. All such law-abiding and respectable citizens need to turn into cold-blooded killers is the right (meaning of course, the wrong) environment and leader – a leader who will convince them they have enemies, mortal enemies, enemies who are out to get them, and it is their patriotic (or religious) duty to stop them, and if there is only one way to stop them, so be it. Finally, I am grateful to these critics (and I am sure they know who they are) because they have helped me to understand what it means to be hated unto death.

Tuesday, January 29, 2002 ******************************** "I agree with what you say but I don't like the way you say it," I am told once in a while by the kind of fastidious reader who on receiving a gift he probably examines the packaging as carefully as its contents. If the style is the man, I suppose the only way to please some readers is to assume a new identity; and I might do just that, given enough time. I am not what I used to be, and I may not be what I am today. But the same applies to my readers. Just because they are what they are today, it doesn't necessarily follow they will be the same ten or twenty years hence. I say therefore, let nature run its course and some day we may meet, shake hands, and agree on all points. In the meantime I suggest we ignore each other, which, I assure you, will be a pleasure on my part.

LATER // 28 January, 2002 ******************************* 1. Life has a way of cutting down to size anyone whose assessment of himself exceeds his real worth. 2. Whenever I am attacked anonymously, I think: "He must be a bishop or the son of one." 3. One of my readers once took upon himself the trouble to remind me that even the worst bishops deserves our respect because he represents God on earth; thus implying that I represent the devil or, at best, a lesser deity. 4. To those who said The Bible was written by the Holy Spirit, Shaw would say: "All books are written by the Holy Spirit." 5. Anyone can say, "I speak in the name of God. Therefore, I am authorized to say you speak in the name of the devil." 6. Tyrants neither explain nor reason. They lie and threaten. Even when they say nothing they lie. Even the blanks spaces between their lines and words are menacing. Even their punctuation marks thirst for blood. 7. Where dissent is silenced, a fraction of the people are also silenced; in the same way that where books are burned, people will also be reduced to ashes.

Monday, January 28, 2002 ******************************** 1. Hugh Trevor-Roper in THE LAST DAYS OF HITLER: "The competitive servility of a court is always odious; combined with eloquent humbug, it is nauseating." We will grow up as a nation on the day we produce writers capable of writing such sentences. 2. We don't know the truth; only fractions of it. We don't know the past; only versions of it. Propaganda has been defined as a fraction of the truth. In that sense, we are all victims of half-truths. 3. A fanatic who thinks of himself as a moderate is one who cannot tell the difference between extremism and moderation, or, for that matter, honesty and charlatanism, or truth from half truths, or half-truths and lies. 4. A religion that emphasizes truth or dogma at the expense of love and charity, is an invention of the devil. 5. If your number one concern is taking care of number one, everyone else is bound to be number two. This is a rule with only one exception: love. In love, the other (or number two) becomes number one.

LATER /27 January, 2002 *********************************** 1. Ideological truths become lies when they justify violations of human rights, the first of which is always freedom of speech. Where there is censorship of ideas there will be censorship of lives. Next time you promote censorship, ask yourself this question: "Do I really want to legitimize murder in the name of God and Country?" 2. The spirit of contradiction in some Armenians is so highly developed that if you were to agree with them they would disagree with you. 3. May I confess that I don't always read my critics. It is painful to the extreme reading thoughts that I entertained as a child but rejected as an adult. 4. Our dividers never say it is a good thing to divide the nation. What they say is: "We are for unity; it’s the other side that divides." And to think that these are the kind of people who accuse me of repeating myself.

Sunday, January 27, 2002 ************************************* One reason I reject all claims of moral superiority is that it is an illusion. To those who say, if it is an illusion, surely, it is a harmless one; I say, there is no such thing as a harmless illusion. All illusions are harmful if only because they distort and sometimes even obstruct our understanding of reality. Because if we are morally superior, it means we must also be nearer to God, and with Him on our side we can safely assume to be less vulnerable to the enemy. But history, reality, and even the scriptures seem to suggest that the Good Lord does not favor those who rely too much on Him and less on themselves.

Saturday, January 26, 2002 ************************************ When recently I quoted Gostan Zarian to the effect that our political parties have been of no political use to us, one of our loyal party members reacted by asserting the same could be said of some of our writers. I agree that we have produced our share of dupes and opportunistic mediocrities who recycled propaganda, composed odes to sultans and commissars, or, at best, tributes to the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat. But what has been our treatment of writers who performed their function as writers (which is understanding reality)? When Raffi said the Ottoman Empire was no place for Armenians because the Turks had no respect for human life, he was ignored. At one point a wealthy Armenian merchant even hired a Kurdish bandit to have him assassinated. When Zarian said Soviet despotism was as bad as its Ottoman variant, he too was ignored with the result that even writers like Zabel Yessayan and Charents went on recycling Soviet propaganda. And when the same Zarian said "the greatest enemy of our political parties today is free speech," he was ostracized, silenced, forced to emigrate to Soviet Armenia where he was eventually buried alive. As another one of our writers (Antranik Zaroukian) once asserted: we are the kind of people who even as we lament the dead, we see nothing objectionable in crucifying the living.

LATER / January 25, 2002 +++++++++++++++++++++++ Armenia is wherever a single Armenian is allowed to live in peace: it could be Siberia as easily as Istanbul or New York City. I say this to point out the fact that we have friends even among our enemies and some of our worst enemies may be among us. There was a time when I thought of Mt. Ararat as a sacred mountain and of Yerevan as the most wonderful place on earth. I know better now. Mt. Ararat, geologists tell us, is a bad mountain because it absorbs rain water like a sponge; and Yerevan is a city like any other industrialized city with its own share of crime, corruption, mismanagement, pollution, poverty, filth, and prostitution. Where I now live may be drab and in the middle of nowhere, but it has allowed me to work and survive in relative peace (except for the occasional death threat by a fellow Armenian). I shiver to think what would have happened to me in Armenia, where, in the words of a reader in an angry letter to the editor, "they know how to handle people like you!"

Friday, January 25, 2002 ******************************** If it’s not religion that leads man astray, it’s ideology, or self-interest, or the ego, or a childhood trauma. The safest road to objective assessment is thinking against oneself. The ancient Greeks knew more about astronomy than contemporaries of Galileo because they (Greeks) didn't have the Old Testament to obstruct their path. Where there is disagreement and conflict (and ultimately war and massacre) you will also find the total absence of objective judgment. There is no such thing as Japanese and Italian mathematics, or socialist and capitalist chemistry; but there are many religions and ideologies, which amounts to saying: in the field of faith and politics there are ten thousand half-truths and lies for every truth. It was this fact that prompted a wise man to observe: "Man cannot create a single earthworm, yet he has created ten thousand gods." Which is why I rate the objective judgment of an ordinary citizen much more highly than the passionate beliefs of a charismatic genius or messianic figure. The Chinese are right when they equate interesting times and great men with trouble.

MEMO *********************** While we applaud the work of our genocide scholars, let us also remind ourselves once in a while that a thousand Dadrians cannot reclaim a single inch of Armenian soil or minimize by a single iota the suffering of our victims. Doing the right thing is the best revenge. As for appeals to the conscience of the world: the world is too busy with its own real problems (not to say, past, present, and future massacres) to afford the luxury of a conscience.

Thursday, January 24, 2002 ********************************* At the beginning of my career as an Armenian writer I was as vulnerable to criticism as an earthworm crossing a busy intersection at high noon. After decades of verbal abuse – and when I speak of Armenian verbal amuse I mean massacre by other means – I have become as fortified as a callused crocodile. Is it possible to be an Armenian among Armenians without being to some degree Ottomanized? Why is it that getting involved in Armenian affairs means trashing and being trashed? Will I ever forgive a reader who insulted me or an editor who was my friend when I was dishonest and became my mortal enemy when I decided to be more objective? Even more to the point: Will my critics ever accept the fact that honesty and patriotism are not incompatible concepts?