Jump to content

The Armenian Art Of Toasting


Zartonk

Recommended Posts

I don't know if the piece has been posted before or not, but I thought we need to have it handy... :)

 

 

 

In Georgia they toast to their parents first. The Armenians say this is because the Georgians get so drunk they are afraid they will forget later.

 

 

 

 

 

This thing called toasting, I have no art at it. In the States, it is enough to say "to You," tilt our glasses and sip. No such thing as a "bottoms up", at least in the literal sense. And if we are really feeling racy, well, then, "Salude", "Au Sante", "To Your Health" will suffice. For those who down the glasses, well that is for shot glasses and whiskey, or double dares of drinking bouts. In short, for the young or the "Drinking Challenged". The Art of toasting is something new to me.

 

 

I categorize toasts ("Genatsetzi") here. They come in layers, each with a sub-toast, a detail that must be covered before one dares touch the spirits to one's lips.

 

 

I remember when a friend came from Texas to visit me. We went to the dacha to spend the night. Higher in the hills towards Aragats, we gazed upon the Ararat Valley, across to Turkey, beyond to Ararat. We toasted timidly, "To You", "Salude", "To Your Health", and were completely out of place. Our Armenians reminded me how I used to toast "like a real Armenian". I blushed, for I had not introduced my friend to the strange intricacies of bonding that form the fabric of this society. I half understood them myself, but toasting was a particular wonder to me.

 

 

I remembered there was a toast to women ("Not yet. Too soon, Rick. You know it is towards the end, after women have served the dinner". Oh, yes, I forgot.). Well then, to parents ("Always at the end, Rick! Not now.") Armenians pride themselves on being able to toast their parents, no matter how much they have drunk. They will always remember this toast. After so much drinking, I am not sure how many remember what they said in their toasts to their parents, but surely none ever forgot to toast. In Georgia they toast to their parents first. The Armenians say this is because the Georgians get so drunk they are afraid they will forget this toast, and so get it out of the way. The Georgians say it is because they put their parents before anything. Before food, before drink, before friendship. That the Armenians do a disservice to their parents by waiting until the end. A small but important distinction between two neighbors.

 

 

To the Host? ("Well, that has already been done, Rick") To the food? ("What, you toast the food, and not the cook? This is not possible. Anyway, that is also after we have been served.")

 

 

By this time I had been in Armenia for two years, I had drunk of the culture, fed voraciously of the idiosyncrasies of its existence ("That wall there: which epoch, what king, how many people took it?") But I had never been a Tamada. A Tamada is the master of the table, so, the master of toasting, the one responsible to keep the ball rolling, so to speak. I had always been the guest who milked my glass of vodka or cognac so that I could match every 20 toasts with one jigger of alcohol.

 

 

And I sat by as the Armenians taught me how to toast. And they taught. And taught. And taught. "This is a good class," I thought, weaving a bit on my chair. "Eat more bread. We do not get drunk because when we drink, we eat."

 

 

"I am eating. And I am drunk."

 

 

"Oh, you poor American--"

 

 

"--Texasitzi!"

 

 

"Ok, Texasitzi. Poor soul. Let's toast to the Texas spirit!"

 

 

After they picked me up off the floor, I tried.

 

 

The layers of drinking and toasting:

 

 

It is actually very simple: You begin with the roots, toast each one, then the trunk and each branch. Then you begin with the leaves, the veins in the leaves, the buds that form the leaves, the sap in the tree that feeds the veins that give color to the leaves. Then proceed to the sun that gives light to the leaves so they may grow and bear fruit, to the rain that covers the earth, giving sustenance to the tree, to the fair weather that protects the tree, the wind that blows at the back of the person so he may embrace the tree for protection, and so on and so on.

 

 

My Texas friend has a more scientific way of describing these toasts. She calls them Sub Dash A's. Toast 1, Sub Dash B, Article 127.9 is the hands that pull us up from our misery. Toast 46D Sub Dash C Article 132.8 are the bonds that bind us together. Toast 22B Sub Dash 5, Article 32 is the phrase "Eench karogh hosem? (what can I say?)". It is in every toast.

 

 

Whatever system is used to describe toasting in Armenia, it is safest to say I never went through a toasting ceremony like that one we had that day. From 1 p.m. until 4 a.m. the next morning, the hard toasters held their convention, while we watched first in amazement, then with bemusement, then with fatigue. We left, we walked to the Turkish border and back, we organized the wood pile, and the convention was still in session. We made a fire, watched the sun set, told stories, played at sleeping, but always in the background, we heard the words, "Eench Karogh Hosem?"

 

 

"Toast 22 B Sub Dash 5, Article 32," said my friend, burying her head in her pillow. "And they haven't even begun on the twigs on the ground yet."

 

 

"Come on, this is Armenia. It is something different." I tried to defend my friends at the table, while I wished that lightening would strike and make them dumb. I wonder how deaf Armenians toast? Surely, they exhaust themselves before long, and simply sign, "Akh! Genatset."

 

 

That, in truth is my favorite toast. "Akh! Genatset." It is also the shortest toast. (It means, "To you.") Enough of the flowers that grace our tables and make life bearable for men (Women. And let's face it, we give women one toast and then order them back to the kitchen, while we continue to drink and eat. I definitely want to come back as a man in my next life.). Enough of the sacred things in our life (as if nothing is sacred on land so hard won and lived on), of the long "--tsiutiune" words whose tricky formal pronunciations only one Armenian I know says with grace and poise; the pose, response, double response toasts. When it all comes down to it, "Akh! Genatset." Life is like wine, it is sweet if we drink it on time, it is poor if we set it too long. To You.

 

Richard Ney

Edited by Zartonk
Link to comment
Share on other sites

...U ays el Shakespeare ungeri genats@.

 

Toasting Shakespeare in Armenia

By Gareth Armstrong

Armenia

 

 

 

William Shakespeare may have been born in the English town of Stratford-on-Avon but, as the actor Gareth Armstrong discovered at a theatre festival in Armenia, some literary giants belong to the world.

 

 

 

I spoke of my pride in coming from the country which could claim Shakespeare as her own

 

 

I had been warned about the "toasts".

 

Armenian hospitality is infamous for its assault on the liver, and a lunch that lasted nearly three hours gave plenty of scope to prove it.

 

Including our hosts, there were 22 of us seated at the long dining table. Altogether we represented a dozen different nations.

 

What had brought us to Armenia? Or rather who?

 

William Shakespeare.

 

We were all taking part in a week-long theatre festival of solo performances based on Shakespeare's works.

 

That along with the unlikely opportunity for an actor to work in the Republic of Armenia is why I found myself downing icy shots of vodka several hours before the sun was anywhere near the yardarm.

 

Toastmaster

 

Our host was the mayor of a small town an hour's drive from the capital city of Yerevan.

 

According to Anna, the charming young translator assigned to me, his first toast was to the unity of nations.

 

 

Glasses were clinked with murmurs of solidarity in many tongues.

 

 

 

The Armenian tradition is that you drink vodka at meals only when acknowledging a toast, and the mayor was an enthusiastic toastmaster.

 

After international friendship, he invoked art, music, Armenian womanhood and then several less comprehensible subjects, which even Anna had difficulty rendering into English.

 

But the mayor's increasing incoherence did not mean an end to the toasting.

 

An elderly Russian actor rose to his feet, unaffected by the quantities he had drunk (which was just as well as that very evening he was to perform his take on King Lear) and toasted our mutual muse: the theatre.

 

Awed silence

 

Opposite me sat a thick-haired, moustachioed Iranian actor.

 

(His show was about an actor whose obsession with Hamlet gets him committed to a mental institution.)

 

 

He stood, closed his eyes and, in a fine baritone voice, sang a Persian love lyric that reduced everyone to an awed silence.

 

It was around then that I realised that each of us was expected to give voice at some time during the proceedings.

 

I had been careless of my vodka consumption, since I had already performed my solo show on Shylock from The Merchant of Venice on the previous night.

 

But I decided that, if I was to make a coherent contribution, it was now or never.

 

Convinced that I held the ace in this particular pack, I stood and spoke of my pride in coming from the country which could claim Shakespeare as her own.

 

He was Britain's greatest poet, greatest playwright and most illustrious son.

 

Lost in translation

 

I proposed a rousing toast: "To William Shakespeare".

 

 

 

I encountered a mild hostility to my laying claim to the writer in whose name we were toasting the afternoon away

 

 

There was polite assent but little enthusiasm. Had what I said lost something in translation?

 

A German participant, who would be troubling Hamlet's Ghost later in the week, firmly echoed my toast to William Shakespeare. He even quoted some of Hamlet's lines in a German translation by Schlegel, which he promised us was as good as the original.

 

Then a Polish lady, whose show dealt with the wretched women in the life of Richard III, made a similar claim for her mother tongue.

 

Finally an Armenian actor who, like me, was exploring the enigma of Shylock, claimed that the translations of the poet Havhannes Hovhannesyan were unsurpassed.

 

What I had encountered was a mild hostility to my laying claim to the writer in whose name we were toasting the afternoon away.

 

Universal genius

 

The accident of where Shakespeare was born - and therefore the language he wrote in - gave me no special claim to his heritage.

 

His genius was quite simply - universal.

 

As far as I know, no other country has ever hosted a festival of one-person plays about Shakespeare.

 

It took an Armenian to dream that up.

 

It had the virtues of economy of scale and expenditure and gave their vibrant theatre community a focus to welcome artists from other cultures and, of course, an excuse to show off their own.

 

The day after our tipsy lunch, we made a painfully early pilgrimage to Khor Virap monastery: a very important site to Armenians who repeatedly remind you that theirs was the first country to become Christian.

 

But its poignant location is what stays in the memory.

 

Dove of peace

 

It lies at the foot of Mount Ararat, the snow-capped symbol of Armenia, where Noah's Ark in the Old Testament story ran aground after the Great Flood.

 

It's now located in Turkey with just a stretch of no-man's-land between the tense and disputed borders.

 

As we were leaving, a small knot of souvenir sellers descended on us and, for a few small coins, I was prevailed upon to take hold of a white dove: the bird that returned to Noah bearing the olive branch in its beak, symbolising the hope for new life.

 

It was a tired, bedraggled creature that I held, but I was told to release it and make a wish.

 

It fluttered rather pathetically, as if in the early stages of avian flu, and returned gratefully to its master.

 

It would be more admirable if I could claim that my wish had been to see an end to the legacy of bitterness between my host country and its Turkish neighbour over events back in 1915.

 

But my silent desire was a little more mundane. An end to my monumental hangover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 1 October, 2005 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know if the piece has been posted before or not, but I thought we need to have it handy... :)

In Georgia they toast to their parents first. The Armenians say this is because the Georgians get so drunk they are afraid they will forget later.

Yes Zartonk, thank you for the article.

It has been aired on more than one occasion, yet it is as welcome as ever

Look here;

http://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=6627&hl=kenats

btw. Richard Ney is no stranger here.

When you see my post in the above thread click on his homepage and find other articles such as Karahunj etc.

Edited by Arpa
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Shnorhakalutiun, and I am so glad that you linked the kenats thread, I mean nothing is better than Toumanian when it comes down to this.

 

 

Maybe i am off topic here,this is my first visit as a member :), but when i read that nothing is better than Tumanyan this Karyak crossed my mind...

 

Es e vor ka, Chishtes asum

Tasd Ber...

Es el kancni hanc erazum

Tasd Ber...

Kyankn ancnume tiezerkum zngalen...

Mekn aprume, myusn spasum

Tasd Ber ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...