A Daughter’s Conversations with the ‘Poet of All Armenians’

[Eddie]

After another long silence....

 

I have recently returned from Armenia and can only echo the criticism made, on another page of Hyefourm, of the Church hierarchy that is letting the marvels of Armenian civilisation go to rack and ruin. I shall return to this when I write up my notes. The significant point is that once again in Armenian life corrupt Church elites unite with equally corrupt secular elites to plunder the people and their cultural legacy. But for the moment, to the subject...

 

Among the large quantity of books I got hold of was a marvellous volume by...

 

Nvart Toumanian, daughter of poet Hovanness Toumanian, wrote ‘Memories and Conversations’ with her father (336pp, 2009, Yerevan) inspired in part by her reading of Ekerman’s famous ‘Conversations with Goethe’. The result is a beautiful book that communicates something of the grandeur and magnanimity of the ‘Poet of all Armenians’. Toumanian earned this special knighthood and deserved it. Like no other public figure in modern Armenian history his life was a hub around which at critical times revolved an entire community and countless men and women of all classes and ages.

 

Written as a diary enriched with subsequent recollection we have a masterpiece of its genre, an encyclopaedia of the poet’s world view, his philosophy of life and art, a true book of wisdom and an irreplaceable primary source. On colourful display are Toumanian’s exceptional charisma and magnetism, his generosity and altruism, his social solidarity and national dedication, his aesthetic sensibility and his tremendous capacity for hospitality, always ready to lay on a feast for countless and interminable guests and visitors.

 

Of exemplary value for our own day Hovanness Toumanian’s life was and remains an unanswerable retort the decadent intellectual who lacks any sense of collective solidarity and social commitment and for whom private gain is foremost. Through his daughter’s memoirs we encounter the genuine democratic artist-intellectual, the poet who is at the same time a tireless national and social activist, the writer who is always among the people partaking of their woes and their joys, the intellectual who unconditionally sacrifices private ambition to the common good.

 

Beyond its strictly biographical and intellectual record Nvart Toumanian’s ‘Memories and Conversations’ with its rich grasp of life can be read as drama of human struggle and creativity, as a drama of frustrated ambitions and truncated potential, of unrealised dreams, but also of hope and of human love and generosity. At points it imposes itself as a moving tragedy of the spirit harassed by dark clouds, of the grieving father, of inconsolable regret at the wastage of creative human potential, of the painful withering candle of life and the loneliness of an end sapped by a cancer that killed the poet when but 54.

 

For the moment regards to all

[Louise Kiffer]

After another long silence....

 

I have recently returned from Armenia and can only echo the criticism made, on another page of Hyefourm, of the Church hierarchy that is letting the marvels of Armenian civilisation go to rack and ruin. I shall return to this when I write up my notes. The significant point is that once again in Armenian life corrupt Church elites unite with equally corrupt secular elites to plunder the people and their cultural legacy. But for the moment, to the subject...

 

Among the large quantity of books I got hold of was a marvellous volume by...

 

Nvart Toumanian, daughter of poet Hovanness Toumanian, wrote ‘Memories and Conversations’ with her father (336pp, 2009, Yerevan) inspired in part by her reading of Ekerman’s famous ‘Conversations with Goethe’. The result is a beautiful book that communicates something of the grandeur and magnanimity of the ‘Poet of all Armenians’. Toumanian earned this special knighthood and deserved it. Like no other public figure in modern Armenian history his life was a hub around which at critical times revolved an entire community and countless men and women of all classes and ages.

 

Written as a diary enriched with subsequent recollection we have a masterpiece of its genre, an encyclopaedia of the poet’s world view, his philosophy of life and art, a true book of wisdom and an irreplaceable primary source. On colourful display are Toumanian’s exceptional charisma and magnetism, his generosity and altruism, his social solidarity and national dedication, his aesthetic sensibility and his tremendous capacity for hospitality, always ready to lay on a feast for countless and interminable guests and visitors.

 

Of exemplary value for our own day Hovanness Toumanian’s life was and remains an unanswerable retort the decadent intellectual who lacks any sense of collective solidarity and social commitment and for whom private gain is foremost. Through his daughter’s memoirs we encounter the genuine democratic artist-intellectual, the poet who is at the same time a tireless national and social activist, the writer who is always among the people partaking of their woes and their joys, the intellectual who unconditionally sacrifices private ambition to the common good.

 

Beyond its strictly biographical and intellectual record Nvart Toumanian’s ‘Memories and Conversations’ with its rich grasp of life can be read as drama of human struggle and creativity, as a drama of frustrated ambitions and truncated potential, of unrealised dreams, but also of hope and of human love and generosity. At points it imposes itself as a moving tragedy of the spirit harassed by dark clouds, of the grieving father, of inconsolable regret at the wastage of creative human potential, of the painful withering candle of life and the loneliness of an end sapped by a cancer that killed the poet when but 54.

 

For the moment regards to all

[Louise Kiffer]

Thank you Eddie for your comment. I am glad that Nvart Toumanian has written a hommage to her father, who was so generous.

We regret him and will be happy to read more about him.