Kostan Zarian

[Rubo]

A SHIP AND A MOUNTAIN:

CONSTANT ZARIAN AND THE ARMENIAN DESTINY IN THE 20TH CENTURY

 

 

Vartan Matiossian

Universidad del Salvador, Buenos Aires

 

 

One of the most important and rather neglected names of Armenian literature in the 20th century, Constant (Kostan) Zarian's life span (1885-1969) covered eight crucial decades in Armenian life. He was active in Constantinople before the Armenian Catastrophe of 1915, then lived forty years in the Diaspora and finally went to die in Soviet Armenia.

 

Zarian lived across two worlds. He was always on the move and developed close ties with non-Armenian intellectuals. He represented a curious mixture of cultures and influences, and his writing stood at the crossroads of several artistic currents. This led to his being considered by other Armenian writers as a cosmopolitan, a European who wrote in Armenian.

 

Very early in his life, he was exiled from his birthplace, his family, his language; he would rebuild an identity of his own after making a passage through the West. In a certain sense and without knowing it, he was the archetype of the Diasporan Armemian years before the foundations of the Diaspora were effectively laid.

 

One of his contemporaries, the noted novelist and critic Hagop Oshagan, stated around 1944 that "to talk (...) about Constant Zarian means to analyse Spiurk". As used by him, "Spiurk" (Armenian for "Diaspora") is to be understood in the sense of sëprum ("dispersion") rather than the proper name. He actually meant that the analysis of Zarian's writings sheds light on the nature of the Catastrophe and the Diasporan state of affairs. Zarian's generation was at the doorstep of the Diaspora, and he, an exile, was unable to fully understand the destruction and the void created by the Catastrophe.

 

In 1943 Zarian published "The Ship on the Mountain", a novel set in the days of the first independent Republic of Armenia (1918-1920). As he mentions in the prologue, it is "the story of a few Armenian souls bound to live through one of the most crucial periods of our national life. (...) No one should look either for historical inaccuracies: it is not a book of history, it is a book of spirit".

 

Here we find the main idea, an ambitious one: a novel, a "book of spirit", as an instrument for bringing the past into the present and set the path for --and even shape-- a cultural renaissance. Such an idea is reminiscent of recent trends in Third World literature.

 

Zarian's novel depicts the story of Ara Herian, a seafarer captain who struggles to bring a ship from the Black Sea coast up to Lake Sevan, perched high in the mountains of the republic as its only sea-like place. The plot takes its inspiration from an real story: an attempt had been made and a ship lay abandoned near a hill close to Yerevan, the capital, towards the last days of the Republic.

 

The myth of Noah's Ark is thus transposed to modern times. After the Deluge (namely, the Catastrophe), the ship/ark has settled on the peak of the mountain, from where new life will spring, the ruined country will flourish and be rebuilt. Behind, we find a far more general subject, which is part of the "myth of eternal return".

 

The title of the novel is ambiguous: the mountain is a center in itself, a point of reference. The ship goes towards sanctity, the state of nature where everything is eternally repeated. The place becomes sacred when the archetype realizes the sacrifice, when he creates and establishes the rite.

 

The novel tries to summarize Zarian's ideas about the search for "Armenian voki", Armenian Spirit/Essence, and the need for centralization. The ship by itself is not a sufficient representation of the spirit; its meaning is only fulfilled with the presence of Ara Herian. The trinity Herian-ship-sea will embody the completed spirit, after having found its center. The individual creates a movement of return to the sources. An impossible movement, because the mechanical repetition of the previous state is unthinkable: the return is possible only with an advance, and time can only be recreated by sacrifice.

 

The "ship on the mountain" means, therefore, the spirit in the center.

 

Zarian constructs a bipolar dialectic: Homeland versus Diaspora. The motherland is the place of reunion, while Diaspora means dispersion and then disposal. The scattered pieces have to be reunified to create a unity, or else they will become waste. The centripetal force which attracts the pieces towards the center must overcome all the contrary, centrifugal forces. Otherwise, Armenian culture will never regain its completeness. Hence begins the rejection of the Diaspora.

 

The concept of centralization is played out through the person of Captain Herian. Having been born in a small Armenian village, he has travelled throughout the world for years, and has finally set out on his voyage of return to the homeland. Another seaman, Toumanian, a former officer of the Czarist fleet, has also returned. This is how Zarian envisages the "nation-like thing" starting on the long road to becoming a "nation".

 

But the centralization is a failure in itself, because Herian and Toumanian start their return, but without losing their complete sense of duality. There is a sense of distance in their personalities which makes them feel foreigners in a sense, not fully integral. And here lies the paradox of Herian/Zarian: the otherness in the identity.

 

PS This book is very powerful even after ten years reading it.

[Arpa]

Atta a boy Rubo!!!

This is exactly where we want you.

The others can take care(or can they?) of themselves very well, thank you!

Let me recite what I remember of that poem again;

"Ari eghbayr prabanenk mer Hoyakap Hayotz Lezun...." as only we can do. Those others can go to the hottest corner of that place they imposed on us. Their country may be hot and unbeareable, ours is the original Garden of Eden.