Maria Titizian
Two years before his death in 1921, Hovhannes Tumanian wrote a letter to Avetik Isahakian.
“…I do not want and cannot write long from our country, although you ask this
of me. In short, I will say that we have destroyed our country from within and
from beyond. Mainly we. I am saying we, and herein lies the truth. Some are
unruly scoundrels, others are robbers and thieves, others are incompetent
derelicts and there wasn’t a multitude, at the very least a small group, who
would uncover the renewed breath or moral capability. Amidst the calamities and
the losses, not a single guilty person was revealed, no one was brought to
justice and no one answered. And it continues. Now it is the same people on the
same journey… And not a single person committed suicide to show that shame and
conscience exists among these people.”
This letter was written 93 years ago from one great Armenian writer to
another, yet it could have been written today, or yesterday or ten years ago and
it can be rewritten ten years from now if a fundamental paradigm shift doesn’t
take place. Anyone reading these words, linked together from the past, will feel
the pain and desolation of a man who witnessed the decimation of his people and
who had to bear witness to continuing calamities and losses.
If we want to have a different result from the result we keep arriving to, we
need to stop doing the same things over and over again. A new script has to be
written where the unruly scoundrels, the robbers and thieves and the incompetent
derelicts are cast out. We keep limiting our choices, we keep making ourselves
vulnerable to foreign threats and we seem to be spawning a kind of person that
should not be allowed to have access to the levers of power.
The past year was a mix of highs and lows, of expectations and
disappointments but mostly disappointments. The only thing that allowed us to
get through it was putting one foot in front of the other and remembering to
breathe.
Let’s return to the past. Hovhannes Tumanian had written an earlier letter,
this time to General Andranik in 1917:
“Dear Andranik,
At a horrific time, every person must bring what he can and what he has to
the common table to prevent the impending danger and to reach a desirable
victory.
I have four sons. All four of them are at your, the country’s government’s,
the National Council’s disposal and my four daughters are preparing for work at
the posts, they will do whatever they are capable of doing. I have nothing else
more valuable than this, therefore I am not sparing anything so that we can,
like all honest nations and freedom-loving people, push back the impending
danger and protect our sacred rights and freedoms. I steadfastly believe in your
experience, acquired amid many storms, your ardent patriotism and love of
freedom, your innate humanitarianism and your high military talent. I am ready
to come where and when your brotherly voice summons me.
I kiss your heroic brow.”
Hovhanness Tumanian adds a post script to his letter where he commits to pay
100 rubles every month because he was of the opinion that every Armenian must
voluntarily contribute to the cause.
I often wonder, what happened to the Hovhannes Tumanians of our nation? I
know they exist out there, somewhere. I see it in the good deeds that go
unnoticed. I see it in the Diaspora with its army of volunteers working and
serving within its various structures and organizations. I see it in Armenia,
too but they are not enough. Unless more and more people are inspired by this
kind of responsibility for the general welfare, attaining a semblance of social
justice will be merely a dream.
Today, we celebrated one of the holiest days in the Christian calendar,
Armenian Christmas. We went to church, we said our prayers, we lit candles and
celebrated the birth of Christ. We sat around dinner tables, surrounded by
family and friends. We drank toasts, we gave thanks for our blessings and
continued preserving traditions that were passed on to us by generations before
us. Hovhannes Tumanian and Avetik Isahakian and all the greats of our nation
also sat down with their beloved families around tables that were much more
humble and dreamt great dreams and wrote prolific thoughts and contributed to
our literary heritage and so much more.
We can continue to lament that all is dark and dismal, but these are mere
reflections of our own jaded eyes.
Albert Camus wrote, “When you have seen the glow of happiness on the face of
a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that
light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned
that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
I can only hope that the invincible summer in all of us will blossom and
bring forth fruit.
"Asbarez," January 7, 2014
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