barbarians

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

INFLEXIBLE LAWS / Where there is a belief system or ideology there will also be a propaganda line; and where there is a propaganda line there will also be a big lie.*Where there is a big lie there will be another that contradicts it.*Where there are conflicting lies there will be war and massacre.*I am for dissent if the alternative is a propaganda line.*I write on Armenian subjects for Armenian readers because far better men than myself – from Abovian to Zarian – have done so.#

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

The purest races now in existence, according to
Bertrand Russell, are "the Pygmies, the
Hottentots, and the Australian aborigines."
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

ON SHRINKS
************************************************
After the composition of his First Piano Concerto, Rachmaninoff is said to have experienced a crisis during which he became convinced he had lost his creative impetus permanently. But after seeing a psychiatrist he recovered his creativity and composed his Second Piano Concerto, or so we are told by his biographers. What we are not told is that if he had not seen a shrink, maybe he could have composed nine symphonies. Marlon Brando was under constant psychiatric care and instead of getting better, he got worse, in addition to making an unholy mess of his private life and his physique. Neither Tolstoy nor Dostoevsky were ever treated by a shrink, and my guess is, their problems were worse than Rachmaninoff's and Brando's combined.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

NOTES / COMMENTS / In human affairs the unthinkable has as good a chance of happening as the predictable.*Our leaders are the architects of our divisions and as such our greatest enemies.*The question we should ask about a specific political policy is not whether it’s right or wrong, or good or bad, but whether it’s remotely connected with the will of the people.*A good line is a key that opens a locked door.*Saul Bellow on women: “They eat green salad and drink human blood.”#

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

RAFFI SPEAKS / Raffi once ascribed all our defeats to treason,which, he said, “is in our blood.” The conceptionof “blood” as the source of racial traits ornational character is, of course, a 19th-centuryfallacy. Instead of blood, we now speak ofconvolutions of the brain, or environmentalconditioning, or collective unconscious. Raffi’stheory is not without merit, however, even if itrequires some terminological updating.#

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

TRASHLAND
**********************
If Gogol and Kafka were to come back to life and collaborate on a book about reality in present-day Armenia, the result would be Denis Donikian’s VIDURES or AGHPASTAN, in Ruzanna Vartanian’s excellent Armenian translation (403 pages, Yerevan, 2013).
Aghpastan, literally Trashland, is a biting satire and a horror story written with withering wit that utilizes many genres and styles reminiscent of James Joyce.
*
During a walk two friends discover the corpse of a woman in a garbage dump, an obvious victim of foul play.
“I know who she is,” one of them says. “I recognize her by her hair and the undamaged side of her face. We should go to the cops.”
The other is outraged.
“The cops! The cops? Can you picture me walking into a police station? Walking in is easy. The trick is coming out. And sometimes you never come out.”
“But it is against the law not to report a murder. If we ignore this murder and another murder next day, what happens if you or I are the next victims? If you and I and everybody else ignores a murder we become a nation of amnesiacs at the mercy of others.”
“Maybe so -- but what happens if we are detained by the police? And when I say detained I don’t mean for an hour or a day but for months. Think of my piglets: what happens to them?”
The conclusion is obvious: “Aghpastan” has become a country that swims in crime, criminals, executioners, and their victims.
*
The book begins and ends with the same two words: “Der Voghormia” (Lord have mercy).
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

We produce more artists, writers, pundits, historians, political leaders, bishops, chiefs, vodanavorjis and mdavoragans than we have any use for. And yet, we wallow in a sea of mediocrity. How to explain this idiosyncrasy? I suspect there are as many explanations as there are Armenians – so what else is new? My own take is an American cliché: Too many chiefs, no Indians. Too many commissars of culture, no culture.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

ON IDENTITY
************************
To those who identify themselves as Armenian,
may I ask: How long does it take
to Americanize an Armenian?
And now, consider 600 years in the Ottoman Empire.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

At least two readers have taken me to task recently for quoting too many dead writers, the implication being that it would be better if I were to rely on the wisdom, patriotism, morality, and authority of living charlatans.

[arabaliozian]

Re: barbarians

Kings will never be
against monarchy,
popes against papal
infallibility,
and our bosses,
bishops and benefactors against divisions.
#