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The Armenian Titans of Istanbul and their new Olympian Gods
by Professor Hovhanness I. Pilikian
For the Religious, History (like everything else) presents no problems. It (and everything else) manifests God’s will. For the intellectual Atheist (scientist and philosopher alike), everything, let alone history, including the very concept of god itself and its creation by Man, presents a problem that needs definition, analysis, intellectual construction, restoration, continual restructuring and re-re-definition, endlessly. Religious folk are happy people, getting their answers from their leaders – the Catholic Church, the Jehovah Witnesses, like Judaism and Islam (and the Protestants – not at all) present their followers with a complete way of life, while self-respecting intellectuals and non-superstitious scientists suffer the unspeakable anxieties of the sceptical mind.
Man was verbal (for a very long time) before becoming literal. Alphabets are virtually ‘modern’ creations in mankind’s history, and post-date the visual man, who learnt to draw before he could write. But Man could certainly think all the time, from the very first moment of his human existence. Cognition seems to be the most fundamental innate skill the human child is born with (1).
Myth making was pre-historical man’s first intellectual activity (to include all later cognitive processes of poetry and philosophy, ritual and religion, history, psychology etc.) Ancient myths thus record (and serve as a source of data) as much for religion and poetry, as for pre-historical events as yet un-deciphered or little understood. The poets Homer, Hesiod, and classical Greek Dramatists provide us with our primary sources of Western myths. (2)
One of the most ancient, and the first with Armenian connections, is the myth of Prometheus, the Titan. The Titans were the ancient Greeks’ conception of the gigantic children born of the union of the masculine Uranus (=Sky) and the feminine Gaia (=Earth). Chronos (=Time) was one of them (3), the father of Zeus who (like Satan in the Christian dogma) rebelled and declared a global war against the Titans. Like father, like son, Zeus battled ruthlessly with no holds barred for a decade, and finally won the war in the heavens (in the biblical book of Revelations, Satan’s war against the heavenly host has not began yet), deciding upon Mount Olympus (in Greece) as his new abode, where he lived with his divine siblings, together referred to as ‘The New Olympians’.
Zeus was particularly vicious to his uncle Prometheus for stealing the Fire from the gods and giving it to mankind (4). Zeus enchained him in perpetuity in the mountains of Caucasian Armenia, where to torture him like a Nazi, an eagle (or, a vulture in some versions of the myth) visits Prometheus daily to feed on his liver, which grows back by night, as a sign of Prometheus’ defiance of the ‘fascist’ state of affairs created by Zeus’ anti-humanity.
The Armenian community of Istanbul is a Promethean miracle of the twentieth century. They were marked for genocidal destruction by Sultan Hamit and the Young Turk regime that toppled him (while adopting his policies towards the Armenian natives of Byzantium). Today, they count ten fold the number of the London Armenians of ten thousand. The latter has an improvised Sunday school renting an English primary in Acton Town, and a single puny church (built by Istanbuli Calouste Gulbenkian as a private altar in London, then left to the community by him). The Armenians in Istanbul possess eighteen totally Armenian community owned schools, and thirty three churches, built in Ottoman times, and surviving the massacres of 1915.
One of the nine most beautiful islands (Adalar) off the coast of Istanbul (in the south-eastern part of the sea of Marmora) is Knale(h), practically wholly owned by wealthy Armenian families who go there for the summer, where no cars are allowed, and public transport is in the form of horse drawn carriages.
I wonder how the Young Turks had intended to wipe out Knale(h) off the map. No mention of it occurs in any known Young Turkish government document of the planned genocide. Were they hoping that by murdering their owners, they would automatically confiscate the place, as they did with the rest of ‘turkish’ Armenia? They may have succeeded with the rest, but obviously they have failed with the Knale(h), and in Istanbul, grown back in the night of the massacres, like the Promethean life-giving liver!
In a sense, I feel sorry for Ataturk, the Father Stalin of the modern Turks, who even though loved dying in Istanbul in the Dolmabhce Palace built by the very Armenian Balian brothers (5), forced himself to be buried in dingy Ankara, his chosen capital, one of the ugliest spots on earth, chosen I am certain under duress from the international public opinion of the time, horrified by the attempted genocide of the Armenians.
Any government of Turkey that can win the forgiveness of the Armenians may wish to transfer its capital back to Istanbul, one of the most beautifully sited cities in the world. And the forgiveness of the Armenians must not suffice for such a deed – a civilised Turkish government could prove its credentials (to for example the European Union) only by committing itself to the full restoration of Haghia Sophia to its former Byzantine glory, its paradigm being the perfectly preserved Saint Marks Cathedral in Venice, which was built in imitation of the Haghia Sophia in the first place…
Today, the Aya Sofya Muzesi (advertised as a museum, but really a converted mosque) is an insult to History, and man’s inhumanity to man’s creative genius – a reminder of ugliness, brutality and the conquering tribe’s lack of civilised tastes. The erasure of the golden murals, the fixture of ridiculous massive medallions on the pilasters, the construction of ugly structures inside the church to pretend it is a mosque is merely an insult to Islam itself. I am sure if the Prophet himself were alive today in Istanbul, and God’s Mercy be upon his soul, he would not have approved of the pitiable state of Aya Sofia. We know that the holy Prophet was civilised enough to insist upon perfuming oneself before attending a mosque to honour God with prayers! He may not have approved of Christian idolatry for doctrinal reasons, but he could never approve of defacing Christian places of worship. On the contrary, Muhammed preached tolerance of other religions.
The named Titans of classical Greek mythology were five in number (6). By a strange coincidence, so is the number of the titans of the Armenian belles lettres in Istanbul – they are Zahrad, Shigaher, Vartanyan, Haddejian, and Khrakhouni, more or less of the same age (early seventy), forming a literary cohort in modern (Western) Armenian literature, as the direct inheritors of the pre-genocide giants of Armenian prose and poetry; Bedross Tourian, Daniel Varoujan, Medsarents, Siamanto, Zohrab, Roupen Sevak, and that unique pre-Freud ‘Freudian’ phenomenon in Armenian literature – Indra (Nerashkharh = Innerworld/1906), who still lacks any disciples (7).
{I am focusing here of course on the literary titans – but one name I must mention before any further ado, Ara Guler, Turkey’s greatest photographer, often compared with the other Istanbuli Armenian Youssef Karsch (a Canadian citizen), the world-renowned portraitist, but more than the latter, Guler’s titanic work documents Istanbul’s socio-economic history and the city’s physical evolution (not only the portraits of its leading intellectuals) in countless photographs, a minute fragment of which is collected in massive volumes published in Turkish. Who will inherit his priceless museum-worth collection of negatives? The British Museum would do well to bid for it}.
It is a great historical mystery (and a miracle!) as to how the above-mentioned literary cohort was born in the aftermath of the genocidal context, and not only blossomed, but also achieved continuity in literary greatness and perfection with their predecessors.
Most interestingly and excitingly, two complex currents run concurrently through their works – Haddejian, Shigaher and Khrakhouni on one hand are the keepers of the classical tradition of form and content, with occasional forays into a mild form of modernism (Haddejian’s newspaper-Diaries collected into an impressive forty volumes! And Khrakhouni’s differently shaped unpunctuated poems).
On the other hand, Zahrad in poetry and Vartanyan in playwriting invented the Armenian literary modernism, the first re-inventing French (Jacques Prevert) and Russian futurist (Mayakovsky) forms in literary Western Armenian, the second re-experiencing the whole of the Theatre de l’Absurde through the wealth of its English prism stretching back to Oscar Wilde down to Harold Pinter.
Zahrad occasionally invaded the Khrakhouni territory, but I am glad he retreated to his own with Dsaire Dsairin (= End Upon End, Or, Edge to Edge, 2001) where he is an absolute grand master. He seems to be endowed with a phenomenal memory – most people half his age in Britain suffer from memory loss, and the quirky turn of phrase distinctive of his poetry seems to be very much part of his own usual idiom full of ‘twisted’ multiple meanings.
When I recently visited Robert Haddejian in his editorial office at Marmara (a daily newspaper Haddejian has been writing-editing-publishing as a one-man-show for as long as anyone can remember!), I had the good fortune of meeting also Zahrad entirely by chance, who popped in to give Haddejian a copy of his recent book, a collection of his poems translated and published in Turkish.
I was so overwhelmed with joy of being able to embrace these two titans of modern Armenian letters, that I could not hide my genuine emotions, and Zahrad remarked acerbically; toun Istanbul yegar ourakhanaloo hamar, which if literally translated sounds puzzling (=you’ve come to Istanbul to feel joy), but understood instinctively trembles with all sorts of multiple meanings, echoing his awareness and appreciation of my genuine evaluation of their achievement, and not as a mere lip service to good manners. What I know Zahrad meant was that I had come to Istanbul to meet them, in true appreciation of their work, and profound understanding of their ‘greatness’ that I have tried to impart to others (in the Armenian Diaspora), and that he himself reciprocated the joy I felt meeting them personally for the first time. All that, was enwrapped in Zahrad’s simple single phrase. He knew better than me my family history, in view of the fact that my eldest sister Mary and her husband Nourhan Sarian (Istanbul born) have been his friends for decades. He even knew about my divorce, my recent marriage and brood of 3 babies!
Haddejian, besides being one of Armenian Diaspora’s greatest newspaper editors, is a writer of classical range and encyclopaedic achievement. I do not know if he has tried his hand at poetry, if he has not, then poetry is the only medium Haddejian has not attempted, although his critical analysis of poetry is second to none (as expressed in a textbook collection Bdouyd me(h) Hai Panasdeghdsoutian Bardezin Metch = A walk in the Garden of Armenian Poetry, 2000), where Haddejian, the literary critic, selects a poem and formally analyses it for the reader/’student’.
Haddejian’s two novels (Arrasdagh=the Ceiling, and Arrasdaghin miooss goghmeh = The Other Side of the Ceiling) are as great as what our great Zohrab would have written, if his head were not crushed literally with rocks by the Young Turk genociders.
Haddejian has a collection of plays (= Taderakhagher, 2002) as classically traditional as a Shirvanzateh, our Ibsen.
A tremendous contrast to Haddejian’s dramatic oeuvre are the plays of Arman Vartanyan, published individually and collected in three massive volumes. Although entirely modernist, Vartanyan’s mastery of the Armenian language is as classical as Khrakhouni’s and Haddejian’s. While technically modernising the Armenian playwriting, Vartanyan draws strength from the sophisticated humour of the classical satirist Hagop Baronian, the Jonathan Swift of Armenian literature, and as subtle and learned.
Vartanyan synthesises all the greats of the Absurdist theatre, from Ionesco to Pinter (if one considered the latter as the British variety), and forges his own which is even more original than any of his European predecessors. Especially to note (and what makes him unique in modern drama) is the fact that Vartanyan, trained as a concert pianist (in Vienna), has succeeded in adapting musical techniques to dramaturgical ends, like borrowing Mozart’s ‘trickery’ of smoothly overlapping duets with trios, or playing Beethoven quartets while giving dominance to a chosen instrument/dramatic character etc.
And Vart Shigaher, a most wonderful and a remarkable human being, a poet to his toes even when he writes glorious prose on his erudite readings (Herg oo Perk = Ploughing and harvesting, 2001). His Quatrains Tchors dogh Myayn (= Four lines in all, 1993), are in the tradition of the greatest of Hovhanness Toumanian and Yeghishe Tcharents (both inspired by Omar Khayyam), but nothing like them in content, and well a cut above Khayyam, whose Quatrains are limited to wine and women.
Shigaher’s Quatrains are polished gems of a hundred karats! The (linguistic) beauty and perfection of his Armenian, tackling the range of existential philosophy, the emotional depth of his sonorous vocabulary, flood the short poems into a sheer pleasure of musical sound, as deep as a Beethoven quartet.
A trained medical Doctor (physician, like Roupen Sevag, and Anton Checkov), son of a cleric, Shigaher does his father proud, being a profoundly spiritual intellectual at all times. Always passionate, but never sensuous even in love-poetry (Pari Asdghi Dag = Under a Star of Goodness, 1999), Shigaher never lacks spiritual content. He could have easily entrapped himself into religiosity, but No, never, his scientific training has obviously saved him from such a disastrous fundamentalism, instead, moreover it has even enriched him with gems of philosophical spiritualism, in the mould of a Platonist. Viewed thus, his compassionate love (like that of Jesus Christ) is everywhere given in abundance to everyone, and not only in his books – his patients (and every Istanbul Armenian seems to be one) vouch for it. Sweet, gentle, and extremely civilised, always humorous, he quietly charms his new acquaintance into his personal world of interesting memoirs, full of historical figures from the Armenian past, but also especially of people he has known personally in positions of community leadership (educators, archbishops, laymen, all become extremely interesting people in Shigaher’s stories…)
How I loved listening to Shigaher for hours, not even finding a moment to have my blood pressure taken, as he had promised when I visited his surgery (with Arman Vartanyan) for the first time. If no other Armenian lived in Istanbul, every Diaspora Armenian wishing for some spiritual comfort would do well to visit Istanbul just only to visit Shigaher’s sweet surgery overflowing with the milk of human kindness…
Shigaher is the real ideal Armenian – Armenians brag about when they feel patriotic and wish to share with non-Armenians (the odar) their national pride, especially when they want to deliberately forget their scum – the mafia in control of independent Armenia today, where Armenians like Shigaher are dying out daily…where even the Armenian language itself is being destroyed (8)– the Soviet Armenian government (in the thirties) took a remarkably short time to achieve 100% literacy of its much-massacred population, today, the government of ‘Americanised’ Armenia took equally short time to plunge that achievement to the levels of illiteracy in America, the “Dumbest Country on Earth” (in the words of the American Michael Moore) (9).
To further expand the metaphor from classical Greek mythology, one could note that there are also new gods being born, the ‘New Olympians’ of the Istanbul Armenian community.
The Zeus among them seems to be Hrant Dink, a sharp intellectual with well-deserved links and position among the Turkish intelligentsia, who had the absolutely right and forward looking concept to act within the Turkish intellectual context by founding and editing Agos, the first Armenian newspaper in Turkish.
by Professor Hovhanness I. Pilikian
For the Religious, History (like everything else) presents no problems. It (and everything else) manifests God’s will. For the intellectual Atheist (scientist and philosopher alike), everything, let alone history, including the very concept of god itself and its creation by Man, presents a problem that needs definition, analysis, intellectual construction, restoration, continual restructuring and re-re-definition, endlessly. Religious folk are happy people, getting their answers from their leaders – the Catholic Church, the Jehovah Witnesses, like Judaism and Islam (and the Protestants – not at all) present their followers with a complete way of life, while self-respecting intellectuals and non-superstitious scientists suffer the unspeakable anxieties of the sceptical mind.
Man was verbal (for a very long time) before becoming literal. Alphabets are virtually ‘modern’ creations in mankind’s history, and post-date the visual man, who learnt to draw before he could write. But Man could certainly think all the time, from the very first moment of his human existence. Cognition seems to be the most fundamental innate skill the human child is born with (1).
Myth making was pre-historical man’s first intellectual activity (to include all later cognitive processes of poetry and philosophy, ritual and religion, history, psychology etc.) Ancient myths thus record (and serve as a source of data) as much for religion and poetry, as for pre-historical events as yet un-deciphered or little understood. The poets Homer, Hesiod, and classical Greek Dramatists provide us with our primary sources of Western myths. (2)
One of the most ancient, and the first with Armenian connections, is the myth of Prometheus, the Titan. The Titans were the ancient Greeks’ conception of the gigantic children born of the union of the masculine Uranus (=Sky) and the feminine Gaia (=Earth). Chronos (=Time) was one of them (3), the father of Zeus who (like Satan in the Christian dogma) rebelled and declared a global war against the Titans. Like father, like son, Zeus battled ruthlessly with no holds barred for a decade, and finally won the war in the heavens (in the biblical book of Revelations, Satan’s war against the heavenly host has not began yet), deciding upon Mount Olympus (in Greece) as his new abode, where he lived with his divine siblings, together referred to as ‘The New Olympians’.
Zeus was particularly vicious to his uncle Prometheus for stealing the Fire from the gods and giving it to mankind (4). Zeus enchained him in perpetuity in the mountains of Caucasian Armenia, where to torture him like a Nazi, an eagle (or, a vulture in some versions of the myth) visits Prometheus daily to feed on his liver, which grows back by night, as a sign of Prometheus’ defiance of the ‘fascist’ state of affairs created by Zeus’ anti-humanity.
The Armenian community of Istanbul is a Promethean miracle of the twentieth century. They were marked for genocidal destruction by Sultan Hamit and the Young Turk regime that toppled him (while adopting his policies towards the Armenian natives of Byzantium). Today, they count ten fold the number of the London Armenians of ten thousand. The latter has an improvised Sunday school renting an English primary in Acton Town, and a single puny church (built by Istanbuli Calouste Gulbenkian as a private altar in London, then left to the community by him). The Armenians in Istanbul possess eighteen totally Armenian community owned schools, and thirty three churches, built in Ottoman times, and surviving the massacres of 1915.
One of the nine most beautiful islands (Adalar) off the coast of Istanbul (in the south-eastern part of the sea of Marmora) is Knale(h), practically wholly owned by wealthy Armenian families who go there for the summer, where no cars are allowed, and public transport is in the form of horse drawn carriages.
I wonder how the Young Turks had intended to wipe out Knale(h) off the map. No mention of it occurs in any known Young Turkish government document of the planned genocide. Were they hoping that by murdering their owners, they would automatically confiscate the place, as they did with the rest of ‘turkish’ Armenia? They may have succeeded with the rest, but obviously they have failed with the Knale(h), and in Istanbul, grown back in the night of the massacres, like the Promethean life-giving liver!
In a sense, I feel sorry for Ataturk, the Father Stalin of the modern Turks, who even though loved dying in Istanbul in the Dolmabhce Palace built by the very Armenian Balian brothers (5), forced himself to be buried in dingy Ankara, his chosen capital, one of the ugliest spots on earth, chosen I am certain under duress from the international public opinion of the time, horrified by the attempted genocide of the Armenians.
Any government of Turkey that can win the forgiveness of the Armenians may wish to transfer its capital back to Istanbul, one of the most beautifully sited cities in the world. And the forgiveness of the Armenians must not suffice for such a deed – a civilised Turkish government could prove its credentials (to for example the European Union) only by committing itself to the full restoration of Haghia Sophia to its former Byzantine glory, its paradigm being the perfectly preserved Saint Marks Cathedral in Venice, which was built in imitation of the Haghia Sophia in the first place…
Today, the Aya Sofya Muzesi (advertised as a museum, but really a converted mosque) is an insult to History, and man’s inhumanity to man’s creative genius – a reminder of ugliness, brutality and the conquering tribe’s lack of civilised tastes. The erasure of the golden murals, the fixture of ridiculous massive medallions on the pilasters, the construction of ugly structures inside the church to pretend it is a mosque is merely an insult to Islam itself. I am sure if the Prophet himself were alive today in Istanbul, and God’s Mercy be upon his soul, he would not have approved of the pitiable state of Aya Sofia. We know that the holy Prophet was civilised enough to insist upon perfuming oneself before attending a mosque to honour God with prayers! He may not have approved of Christian idolatry for doctrinal reasons, but he could never approve of defacing Christian places of worship. On the contrary, Muhammed preached tolerance of other religions.
The named Titans of classical Greek mythology were five in number (6). By a strange coincidence, so is the number of the titans of the Armenian belles lettres in Istanbul – they are Zahrad, Shigaher, Vartanyan, Haddejian, and Khrakhouni, more or less of the same age (early seventy), forming a literary cohort in modern (Western) Armenian literature, as the direct inheritors of the pre-genocide giants of Armenian prose and poetry; Bedross Tourian, Daniel Varoujan, Medsarents, Siamanto, Zohrab, Roupen Sevak, and that unique pre-Freud ‘Freudian’ phenomenon in Armenian literature – Indra (Nerashkharh = Innerworld/1906), who still lacks any disciples (7).
{I am focusing here of course on the literary titans – but one name I must mention before any further ado, Ara Guler, Turkey’s greatest photographer, often compared with the other Istanbuli Armenian Youssef Karsch (a Canadian citizen), the world-renowned portraitist, but more than the latter, Guler’s titanic work documents Istanbul’s socio-economic history and the city’s physical evolution (not only the portraits of its leading intellectuals) in countless photographs, a minute fragment of which is collected in massive volumes published in Turkish. Who will inherit his priceless museum-worth collection of negatives? The British Museum would do well to bid for it}.
It is a great historical mystery (and a miracle!) as to how the above-mentioned literary cohort was born in the aftermath of the genocidal context, and not only blossomed, but also achieved continuity in literary greatness and perfection with their predecessors.
Most interestingly and excitingly, two complex currents run concurrently through their works – Haddejian, Shigaher and Khrakhouni on one hand are the keepers of the classical tradition of form and content, with occasional forays into a mild form of modernism (Haddejian’s newspaper-Diaries collected into an impressive forty volumes! And Khrakhouni’s differently shaped unpunctuated poems).
On the other hand, Zahrad in poetry and Vartanyan in playwriting invented the Armenian literary modernism, the first re-inventing French (Jacques Prevert) and Russian futurist (Mayakovsky) forms in literary Western Armenian, the second re-experiencing the whole of the Theatre de l’Absurde through the wealth of its English prism stretching back to Oscar Wilde down to Harold Pinter.
Zahrad occasionally invaded the Khrakhouni territory, but I am glad he retreated to his own with Dsaire Dsairin (= End Upon End, Or, Edge to Edge, 2001) where he is an absolute grand master. He seems to be endowed with a phenomenal memory – most people half his age in Britain suffer from memory loss, and the quirky turn of phrase distinctive of his poetry seems to be very much part of his own usual idiom full of ‘twisted’ multiple meanings.
When I recently visited Robert Haddejian in his editorial office at Marmara (a daily newspaper Haddejian has been writing-editing-publishing as a one-man-show for as long as anyone can remember!), I had the good fortune of meeting also Zahrad entirely by chance, who popped in to give Haddejian a copy of his recent book, a collection of his poems translated and published in Turkish.
I was so overwhelmed with joy of being able to embrace these two titans of modern Armenian letters, that I could not hide my genuine emotions, and Zahrad remarked acerbically; toun Istanbul yegar ourakhanaloo hamar, which if literally translated sounds puzzling (=you’ve come to Istanbul to feel joy), but understood instinctively trembles with all sorts of multiple meanings, echoing his awareness and appreciation of my genuine evaluation of their achievement, and not as a mere lip service to good manners. What I know Zahrad meant was that I had come to Istanbul to meet them, in true appreciation of their work, and profound understanding of their ‘greatness’ that I have tried to impart to others (in the Armenian Diaspora), and that he himself reciprocated the joy I felt meeting them personally for the first time. All that, was enwrapped in Zahrad’s simple single phrase. He knew better than me my family history, in view of the fact that my eldest sister Mary and her husband Nourhan Sarian (Istanbul born) have been his friends for decades. He even knew about my divorce, my recent marriage and brood of 3 babies!
Haddejian, besides being one of Armenian Diaspora’s greatest newspaper editors, is a writer of classical range and encyclopaedic achievement. I do not know if he has tried his hand at poetry, if he has not, then poetry is the only medium Haddejian has not attempted, although his critical analysis of poetry is second to none (as expressed in a textbook collection Bdouyd me(h) Hai Panasdeghdsoutian Bardezin Metch = A walk in the Garden of Armenian Poetry, 2000), where Haddejian, the literary critic, selects a poem and formally analyses it for the reader/’student’.
Haddejian’s two novels (Arrasdagh=the Ceiling, and Arrasdaghin miooss goghmeh = The Other Side of the Ceiling) are as great as what our great Zohrab would have written, if his head were not crushed literally with rocks by the Young Turk genociders.
Haddejian has a collection of plays (= Taderakhagher, 2002) as classically traditional as a Shirvanzateh, our Ibsen.
A tremendous contrast to Haddejian’s dramatic oeuvre are the plays of Arman Vartanyan, published individually and collected in three massive volumes. Although entirely modernist, Vartanyan’s mastery of the Armenian language is as classical as Khrakhouni’s and Haddejian’s. While technically modernising the Armenian playwriting, Vartanyan draws strength from the sophisticated humour of the classical satirist Hagop Baronian, the Jonathan Swift of Armenian literature, and as subtle and learned.
Vartanyan synthesises all the greats of the Absurdist theatre, from Ionesco to Pinter (if one considered the latter as the British variety), and forges his own which is even more original than any of his European predecessors. Especially to note (and what makes him unique in modern drama) is the fact that Vartanyan, trained as a concert pianist (in Vienna), has succeeded in adapting musical techniques to dramaturgical ends, like borrowing Mozart’s ‘trickery’ of smoothly overlapping duets with trios, or playing Beethoven quartets while giving dominance to a chosen instrument/dramatic character etc.
And Vart Shigaher, a most wonderful and a remarkable human being, a poet to his toes even when he writes glorious prose on his erudite readings (Herg oo Perk = Ploughing and harvesting, 2001). His Quatrains Tchors dogh Myayn (= Four lines in all, 1993), are in the tradition of the greatest of Hovhanness Toumanian and Yeghishe Tcharents (both inspired by Omar Khayyam), but nothing like them in content, and well a cut above Khayyam, whose Quatrains are limited to wine and women.
Shigaher’s Quatrains are polished gems of a hundred karats! The (linguistic) beauty and perfection of his Armenian, tackling the range of existential philosophy, the emotional depth of his sonorous vocabulary, flood the short poems into a sheer pleasure of musical sound, as deep as a Beethoven quartet.
A trained medical Doctor (physician, like Roupen Sevag, and Anton Checkov), son of a cleric, Shigaher does his father proud, being a profoundly spiritual intellectual at all times. Always passionate, but never sensuous even in love-poetry (Pari Asdghi Dag = Under a Star of Goodness, 1999), Shigaher never lacks spiritual content. He could have easily entrapped himself into religiosity, but No, never, his scientific training has obviously saved him from such a disastrous fundamentalism, instead, moreover it has even enriched him with gems of philosophical spiritualism, in the mould of a Platonist. Viewed thus, his compassionate love (like that of Jesus Christ) is everywhere given in abundance to everyone, and not only in his books – his patients (and every Istanbul Armenian seems to be one) vouch for it. Sweet, gentle, and extremely civilised, always humorous, he quietly charms his new acquaintance into his personal world of interesting memoirs, full of historical figures from the Armenian past, but also especially of people he has known personally in positions of community leadership (educators, archbishops, laymen, all become extremely interesting people in Shigaher’s stories…)
How I loved listening to Shigaher for hours, not even finding a moment to have my blood pressure taken, as he had promised when I visited his surgery (with Arman Vartanyan) for the first time. If no other Armenian lived in Istanbul, every Diaspora Armenian wishing for some spiritual comfort would do well to visit Istanbul just only to visit Shigaher’s sweet surgery overflowing with the milk of human kindness…
Shigaher is the real ideal Armenian – Armenians brag about when they feel patriotic and wish to share with non-Armenians (the odar) their national pride, especially when they want to deliberately forget their scum – the mafia in control of independent Armenia today, where Armenians like Shigaher are dying out daily…where even the Armenian language itself is being destroyed (8)– the Soviet Armenian government (in the thirties) took a remarkably short time to achieve 100% literacy of its much-massacred population, today, the government of ‘Americanised’ Armenia took equally short time to plunge that achievement to the levels of illiteracy in America, the “Dumbest Country on Earth” (in the words of the American Michael Moore) (9).
To further expand the metaphor from classical Greek mythology, one could note that there are also new gods being born, the ‘New Olympians’ of the Istanbul Armenian community.
The Zeus among them seems to be Hrant Dink, a sharp intellectual with well-deserved links and position among the Turkish intelligentsia, who had the absolutely right and forward looking concept to act within the Turkish intellectual context by founding and editing Agos, the first Armenian newspaper in Turkish.
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