notes and comments

[jgk3]

Re: elegy

What do you mean, that he's an entirely mythological figure, or that his relevance has been largely exaggerated?

I see you responded to my comment about the mythology of Vartan Mamikonian that I omitted after editting because I didn't have time to explain it at the moment.

Well yes, he's sourced from Yeghishe's history of Vartan and the Armenian war. Yeghishe, along with Movses Khorenatsi are names of authors from the 5th century AD, Armenia's "Golden Age". But according to Nichanian (and I bet any scholar who can see the difference between 5th century Armenian, and that of later periods), the language used in the histories attributed to them does not correspond linguistically to the state of the Armenian prose during this century. In certain works (not all, because sometimes they are written by impostors writing from subsequent centuries) from other authors of this century, such as Pavstos Buzand (Faustus of Byzantium), Koryun, Ghazar Parpetsi (Lazarus of Parpe) and Yeznik, the stage of the Armenian language lacks the traces of subsequent linguistic developments, especially those of the Hellenistic school (posited to have occurred sometime between late 5th to the mid 7th century) which through its feverish work to translate Greek manuscripts dealing with theology, philosophy and science had a significant role in transforming the Armenian language to mimic the way Greek builds its neologisms, and basically imported, using Armenian lexical forms, all the terms for abstract and technical concepts from Greek not yet existing as words in Armenian.

I suppose this criteria of "what stage the Armenian language is in" is part of why "the History of Vartan" and Khorenatsi's "History of Armenia" fails the test of appearing like a genuine work of the 5th century and is dismissed as anachronical. The scholars who reach this verdict posit that those works were likely written between the 7th and 9th centuries, though I wonder if they use any basis for choosing this date based on linguistic evidence, rather than historical content appearing in these works which belongs to subsequent centuries, the latter criteria being unable to silence critics of this dismissal because of the argument that one can easily revisit a manuscript from a previous century and add things to it, with no one being able to tell should the original manuscript be lost and the only access to its text being available through copies of it made after it has been (mischievously) edited. Therefore, according to these folks, the entire manuscript's textual significance cannot be dismissed, but only its anachronistic parts...

Feel free to reach your own verdict though, knowing that Vartan Mamikonian is not cited outside of Armenian historiography, and that Christianity was relatively tolerated by the Sassanid emperors:

The Parthian kings did not hinder the diffusion of Christianity and after 226 their Sasanian successors spontaneously offered asylum to Christians seeking refuge in Persia from persecution in the Roman empire. Not until war broke out between the Romans and the Persians in 340 did the Christians come under public suspicion, as was only to be expected, and a bloody persecution was let loose under Shapur II. In the realm of the Romans as well as of the Persians, Christianity had to exist as a religious minority amidst a non-Christian population, subjected to non-Christian rulers. Church history is full of accounts of martyrs in both empires.[7] But Christianity under Persian rule differed from that under the Roman empire in many ways. Christians in the Persian empire were not subject to persecutions officially ordered by the King of Kings. The persecutions in the Persian empire were rather of a local nature.

[freakyfreaky]

Re: elegy

i avoid armenian academics like the plague.

Do you ONLY avoid armenian academics? If so, why only them? Isn't the more superior philosophy to avoid ALL academics.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Sunday, January 23, 2011
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************** **
Speaking of one of our political bosses,
a friend – himself a poet – once said to him:
“He is a good man, a man we can trust.”
“I trust no one in politics,” I said.
“You don't know him as I do.
He loves literature and he respects writers.
He once told me poets are engineers of the soul.”
“He never said that,” I said.
“He said it to me.”
“He was quoting Stalin.”
*
We are a nation whose defenders of the faith
are themselves ignorant infidels.
*
Worth repeating and remembering:
Don't believe everything you read or you are told.
Everyone has an ax to grind – an ax aimed at your neck.
*
Never identify a regime, any regime, or power structure
with the Homeland.
*
Most of our disagreements and controversies
are rooted in two propaganda lines
which we have swallowed hook, line, and sinker.
#
Monday, January 24, 2011
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************** **
Nothing comes more naturally to an Armenian bully than to assume, as a superpatriot he speaks in defense of the eternal snows of Mount Ararat.
“All you do is write,” such a specimen once told me.
To which I could only say:
“And what else have you been doing beside pulling your xxxx?”
I should write a book on the art of making enemies for life.
*
Armenians are smart?
A really smart person does not need to be told he is smart;
and the surest way to flatter the vanity of an imbecile
is to tell him he has the IQ of a genius.
*
“Among ten men nine are sure to be women,” Turks say.
This may explain why they relied on infidel boys
to do their fighting for them.
This may also explain why slaughtering defenseless women, children, and old men came naturally to them.
*
They say “Live and let live, that's my philosophy -- not that's my favorite cliché, platitude, or slogan, but philosophy.
In a democracy everyone is a philosopher.
Not a philomoron but a philosopher.
Nobody ever says “I believe in God, that's my theology,”
or “Smoking causes cancer, that's my oncology.”
*
An Armenian born in Iran and educated in Yerevan
became an instant celebrity last week.
He was in all the papers, on radio, and TV.
He killed a cop for no apparent reason.
#
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************** **
The “I” must be the most irrelevant part of our being.
We are born without it and we lose it when we die.
*
If only popes, imams, and rabbis were honest enough to admit
they don't deal in verifiable facts
but in unverifiable assumptions and theories
all of which may be open to error.
Or, like Socrates, to be modest enough to say,
“Of the gods we know nothing.”
*
As children we are taught to believe obedience to authority is a virtue.
As adults we learn that subservience to scum is an inevitable fact of life
that we challenge at our peril.
*
One positive aspect of computers is that
it makes inaccessible people accessible.
*
An Armenian will demand your agreement (meaning subservience)
even when he contradicts himself.
*
Anonymous: "It is easy to lust for fame,
much harder to achieve greatness."
*
Ideological truths become lies
when they justify violations of human rights,
the first of which is always freedom of speech.
Where there is censorship of ideas
there will be censorship of lives.
Next time you promote censorship,
ask yourself this question:
"Do I really want to legitimize murder
in the name of God and Country?"
#
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
********************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
************************************************** **
The work of an honest writer
tells the story of a liberation from the tyranny of fear,
the limitations of ignorance,
and the oppression of prejudice.
*
The aim of all propaganda is to legitimize prejudice
by means of such lies as “superior race,”
“the Chosen People,” and closer to home,
“first nation this, first nation that, “ -- lies
whose ultimate aim is to convince dupes
they are in the best of hands
and they never had it so good.
*
Even the most liberal and democratic power structures
will speak the truth only if it is in their own interest.
But since self-interest is a big lie,
and since truth and lies are mutually exclusive concepts,
it follows: even when nations speak the truth, they lie.
Either that or they use one truth to cover up many lies.
*
Where was God before the Big Bang?
The only possible answer:
in a dimension that is beyond
the time-space continuum – such as
the dimension of dreams, music, and mystical visions;
or the realm of Platonic ideas,
“the Kingdom of God” within us,
or the “satori” of Zen Buddhism.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Do you ONLY avoid armenian academics? If so, why only them? Isn't the more superior philosophy to avoid ALL academics.

odar academics are more independent than their armenian counterparts.
to be an armenian academic one must be subservient to our bosses, bishops, and benefactors.
and the only way to achieve that status is by being irrelevant.

[jgk3]

Re: elegy

odar academics are more independent than their armenian counterparts.
to be an armenian academic one must be subservient to our bosses, bishops, and benefactors.
and the only way to achieve that status is by being irrelevant.

I suppose so, though there are grades of this... Somehow, even though the chair of Armenian studies in American institutions like UCLA and others are financed by rich Armenians, they will let its holders come to conclusions that can really piss off the defenders of the Armenian patriotic narrative, who respond by brandishing them as traitors who promote the destruction of Armenia, and feature them on videos like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6VrO2WBx4A (From 5:12 onwards)

(I like the narrator dude's accent.)

[KanadaHye]

Re: elegy

odar academics are more independent than their armenian counterparts.
to be an armenian academic one must be subservient to our bosses, bishops, and benefactors.
and the only way to achieve that status is by being irrelevant.

If you believe this, then you must be blind to see that odar academia is far more bias and propaganda driven than Armenian academia. Perhaps the propaganda is so well devised that even you as an Armenian have been influenced.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

If you believe this, then you must be blind to see that odar academia is far more bias and propaganda driven than Armenian academia. Perhaps the propaganda is so well devised that even you as an Armenian have been influenced.

there is healthy debate among yankee academics as there are conflicting interests.
among armenians, no one would ever dare to say benefactors are philistines who have bastardized our culture.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

ON HISTORY AND HISTORIANS
****************************************
A capitalist version of American history is to be
trusted as much as a communist version of Russian
history. Likewise, since nationalism is also an
ideology, a Turkish version of Turkish history is
as trustworthy as a Greek version of Greek
history, or a xxxish version of xxxish history,
or a Palestinian…and so on and so forth.
*
There are those who maintain the Armenian version
of Armenian history is an exception to this rule.
I am not one of them.
*
But to speak of an Armenian version of history is
a misnomer because we don’t have one but several
– provided we define history not just as what
happened by why.
*
In one version of our history, General Antranik
is represented as a great military leader and a
hero. In another, he is described as a war
criminal. And in the General’s own version,
Armenian political leaders are the real war
criminals who should be crucified because they
must be held partly responsible for the
massacres.
*
Why does the average Turk trust Turkish
historians more than any other? For the same
reason that the average Greek, xxx, Russian,
American, and Armenian trusts his own historians.
*
Historians are motivated not by love of truth,
but, at best, by love of God and Country; and it
is a universally acknowledged fact that, in a
world where gods and geographic boundaries are in
conflict, my god and my geography will be closer
to the truth than my enemy’s.
*
As he is drowning while Smyrna is in flames, a
Greek character in BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS by Louis
de Bernieres, is quoted as saying to an imaginary
audience: “Don’t misunderstand me, it isn’t that
I think Greeks are worse than Turks, what
irritates me is that they think they’re so much
better when really they’re exactly the same.”
Such admissions are made only in works of fiction
written by foreign writers. I was born and raised
in Greece and I now live in a Canadian city with
a substantial Greek community, and I have never
heard a Greek expressing sentiments remotely
similar to these and I doubt if I will live long
enough to hear an Armenian admit that Turks too
are human beings who deserve to live.
*
Whenever a xxxish writer says anything critical
of xxxs, he is told: “If Hitler were alive today,
he would enjoy reading you.” And whenever I try
to humanize Turks, I am accused of covering up
the Genocide. It comes with the territory, I
guess -- the territory being an attempt to view
the past without bias.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

xxxx = xxxish

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

hebrew israeli