notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, January 20, 2007
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MORE ON THE "F" WORD
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Fanaticism is as different from moderation as beast is from man. Fanatics are not just a different race, color, and creed, but also a different species.
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A fanatic does not reason. Common sense, logic, and dialogue are alien concepts to him. He is out to settle a score. He is out for blood. He defines an enemy as anyone who disagrees with him. Fanaticism and hoodlumism might as well be Siamese twins.
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A moderate may be prone to error, but a fanatic is never right. Even when on those extremely rare occasions he is right, the means he employs are sure to be wrong.
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Our revolutionaries were right to revolt against tyranny – no doubt about that. And because they were right, we did not survive.
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Like all men of faith, a fanatic begins with the certainty that he is right; and where certainty is placed above doubt, fanatics will flourish.
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A fanatic’s favorite disguise is moderation.
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LITERATURE AND PROPAGANDA
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Literature tells us we are not what we pretend to be, and more often than not, what we pretend to be is the exact opposite of who we are.
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QUOTATIONS FROM ART BUCHWALD
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“If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it.”
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“People ask what I am really trying to do with humor. The answer is, I am getting even. For me, being funny is the best revenge.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, January 21, 2007
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BOOK REVIEW
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SHAHAN SHAHNOUR: CORRESPONDENCE, volume 3 – LETTERS TO VAHAN TEKEYAN, ZAHRAD, VRATSIAN, SARAFIAN, ALAJAJIAN, SAROUKHAN & OTHERS. Edited, Annotated and with an Introduction by Krikor Keusseyan. Illustrated. (215 pages, 2007). Privately printed
(50 Watertown St., #302, Watertown, MA, 02472).
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Shahnour was an honest man and an objective observer of our contemporary scene; and that was his undoing. Honesty has never been good policy in our environment. If the ubiquitous secret agents of an alien tyrant don’t get you, the hirelings of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors will. The occasional grudging support he received from benefactors (which more often than not he rejected) was more akin to charity that probably did more harm than good to his self-esteem and precarious health.
In his introduction, Krikor Keusseyan writes that three of Shahnour’s favorite writers were Turgenev, Flaubert, and Hardy, and that like them he was austere in his private life but audacious in his work. Which in our context means, among other things, that he consistently refused to recycle partisan propaganda and chauvinist clichés about the eternal snows of Mount Ararat. As a result he was treated as an enemy of the people and reduced to the status of abominable no man. Even after he gave up writing in Armenian, assumed a different name (Armen Lubin) and produced several volumes of prose and verse in French, a collected edition of which was issued recently by Gallimard, his critics would unearth things that he wrote thirty years ago and continue their attacks. In one of his letters, Shahnour quotes with obvious approval Mahari’s observation, “The curses of a good man are preferable to the flatteries of an idiot.”
Speaking of our writers under the Red Sultan in Istanbul, he comments: “They had neither universities nor scholarships, and yet they produced many more valuable works than our academics today.”
Some of his opinions on contemporaries are worth quoting:
On Nartuni: “He is neither good nor bad. He is elsewhere.” (This could be said of so many of our Turcocentric academics today.)
On Vorpuni: “He is not devoid of talent. What he lacks, it seems to me, is individuality. He tends to write under the influence of a book (invariably by a foreign writer) that he has just read and enjoyed.”
On Minas Tololyan: “In his CENTURY OF LITERATURE he discusses 56 writers none of whom he tears to shreds as thoroughly as he does me. He seems to be unaware of the view that there is a kind of hostile criticism that might as well be equivalent to praise.”
The illustrations consist of photos of the author, alone and with other writers, and samples of his own brilliant caricatures executed in different styles.
There is a great deal more in this excellent volume that is worth rereading and translating; and I promise to do so in future installments.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Monday, January 22, 2007
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NOTES AND COMMENTS
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In a fight both sides discover the worth of the other, Shaw says somewhere. But in my view, what a fight exposes more often than not is less worth and more worthlessness.
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The art of making dupes consists in simplifying complexities for the simple-minded.
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To those who disagree with me I ask: How much of your disagreement is based on hearsay? Do you disagree with me because you think I am wrong or because you heard someone say I am wrong at a time when you were in no position to know and judge for yourself?
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Most people think if they hide their defects they will project a better image. They seem to be unaware of the fact that the more we try to hide our defects the louder our body language or style declares them. Have you noticed the way Putin and Kocharian walk? They don’t walk so much as they swagger like bullies.
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Not all Nazis were racists. When they saw a smart xxx they promoted him. To those who objected, Goering once explained: “It’s up to me to decide who is a xxx and who isn’t.”
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I see something fundamentally wrong in being right and dead. I don’t believe in being an excellent corpse. “A corpse is without interest,” says the Talmud.
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Life after death? Who’s who in the messiah business? Irrelevant questions. It’s more important that we concentrate on the mess we have made of the world, because that’s the first subject on which we will be cross-examined by the messiah or whoever is in charge of eternity.
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Man values knowledge over ignorance. In theory. In practice, the brainwashed, the dupe, the fanatic, and the man of faith are unteachable.
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Whenever we follow our gut or instinct and ignore the voice of reason, we behave like Hrant Dink’s killer. In that sense WE ARE ALL ASSASSINS, which happens to be the title of a post-World War II French movie. It is to be noted that the word assassin begins with “ass” and ends in “sin.” But that’s pure coincidence, like so much else in life. The root word of assassin is hashish, a drug used by a gang of Middle-East fanatics before they went on the warpath. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hrant’s assassin pleads not guilty by reason of drug-induced insanity.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Tuesday, January 23, 2007
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If you tell me Armenians are nice people, I believe you on the assumption that you speak from experience. If someone else tells me Armenians are nasty people, I don’t see why I should call him a liar. And if you were to ask me what I think of Armenians, I would say they come in all sizes and shapes and the higher they rise in the community, the nastier they are.
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The better the message, the more easily it will be perverted. “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” says the Good Book. So what our kings and nakharars, bosses and bishops do? They concentrate their efforts on inventing orthodoxies and ideologies with which to divide and demolish our house.
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If a man stands on principle it may be because he has nothing else to stand on. Another way of saying he is a born loser.
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If you begin to make a list of all those things you don’t know, you will never have time to brag about what you know.
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If war is hell, everyone involved in it must have something of the devil in him.
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Writing about Armenians for Armenians is a dead end. Writing about Turks, that’s different.
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If you repeat a thousand times what they want to hear, they will love you.
If you repeat twice what they don’t want to hear, they will hate you.
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[RSNATION]

Re: notes / comments

Hello, my name is Ara Baliozian...I hate everything.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Hello, my name is Ara Baliozian...I hate everything.

...especially smart-ass cowards
who are afraid to identify themselves.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, January 25, 2007
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REFLECTIONS ON A REMARK BY SHAHNOUR
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If there is a story in my life, I don’t see it. All I see is either a succession of dead ends or paths that lead nowhere. I have wasted so much time trying to reason with my readers -- as if that were in the realm of possibilities.
In one of his letters Shahnour writes (I translate from memory): “Sooner or later the voice of an authentic writer will be heard. He will even prevail over those who misinterpret him.” But can he prevail over those who having heard his voice choose to ignore him or dismiss him as a nuisance? Who reads Shahnour today, or having read him is open to his line of thinking?
It is said that on the battlefield soldiers don’t think of victory, only of survival. I have survived, so has the nation. But what if our survival is nothing but a slow-motion death of a thousand cuts, most of them self-inflicted?
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[RSNATION]

Re: notes / comments

...especially smart-ass cowards
who are afraid to identify themselves.

For Shame Ara! An intellectual such as yourself resorting to swear words. Your words, they puncture my very soul.

[MrLeftyHye]

Re: notes / comments

Yes, i agree people who are intellectual do not have the curse words in there vocabulary.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, January 26, 2007
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CRITICS AND MAD DOGS
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Stand long enough at the edge of an abyss and someone is sure to push you.
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Whenever a faceless anonymous hooligan on the Internet verbally abuses me, my first reaction is to believe everything he says. Paul Valéry is right: when a mad dog bites, it hurts.
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There is nothing wrong in saying “I believe in god.” But there is something horribly wrong in saying “My god is the only true god.”
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To those who tell me I go about my criticism the wrong way, I say: Name an Armenian critic, or any critic, who went about it the right way and I will be more than happy to adopt him as my role model.
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Has anyone ever written a treatise on critical etiquette and, having done so, has not been torn to shreds by critics?
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Speaking of a Sorbonne-educated avant-garde poet, a friend tells me: “When I told him I didn’t understand his poetry, he said you will, in 25 years. I met him again last week and told him the 25 years were up and I still can’t make heads or tails of it…”
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Nothing comes easier to a charlatan than to assume everyone else is a charlatan.
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Three of our most abundant national products: bragging, backbiting, and bullxxxxting.
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My favorite 11th Commandment: “Thou shalt not aim at perfection in an imperfect world.”
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