Massikian

April 15, 2010
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READING BARUIR MASSIKIAN,
THE ABOMINABLE NO MAN
OF ARMENIAN LITERATURE
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“Armenian literature is a vast cemetery and writing for Armenians as cheerful a prospect as attending a requiem mass.”
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A handful of his contemporaries may have heard of him but the rest have every reason to assume that he is a fiction of my own imagination whose raison d'etre is to reinforce my own peculiar views on Armenians and related atrocities. It is to dispel that notion that I have translated below the brief entry on him in the SOVIET-ARMENIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA (volume 7, page 267), by A. Yapujian:
“Armenian author, born in Adana in 1914. He lived in Cairo in 1920. Received his primary education in the Berberian School, Studied law at the University of Paris, philosophy and literature at the University of Brussels. His works include OUR LIFE (1946), BROKEN CROSSES (1959), and PELTING RAIN (1962), which is a collection of humorous tales, and the plays “My Grandson,” “The Cross,” “One Million,” and “Akhjikdes” [literally, “girl-viewing,” a formal visit arranged by match-makers). His operetta ERZRUM RONDO was staged in Cairo, New York, and elsewhere.”
In addition to being a composer he was also an excellent violinist, or so I am told by a personal acquaintance of his.
He died about ten years after the Encyclopedia was published in 1981.
His contempt of Armenian activists, Panchoonies, and Jack S. Avanakians was such that, when several of them approached his deathbed suggesting he bequeath his estate to an Armenian educational foundation (he died single and, as a successful lawyer, he was a wealthy man), he is said to have replied: “I'd much rather leave it to a Cairo bordello.”
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“To be an Armenian poet means to be a beggar at the mercy of buggers.”
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“They asked a thief why he stole, and he replied: 'To qualify as a member of an Armenian organization.'”
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“He was convinced he looked like a doctor though he had not had much practice in legal murder.”
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“The logic of an Armenian charlatan: All geniuses have major failings. Since I have a major failing, I must be a genius.”
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“Instead of books, they want basterma.
Instead of theater, belly-dancing.
Instead of poems, obscenities and brawls.”
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April 16, 2010
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REFRAINS
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Because he was a Jew, writes Kirk Douglas in his memoirs, he was constantly harassed, bullied, and beaten by neighborhood boys in New York. I too was bullied and sometimes beaten, not by Greeks but by my Armenian classmates.
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Nothing comes more naturally to a victim than to victimize the first chance he gets.
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For most of our historic existence we were at the mercy of bullies who were successful in convincing us we were in the best of hands.
When shortly before he was himself murdered, Zohrab warned his fellow Armenians of the coming catastrophe, they said, “Zohrab effendi is exaggerating.”
That's another problem with us. After being victims for centuries, we assume our status as underdogs to be an integral part of the human condition.
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I have said this before and it bears repeating: Once upon a time we were slaves. We are now slaves of former slaves.
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We experienced a literary Renaissance in Istanbul under Sultan Abdulhamid II. Under our own bosses and benefactors (and with the blessing of our bishops) we are experiencing the apotheosis of mediocrity which is worse than death.
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The dead can be resurrected. It is more difficult with the living.
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I remember to have read somewhere, “A feud should live a full and colorful life and then it should die a natural death and be forgotten.” After we die, our feuds will go on living. Our mortality is certain. So is the immortality of our feuds.
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April 17, 2010
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TWO BOOKS
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Two recently published books that I am looking forward to read are SPEAK, NABOKOV by Michael Maar, and a biography (the first, I think) of Lesley Blanch titled INNER LANDSCAPES, WILDER SHORES by Anne Boston.
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Nabokov is a favorite writer of mine. LOLITA is the only work of fiction that I have read four times with equal enjoyment. His critics are right when they say he has no moral sense, no social consciousness, and no constructive message. In that sense, he is very much like music, even though he was himself tone deaf, unlike his son Dimitry, who in addition to being an opera singer is also his father's editor and translator of his Russian works.
My admiration of Nabokov is such that I am more than willing to forgive his blind spots – two of them being his contempt for two bourgeois writers like Thomas Mann and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Nabokov was born in the highest Russian aristocracy, a multimillionaire, who lost his fortune to the Soviets and his father to an assassin.
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Lesley Blanch is the author of THE SABRES OF PARADISE, the most fascinating book on the Caucasus, or rather, the fierce resistance of Caucasian tribes under the leadership of Imam Shamil, which continues to this day.
There are several Armenians in this epic story, one of them being a girl not much older than Lolita, with whom Shamil is said to have fallen in love. So much so that even when the girl's parents were willing to pay a ransom for her (she was abducted), she refused to return to her family.
Leslie Blanch married Romain Gary, author of the best-selling THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN, (inspired by the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin, with whom he was personally acquainted), who left her for a much younger Jean Seberg, who committed suicide; and so did Romain Gary.
I have a soft spot for all suicides (except Hitler), but I am also convinced it is the wrong people who commit suicide, and those who should, don't – Stalin, Mao, Franco, and any day now, Castro.
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