Connections
BABKEN SIMONYAN, ARMENIAN POET AND HONORARY CONSUL OF SERBIA IN YEREVAN
Where You Must Sing
He has been in Serbian history and language ever since his high school days, studying it since the early seventies. He has visited Kosovo and Metohija for the first time in 1993 and was permanently touched by the beauty of Serbian shrines. Since then, it has become the inevitable subject of his poetry. He still remembers the old house from his childhood, the yard, fountain, because they are the unmovable melancholic strongholds of his world. He was most influenced by Armenian medieval poet-monk Grigor Narekatsi and Serbian poet-bishop Njegoš. He dreams about the reuniting of the torn apart Armenian homeland. In order for the dream to come true, every Armenian must keep the dream within themselves as long as it takes
By: Mišo Vujović
Photo: Private Archive
Armenian poet, translator, essayist, Serbistics expert, culturologist. He is author of twelve books of poems, essays, travelogues and more than 900 publications. In 1975, he was the first in Armenia who became engaged in Armenian-Serbian literary and cultural connections. Winner of numerous Armenian and Serbian awards.
Observing the 40th anniversary of his literary work in the field of Armenian-Serbian cultural connections, Babken Simonyan (Yerevan, 1952) was awarded with a Gold Medal of the Republic of Serbia. As honorary consul, he is the first official representative in diplomatic relations between Armenia and Serbia (since 2006). He teaches Serbian Language at the University in Yerevan.
What was your childhood like, where did your ancestors come from?
I had a happy childhood. I grew up in a patriarchal Armenian family, where it was most important to preserve national traditions, most of all language and customs, love towards our homeland, respecting elders, especially parents and teachers. Throughout our history, Armenians considered teachers guiding stars on our rocky and difficult path. Teachers planted the love towards the language, faith and homeland within us.
I still remember our yard, our old house and fountain, which are long gone. The old house of my childhood is permanently engraved in my memory. I can still hear the gurgling of water from the old fountain. I nostalgically carry in me the old images of our yard, which no longer exists.
How did you connect your life with Serbia? And why Serbia?
In order to answer, I have to go back to the distant past – more than half a century back, when I was a high school student in Yerevan. I am grateful to my medieval history teacher, who once entered the classroom and told her students that she will speak about the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. For 45 minutes, our class listened to our teacher’s wonderful and interesting story. That history class remained in my memory forever. I did not even anticipate that the story of our teacher about the Battle of Kosovo will have a crucial meaning in my life, that I will later completely dedicate myself to Serbia, its history, literature, studying the Serbian being, Serbian mentality. If it were not for my history teacher, I would perhaps choose something else. But it was God’s will to dedicate my life to Serbia, to stand together with it and its nation.
BEFORE GOD’S CREATION
Your interest in Serbia initiated you to learn Serbian language excellently, to study its history and literature?
Certainly. The shortest path to learning history, culture and literature of a nation is through the language. It provides you direct contact and enables feeling all the layers and culturological finesses of folk literature.
In the early 1970s, I got in touch with Irina Arbuzova, wonderful professor at the Slavic Studies Department of the Leningrad, now St. Petersburg University. With her textbook, I made the first steps in learning Serbian language. She gave me the basis of Serbian language. I still hear her words ringing in my ears: ”You will have a brilliant future, you will make a great career in the field of Serbian studies and cultural connections.” It seems that Arbuzova was clairvoyant. Everything she said more than forty-five years ago came true.
You got to know Serbia during your numerous journeys. What inspired you to dedicate your touching verses to Serbia?
I saw the entire beauty of the Serbian medieval state – Kosovo and Metohija and, before all, the Patriarchy of Peć, Gračanica, Visoki Dečani, Our Lady of Ljeviš. In Kosovo, I had various encounters with ordinary people, writers, peasants, priests, but I particularly remember meeting His Holiness Patriarch Pavle in his traditional seat – Patriarchy of Peć. I also remember the wonderful medieval frescoes which speak about the high culture and art of wall painting. Not to mention the imperial city of Prizren. When I saw Our Lady of Ljeviš, I was speechless. There is a preserved verse written by Persian poet Haphiz on the church wall: ”The pupil of my eye is the nest of your beauty.” It was something unspeakable, magnificent. I realized that Our Lady of Ljeviš is genuine poetry built of stone. Already then, the poem about Our Lady formed inside of me.
I first visited Kosovo in 1993. Already the first day, while looking at wonderful Gračanica, I remembered my teacher’s story about the Battle of Kosovo. I watched this creation of God. My guide told me interesting facts from the history of Gračanica’s construction and showed me the fresco of Simonida with gouged eyes. I watched and listened astounded. I was touched. Already during that visit to Kosovo, the first among many, I wrote my first verses, and the subject of Kosovo became one of the central motifs of my poems. ”Simonida” is one of my poems from Kosovo. And it is no accident that I dedicated a beautiful wreath of poems to Serbia, as well as essays and travelogues.
KOSOVO SUN AND THE LAND OF ARARAT
Serbian literature has become accessible to Armenian readers thanks to your translations and efforts. What was your criteria for selecting works for translation?
I have been in translation since 1980. I translate according to my personal choice, never upon a received order. I translate works that symbolize real national literature, since the Middle Ages to the very day. I choose according to quality, as well as the closeness to my understanding and my soul. I try to translate works that represent the true image of Serbia. I’m not interested in works without national features and basis, especially in poetry.
Thus, I mostly translate works of medieval authors, such as the first Serbian poetess Jefimija, son of Prince Lazar and Princess Milica Despot Stefan Lazarević, great Serbian poet and Montenegrin bishop Petar Petrović Njegoš, Serbian folk poems published by Vuk Karadžić (just to remind that the book was printed in 1853 in an Armenian printing house in Vienna). I also translate Serbian legends, as well as contemporary Serbian prose and poetry.
Already in the late 1990s, an idea was born to make an anthology of XX century Serbian poetry in Armenian. Famous Armenian publisher ”Apolon” published my anthology The Kosovo Sun in 2003, for which I wrote a thorough foreword, selected poems, translated them and wrote notes. It was the first anthology that entirely presented the Serbian poetic thought to Armenian readers. In the year 2002, I published a nice bilingual selection of Serbian contemporary poetry about Armenia, entitled The Land of Ararat.
You translate Njegoš’ works. How understandable will he be to the Armenian literary audience?
What attracted me to Njegoš’ works were, before all, his messages, wise verses, philosophical thoughts, and his diplomatic skills. According to my deepest conviction, with its wisdom and strength, Mountain Wreath differs from all his other works.
When I began translating Njegoš’ poem, I had two reasons. The first is the relation with our culture outside of Armenia, because, as you know, Mountain Wreath was also printed in 1847 in the Armenian printing house in Vienna. The second reason: Mountain Wreath is understandable to us, Armenians, because of its contents, fighting against the Turks, the Ottoman oppression. Through his Mountain Wreath, Njegoš teaches us how to love and defend the homeland and how to preserve self-dignity.
Njegoš’ wisdom drew me to translating his wondrous lyrical poem ”A Night More Precious than a Century”, which I believe is the most beautiful lyrical poem in Serbian poetry, besides Kostić’ ”Santa Maria della Salute”. I am happy because the poem found its sanctuary in ancient Armenian language. Its translation is one of my best translation achievements, which makes me proud and joyful.
CONFRONTED WITH THE FACE OF EVIL
Do you believe that literature is the strongest weapon for survival?
Of course. Through written words we bring up generations and experience them as powerful means of survival. No nation can survive without literature, if it has it. Literature is essentially the mirror of a nation, its past and present. The entire Armenian history, starting from the V century to the tragic, bloody events in 1915, all our troubles, suffering and battles, are expressed in our literature, especially poetry. I think that the awareness of what Armenians have experienced – the most brutal genocide in the XX century, a historical tragedy of enormous proportions – is transferred from generation to generation through the milk we are breastfed with. A nation which forgets its bloody historical past is condemned to disappearance, it cannot be proud of its present or create its future. We, Armenians, have a bitter experience with evil, and we constantly fight against it, if not with arms, then through intellectual and cultural battles, performances on various international forums and conventions, as well as in the media. The Armenian audience is very sensitive to national issues, thus your longing for Kosovo is very clear to us. In our recent history, we experienced tragic events in Artsakh (Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh), which was inhabited by Armenians for centuries and annexed from us in 1921 together with the Nakhichevan Area. The Soviet Bolshevik authorities handed over the two Armenian areas to the newly established neighboring state. No one asked Armenians if they want to be separated from their mother country and live in another state. All that reminds of the Kosovo tragedy, lines of Serbian refugees exiled from their birthplaces, Serbs who became homeless. All that is also noted in the Armenian literature.
How was the horrible genocide from 1915 hidden from the public for decades and why does Turkey deny it?
Speaking about the genocide that Turkey committed against Armenians in 1915 is painful. And it is even more painful to speak about consequences. That tragic year left an unerasable and painful trace in the heart of every Armenian, an unhealing wound. The executioners of the Young Turk government – Enver-Pasha, Talat-Pasha, Cemal-Pasha, Dr Nazim and many others – taking advantage of the war circumstances, undertook a series of barbarian measures to realize their previously conceived plan about the extermination of Armenians. Already on April 15, 1915, local authorities decided about the beginning of deportation and pogrom of Armenians, which was supposed to be executed on April 24. In his secret instructions, the minister of internal affairs, Talat-Pasha, ordered the complete extermination of Armenians, without sparing women, old men, children, even newborns, and the secretary of the Young Turk Party, Dr Nazim, stated that the Armenian nation should be eradicated from the face of earth, and its name annihilated. The international public was ”deaf and numb” and cold-bloodedly watched the greatest tragedy of the Armenian nation. The Turks went unpunished. It gave them incentive for a new genocide against other Christians living in Turkey then. As long as Turkey denies the crime and does not admit the genocide against Armenians, it will always carry the seal of shame on its forehead.
HOMELAND, BOOK AND MOTHER CULTS
Armenia, Ararat, nation and mother are the basis of your literature. What is the role of women in the survival of Armenia and Armenian families?
As a man and as a poet, I place an equality sign between homeland and mother. In our poetry, in literary and everyday forms of speech, people never say only Armenia – but Mother Armenia. Thus, in Armenia, besides the homeland and books, mother is the greatest cult. It is the pillar of the family and home. Many think that the father plants love for the homeland in young generations and that he has an educational role. However, it is not always so. In Armenian families, women most often take over that function. Armenian women have an important role in preserving the family, they are loyal and faithful, and attempt to keep the Armenian family solid and happy, because Armenians consider the family a sanctity. And every solid and happy family is the happiness of the entire nation.
Since you are asking me about Ararat, I have to return to the genocide against the Armenians. As you know, Ararat is an Armenian mountain, where, according to the Bible, Noah’s Ark stopped after the great flood. Due to bitter fate, the magnificent Armenian mountain has unjustly remained in the western part of our historical homeland, now located in another country. Ararat is not only a symbol and spirit of the Armenian nation, it is also a holy and mysterious mountain, which inspired many famous writers, poets, painters, musicians. It became one of the central subjects in Armenian literature and culture. The entire Armenian mythology, history, literature and culture are related to Mount Ararat.
Your several centuries long literary and culturological work is crowned with your appointment as the honorary consul of Serbia in Armenia. How do you manage to join those two missions in one whole?
In the year 2022, it will be fifteen years since I have been carrying the title of honorary consul of the Republic of Serbia, and I have never dealt with other things at the expense of my consular obligations. Literature is my fate, while the consul title is a result of my many years of various activities. I spend time on every job and perform my function with great pleasure. The merge of writer and consul is functioning very successfully. It is best proven by everything I have done as honorary consul in the past fifteen years.
I can ascertain without doubt that a country is always best represented by diplomats from culture and literature. Just remember Serbian writers and intellectuals: Jovan Dučić, Miloš Crnjanski, Rastko Petrović, Ivo Andrić, Milan Rakić, Branislav Nušić, army commander and diplomat Priest Matija Nenadović, who left testimonies about the time they were engaged in diplomacy. Not to forget Princess Milica, monarch and diplomat, who, after Lazar’s death, took over the burden of diplomatic attempts to save Serbia in difficult times.
Occasionally I read memoirs of diplomats and discover much about them and their times.
CLOD OF EARTH AND DROP OF WATER
Do you go to church? Do dialogues with God facilitate your life in the most difficult moments?
Living and surviving would be very difficult without faith. I go to church very often, to liturgies which calm down and hand over everyday troubles and problems to oblivion. Whenever it was difficult, I have always asked for help and salvation from God. Through liturgies I enter into dialogues with God.
The most impressive image from your life?
When I first visited the city of Van in 2002, on the shore of the lake with the same name, where my father’s ancestors lived. While watching the landscapes, still preserved old houses and narrow streets, churches in ruins, bitter tears were running down my face. I remembered the touching stories of my late father, whom I gave a vow before he died that I would visit Van, bring a clod of soil and some water from his homeland, and scatter it over his grave after his death, to calm down his soul. I fulfilled his wish. And now my soul is calm.
You are turning seventy in 2022. How do you feel about entering the eighth decade of your life?
Sincerely, I do not feel the burden of the past seven decades. I feel as if I am still twenty-five. I am aware that the state of the soul is important, not biological age. The devotion to spiritual values, eternal and cosmic, helps me live that way, while everything material is transient. I always try to reveal new layers and features within me, those of self-recognition and self-criticism. My life was not easy. There were many joyless moments on my path of thorns, separation from the dearest ones, great battles, tears and bitterness, as well as joy. Nevertheless, I am always in a victorious mood, I have always entered battles without retreating, respecting my self.
Do you have any unrealized wishes?
Yes, I do. To see our historical homeland – Western Armenia, Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) and Nakhichevan in a united Armenian state. Almighty God has always been with us. He was the one who granted us the holy Armenian land with the biblical Mount Ararat. In order to realize the wish, the task of every Armenian is to preserve their roots, origin, customs and traditions, national identity and historical memory, without which survival is impossible.
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Books
Among numerous titles written by Babken Simonyan, we will mention here only a few:
”Scent of Homeland” (poems, 1994), ”Through the Balkan Fire” (travelogues, essays, conversations, 1995), ”Pilgrimage” (poems, 1998), ”From Ararat to Kosovo” (poems, essays, travelogues, notes, translations, 2000), ”Bibliography” (publications about Serbian and Armenian-Serbian historical, literary and cultural connections, 2002), ”Artamet” (poems, 2010), ”Hachkar” (poems, 2012), ”Clod of Serbian Soil” (essays, 2017), ”I know who I am” (poems, 2018)...
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Sweet Troubles
What troubled you most while translating Serbian poetry?
Certainly, Njegoš with his Mountain Wreath and his brilliant poem ”A Night More Precious than a Century”. But the troubles were sweet and unforgettable.
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Self-Awareness
– The patriotic spirit of Armenians is very strong. For our soldiers, Armenia is not just a territory, it is a holy land. We have fought liberation wars for survival against nomadic tribes and conquerors for centuries, Seljuks, Mongolians, Tatars and Turks. Armenia has been destroyed and torn apart several times, but its freedom-loving spirit has never been broken. Thanks to that spirit, Armenia survived and resurrected from the ashes. Here is what English poet Lord Byron wrote in the XIX century: ”I learned the language of the Armenians in order to understand the language gods had spoken. Armenia is the homeland of gods. And gods originate from the Ararat valley.
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Awards Are not a Measure of Quality
– Writers remain in history not with their awards or decrees, but with their works. Awards and decrees are not a measure of the quality of a writer; they are just a moral side in a writer’s biography. Although I admit that receiving an award for the contribution in literature is sometimes pleasant. I was never obsessed with it, though. I am sure that the biggest award are warm words and positive responses from readers.
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Two Great Influences
Can you state two people who have left a strong trace in your creative work?
Of course – brilliant Armenian medieval poet and monk of the Armenian Church Grigor Narekatsi, who lived in the X century on the banks of Lake Van, and great Serbian poet Petar Petrović Njegoš. Both poets left immortal literary achievements.
