Recent years have exposed the extent of our unfamiliarity with ourselves and our homeland – to the point where we find ourselves having to debate over what qualifies as a part of that homeland and what doesn’t. Yet, it is essential to know it to love it genuinely; otherwise, one cannot fully possess it. An average Armenian citizen will recall more Georgian or Turkish resorts than mountains in the tiny vestige of his homeland that is now known as his state. That said, ‘knowledge only increases sorrow’. Many of those who never once considered visiting Artsakh are now anticipating an ‘era of peace’ and would only welcome the conversion of Gyumri and Meghri into Batumi, a place much more easily understood and dear to their hearts.
With those fewer than 15 per cent of the population, all is clear. We appeal to those for whom the Motherland does not cease at the 29743rd square kilometre in the middle of a village, where just a year ago an Armenian was tending a garden, which was first planted by his ancestors before our era, while today the fruits of his efforts are being reaped by an Azerbaijani occupier. What little we will tell about the other millennia-old fruits of Armenian culture (‘culture’ is derived from ‘cultivate’ for a reason) is not shameful to not know, but is disgraceful to neglect. Only we can retain and transmit it to the generations as a compass for reclaiming themselves and what is theirs.
You see, it’s pretty easy to lose things you never knew you had. How many Armenians realised the value of Artsakh’s liberation in the 1990s and would be able to convey it not even to an international watcher, but to their own child? How many Armenians could explain the meaning of the motto ‘I Remember and Demand’, adopted to mark the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide? A tip: it is not even explained by those who devised it. How many Armenians touting the first Christian nation left and right are knowledgeable about the role of Christianity and the Armenian Apostolic Church in safeguarding Armenian identity? And who, in doing so, have read the great monk and philosopher Grigor Narekatsi in the only language capable of grasping his profundity – in Grabar? And those who, happy with themselves, post that Tiflis and Baku were built by Armenians but fail to name a single example and give an explanation why Armenians built up these cities and not Yerevan? And it’s not that people don’t read enough or are not curious about their homeland – you would be hard-pressed to find as many ‘walking encyclopaedias’ per square metre anywhere else. That is, there is no national aristocracy to flesh out all these righteous statements and claims. Without inner filling of these ideas, their carriers are left even more fragile (the greater the expectations, the harder it is to fall).
These meanings and our self-awareness are not floating in the air waiting for someone to grab them. We have been losing them along the way for far too long: in barbaric attacks, in destroyed temples and expelled pagan priests, in ruined churches and persecuted monks, in the systematic coloniser’s policies of exterminating everything Armenian. Armenian manuscripts would survive in Indian Madras, but not in Armenian Polis.
It wasn’t a mere erasure of identity. The knowledge that first heathen priests, then monks, and eventually composers such as Komitas and thinkers such as Nzhdeh had of us and the world around us could enable us to recognise what invisibly shielded us from total annihilation: the rudiments of national immunity, the inner strength and core, the aspiration to be part of something greater in defiance of the selfishness forced upon us by endless wars and redivisions. For selfishness is the opposite of loving oneself. And how can you love yourself if you don’t even know who you are?
Many layers of Armenian culture – both physical and intangible – have been lost irrevocably. Much of what has miraculously survived now inhabits the minds and scattered notes of sporadic enthusiasts, regarded by most as ‘village idiots’. The main function of the state is to preserve, nurture, and unleash the potential of the nation which constitutes it. However, nominal statehood has cost foreign-managed Armenia and Armenian culture as dearly as did the centuries of direct colonial rule. Lost lives and lands, brain drain and immolation of knowledge are the net result of the existence of the Third Republic.
Identity is what distinguishes one’s own from another’s. How can one protect Armenian music without recognising it from ‘Azerbaijani’ music (while the latter obviously cannot claim authenticity)? How can we uphold our centuries-old ethnic costumes and rugs if Azerbaijanis have been embroidering our patterns for a while now, whereas at ‘cultural’ events in Armenia and Spyurk (our communities abroad) we are laying tablecloths and putting children in dresses with distorted and mutilated Armenian patterns made in Turkey? How can you argue with Azerbaijanis, as to whose dance is kochari, if you only know the Azerbaijani version of the dance’s name origin and, like them, you have no idea that in fact kochari is not one dance, but a group of about a dozen martial dances from different parts of Western Armenia? Who should be responsible for all this, apart from a group of enthusiasts and our collective sense of the beautiful, which suggests that the people who spawned Grigor Narekatsi and Komitas will never entertain performers like Spitaktsi Aiko, whose ‘songs’ were translated from Azerbaijani and Turkish?
Superficial judgements about Armenian music, dance, patterns, clothing, architecture, religion are good enough to assert oneself in the ‘couch wars’. Yet, as we have already stated, this shallowness is detrimental not only because another attribute of Armenian culture could be registered with UNESCO as Azerbaijani heritage. No. The truth is that each of these encapsulates the wisdom of the many generations of our ancestors, a code to our strength and independence.
Would you tell Armenians from Azerbaijanis or Turks from their backs at their wedding festivities? Then maybe Nikol Pashinyan is right and we can actually usher in an era of peace and ‘integrate’ with them?
But you most certainly won’t mistake anyone on this planet for Armenians who are gathering to dance at the Cascade on each month’s last Friday. Why is that? Practically every Armenian will tell you that the great Komitas unravelled the secret of the Armenian musical notation – khazes, but torn the very sheet with the riddle while being in a severe state of mind after witnessing the Genocide. But of course not quite everyone will make it to the Komitas Museum a few steps away from the much-loved Yerevan Mall (one of the largest shopping centres in Yerevan built upon one of the most ancient city buildings from Urartu era) and learn that Komitas was probably not going insane, but he just sworn off speaking after what he had seen in Western Armenia.
The secret of the khazes remained untold, but Komitas had written down the purest Armenian music with its unique rhythm and codified the steps of Armenian dances. Our ancestors used to dance for all occasions: fighting wars, baking bread, seeding, cutting grass for hay, making matsun (yoghurt), of course, wedding rituals, mixing clay during construction, entangling evil forces, drought, funeral, honouring high-flying birds, scaring away enemies, who, by the way, used to kidnap Armenian brides right from their own wedding ceremonies, etc. Some of these may seem superstitious, but over time these pre-Christian dances had come to embody the harmony in which the Armenian lived with his or her nature, land, and community. This codification includes variations of ‘springs’ performed with the feet in upright movements – universal in these dances. That is why Armenians can be infallibly discerned even in those dances, variations of which are performed by other peoples who once inhabited the Armenian Highland, now despicably dubbed ‘Anatolia’ – Greeks, Kurds, Assyrians. Virtually all extant Armenian ethnic dances consist of a set of such springs, which may deepen and slow down or speed up to a leap. They determine a special connection with the soil under our feet, allowing us to stand firmly on it, to feel it – and those surrounding us – with every fibre of our being.
Every detail is thought out in these dances. Everything that has to do with communal affairs and rituals is danced in a circle called the core. Such dances were danced for hours by the entire congregation, typically holding each other by the little fingers or shoulders. One could not leave the circle without clasping the fingers of their neighbours: the circle must not be left open to strangers for even a second. ‘Private space’ vanishes in martial dances, including kochari, which almost always take place in a precise line, with a firm interlocking of hands. In all kinds of these dances, it is essential not to step further ahead of your neighbour. And someone will be telling us that we are incapable of teamplay and we only think about ourselves? Perhaps, only those who perform a semblance of individualistic lezginka at weddings as an Armenian dance. And it’s not their fault either – it was expedient for the colonisers to impose lezginka on us so that our hands and feet would forget how to make a stand for each other.
We talk proudly about martial dances and arouse the foreigners’ bewilderment (do you all remember Caesar’s famous ‘quote’ about how the columns of his palace would collapse, if only Armenians grab each other’s hands and start dancing shoulder to shoulder?). Though the metaphor is certainly a valid one. But what do we know about these very same martial dances after all? Well, firstly, the famous yarkhushta is the epitome of utmost dedication to a brother in arms, side by side with whom one is about to engage in battle. Second, let us now return to the kochari’s origins. The name and substance of the dance date back to the veneration of rams, the role models for Armenian warriors. A ram engages in head-to-head combat, butts heads with the enemy, never lowering his own down, and finally straightens his back victoriously to confront the foe once again. Now it’s not that astonishing that the Turks have opted for the model of grey wolves, is it? However, we have ourselves mistook proud rams for lambs headed for slaughter and it is us vigorously reproducing the Azerbaijani version that kochari comes from ‘nomad’.
In the past, Gagik Ginosyan, a combat commander and the man who had recovered the dances that had practically disappeared because of the Genocide – in general, one of those who could be called the national aristocracy in the full sense of the word – proposed to introduce martial dances – Yarkhushta and Shatakh dance (Razmapar) – into military training. Seyran Ohanyan’s ministry dismissed his idea – it was engaged in ‘more serious’ things, for example, embezzling the defence budget and, at their leisure, taping up military facilities with overwrought texts on discipline and patriotism instead of concise and succinct instructions from those whom the Armenian soldier should have been seeing in front of him every day, at least in pictures: Monte Melkonian, Leonid Azgaldyan, Andranik Ozanian, Garegin Nzhdeh, and other commanders and thinkers betrayed by the First, Second, and Third Republics.
Some would say: he should have rather suggested buying thousands of drones. However, firstly, it was suggested by others who remained unheard. Secondly, unanimity, discipline, and responsibility are the actual determining factors on the battlefield, well known for at least 2,500 years now (remember Sun Tzu’s The Art of War). And yet there is another critical factor that these dances could affect in conjunction, that is, the work (had there been such) to abolish non-statutory relations in the army. This is yet another warfront in which we are constantly and utterly stupidly losing young men, be it through the murders of fellow soldiers or suicides and crippled souls. How can a soldier with compromised dignity stand up proudly for his country? How will he cover his comrade’s rear if he has hatred or contempt for him?
Well, perhaps one of the two presently established transnational political nations – the Irish – is missing something about the revival and liberation of the nation, since its upper classes started that process by restoring nearly extinct team-based Gaelic sports beneath colonial oppression. In the past, these games, especially hurling, were nearly forgotten, first due to the shift of the ‘elite’ – the viceroys of the British Crown – to rugby and cricket which were more popular in England, then due to the state ban, and finally, almost completely, as a result of the Great Famine. 140 years ago, those who proved worthy to be referred to as the Irish aristocracy began the seemingly hopeless struggle for independence with a newspaper of their own and… that game. Nowadays hurling is known to every child and adult across the island, with every village running its own team, and being a sponsor of one is an honour in each community. The Irish went from the Great Famine to the creation of a national aristocracy in 30 years. We don’t have that much time on our hands.
An integral component of the failure of the Third Republic is the degradation of Spyurk, which relied on the Republic of Armenia as a guardian of Armenian identity. As a result, Spyurk, where much more sacred knowledge about Armenia and Armenians (dances, music, recipes, pastimes) was preserved in pieces than in the territory of former Soviet Armenia, became contaminated by the game of imitation and loosened its grip. Indispensable wisdom – the reason why the civilised world has needed us up to this point – is slipping through our fingertips. The choices for what to do next are limited to two. One: we let it happen and demolish the last protective shield of our immunity, so we can be handled bare-handed. The option two: we establish a national aristocracy, reassemble this split puzzle, and get the key to the last stronghold of the Armenian world and the hidden doors of its fortress. The people that built Erebuni, Shushi, and Kars cannot bear to live on the service floor of a cheap motel. Only if it forgets its own secrets of constructing cities, fortresses, bridges, and human bonds.
