Evelina Galli - Armenian Reporter

the armenian
culture&
arts
culture &
November 8, 2008
November 8, 2008
arts the armenian
reporter reporter
Evelina Galli
Designer to “glamorous and chic women”
Brush strokes
frozen in time
Page C9
The thrill of
flying high
Page C5
Studio visit:
Zadik Zadikian
Page C7

Good things can come in small poems
by Lory
Bedikian
The first poem by Aram Saroyan that I
was introduced to appeared in The Discovery
of Poetry, the text we used in one of
the first poetry courses I took in college.
Our instructor asked us to read various
chapters and then to create a reading
response to poems we came across
during our studies. In a chapter entitled
“Traditional and Open Forms” I discovered
this poem by Saroyan:
eyeye
Yes, that is correct. This was the poem
and is the poem. Since this was my first
poetry class and considering we had read
so many different poems from Blake to
Dickinson or from Shakespeare to Whitman,
it was surprising to suddenly come
across this small poem. The publishers
had it printed in a large, dark typeface
so that the reader obviously would not
miss the poem or think it was some sort
of typographical error in the middle of
the page. The poem was included as an
example of “concrete poetry” or poetry
that takes some sort of shape. Saroyan’s
poem can be said to be in the shape of
two eyes close together. Other poets
have formed poems in the shapes of
birds, houses, hourglasses, etc., where
the words on the page actually appear in
the shape that the poem is about.
I remember thinking that writing this
and signing one’s name to it was a courageous
act of individuality. I had never
heard of the poetry of Aram Saroyan
and what I thought was most intriguing
was that the poem that brought about
the most animated discussions from
our class was written by an Armenian-
American. The question that was brought
up during our lively class discussion was
“well, is it a poem or not?”
As with any classroom setting, the
students had all sorts of answers, arguments,
and debates. I’d like to take
the stance of my then-instructor and instead
of defending whether or not it is
or isn’t a poem, to instead discuss or appreciate
what the poet is doing through
these types of creations. In the case
of “eyeye” my most minimal response
would be that the poet is challenging
our conventional and traditional views
or definitions of poetry and poems.
Lory Bedikian received her MFA in poetry from the
University of Oregon. Her collection of poetry has
twice been selected as a finalist in the Crab Orchard
Series in Poetry Open Competition and twice in
the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award
Competition.
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Aram Saroyan.
Concrete poetry is actually not a modern
invention and has been something
documented since the time of the ancient
Greeks.
“Eyeye” appears in Saroyan’s collection
Complete Minimal Poems, a book in
which the poet presents us with poems
as small as words, sometimes smaller,
the size of a letter itself and at other
moments as large as a sentence – although
not necessarily a complete one.
Saroyan’s poems are playful, witty, almost
seem to nudge you as a reader to
see how you will react. I almost feel that
it’s a test for some readers’ patience
and acceptance and perhaps this can be
viewed as a good thing. One thing remains
true – as was the case in my own
college class – that the poems encourage
responses, whatever they may be, and
if that was part of the poem’s purpose
(not the poet’s necessarily) then it has
done its job.
I tend to enjoy the poems that remind
me of the more imagistic poems
of William Carlos Williams such as “The
Red Wheelbarrow” or “This is Just to
Say,” that many of us studied in English
courses. Imagistic poetry tends to focus
on a single image or few images written
with much precision and focus, and with
a frugality of language.
We can see this economical use of
words in Saroyan’s following poem:
Sunday
as the
grass’s
cut
and its smell
rises
twice
The poem relies on the sense of smell,
on our remembrance of such an experience.
Some can ask “and what about
it?” Perhaps our response to such a
poem should not be a reaction, but an
embrace. If we imagine what this small
note is conjuring up in image, we can
take the experience and go beyond the
poem to create our own meaning to the
image. In other words, I can enjoy this
moment that the poet has reminded
me of and appreciate what thoughts
may arise from it, from my own vaults
of memory.
Saroyan also takes the imagistic technique
and uses it in unison with creating
a simile such as in this poem:
On page C1: Evelina Galli makes clothes for “glamorous and chic women
who are not afraid to stand out in the crowd and feel comfortable being
like that.” See story on page C8.
somebody as
suddenly as a radio comes on
in the street
speaks
These poems seem to be – not rejecting
necessarily – but moving away from
what we traditionally know as poems
which present an image, analyze it, perhaps
compare it to other images, move
beyond it, bring some philosophical illumination
and the list could go on for
quite a bit. Instead these poems seem
to be small still life portraits that ask us
to see something, smell or hear something.
I can’t claim to know exactly what a
poem is or should be. If I did I would
either have to follow my own definition
flawlessly or if I did make a claim (which
was accepted) on what poets, writers, intellectuals,
and academics have debated
about for centuries I would probably
be in a different place and of a different
stature than I am today. But I’m fine
where I am, and I am still intrigued by
what’s out there in the land of poetry,
from the great old oaks to the smallest
of acorns rolling by our feet. f
The poems that appear in this column
are from Complete Minimal Poems, Ugly
Duckling Presse, 2007. Reprinted with
permission.
connect:
www.aramsaroyan.com
www.uglyducklingpresse.org
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C2 Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture November 8, 2008

Gritty and raw: New York author Arthur Nersesian
His Armenian heritage is
making its way into his
stories
by Kay
Mouradian
Arthur Nersesian read a chapter from his
latest novel, The Sacrificial Circumcision
of the Bronx, at Vroman’s bookstore in
Pasadena a few weeks ago. Trying to interview
him became a challenge. I was in
an environment far too chaotic for an indepth
conversation with this New York
author. An author who preceded Nersesian’s
reading that evening brought with
him a noisy fan base drinking wine and
milling around both authors while Nersesian
was busy trying to sign books. Waiting
for a moment when I could talk to
this Armenian author, I decided to chat
with two of the twenty-something girls
in the audience, Gilda Davidian and
Lisa Narinian of Highland Park. Both
had read several of Nersesian’s novels.
Gilda described Nersesian’s work as gritty
and raw. Since the title of Nersesian’s
first novel is The Fuck Up, I knew exactly
what Gilda meant. Two of Nersesian’s
books, The Dog Run and The Chinese Takeout,
were favorites of Lisa Narinian’s. The
communal feeling portrayed in The Dog
Run triggered a desire to go to New York
and The Chinese Takeout helped Lisa see
New York through the eyes of the characters
in the story . . . a testament to how
Nersesian’s writing can affect a reader.
Nersesian has been a fixture in the writing
scene for many years. He was an editor
for The Portable Lower East Side, which
was an important magazine during the
1980s and early 90s and for 10 years was
an English instructor at a community college
in the Bronx. He writes briskly and
acutely, with a good sense of detail. He is
also a poet and playwright and three of
his works have been optioned for film.
His most recent book, The Sacrificial
Circumcision of the Bronx, is the second
of five novels that features an Armenian
protagonist throughout the series. Uli
Sarkisian is a former FBI agent suffering
from amnesia trying to discover his
own past. His name alludes to Ulysses.
But I became fascinated with another
character, Paul Moses, who has a strong
secondary focus in Sacrificial Circumcision.
Paul was the estranged elder brother
of the wealthy and famed New York
architect, Robert Moses. Robert was
considered the “master builder” of mid-
20th century New York City, Long Island,
and Westchester County and was a
polarizing figure in the history of urban
planning as he changed shorelines and
transformed neighborhoods forever.
Nersesian’s own neighborhood in 1968
became a casualty of Robert’s urbanization
as his family was forced to move
from their Midtown apartment – the
result of an eviction to make way for an
office tower. It had a traumatic effect on
the 10-year-old Nersesian, and the following
year his parents divorced. Evictions
then became a part of Nersesian’s
life . . . in Brooklyn Heights with his
family, then Times Square, Chelsea, and
the Upper West Side until 1982, when he
found stability in a one-bedroom apartment
in the East Village, where he has
lived ever since.
Nersesian’s previous novels were about
marginal characters living in New York
who became victims of forces – personal,
political and social – they could not
comprehend. This new series is more in
the genre of science fiction fantasy and I
think it is prudent for readers to read the
first book in the series, The Swing Vote of
Staten Island; otherwise the story continuum
could become confusing. I asked
the author for a brief description of his
vision of the five stories: “Although the
story opens in America of 1980, Uli goes
through aspects of Ulysses’ journey in
both The Odyssey and The Iliad. In book
one, in this fictional place set up by the
federal government, Rescue City, we see
his fighting against the cyclops and the
sirens and so on. In book two, after he escapes
Rescue City, he finds himself stuck
in an abandoned subterranean shelter,
attempting to escape. Throughout book
two there are allusions to Hades.”
I went to Turkey in 1994.
I wanted a first-hand
experience and I found it
weird, a strange mix, and I
was getting ill.
Nersesian explains that while the series
can be considered a thriller, it is
also an alternate history of the United
States. “It opens with a fictitious ‘dirty
bomb attack’ on New York City in 1970.
Nixon is in power, the Vietnam War is
on, the Weather Underground and other
domestic terrorist organizations are
working. A major aspect of the work is
the government’s response to events.
When the lower classes of New Yorkers
are unable to find alternate living
conditions, the Feds step in, offering
temporary asylum to those who apply
– like New Orleans. This group consists
of fringe aspects of New York culture
as well as the American counterculture
at the time. But instead of a matter of
months, these people wait as years pass,”
he says.
As book one opens, it is 1980 and Uli
finds himself in the middle of this geographically
isolated city in the Nevada
desert, not knowing how he or anyone
else got there or who he is. Slowly he
comes to understand that the army
which initially governed the place has
pulled out. Rescue City is now divided
by two warring gangs that are much like
our political parties. Their slang names
are the Piggers (reminiscent of the Republicans)
and the Crappers (alluding to
the Democrats). Eventually he sees his
job there as trying to bring order and
restore freedom.
Arthur Nersesian is unique, and I’m not
sure where that places him in the gallery
Arthur Nersesian. Cover of Nersesian’s latest book.
of writers in my mind. Looking at his
picture you may think he is a replica of
one of the marginal characters he writes
about, but there is an interesting story
behind the wild hair and the less-thangroomed
beard. Arthur is one of three
sons born to an Armenian father and
an Irish mother. Since he was frequently
mistaken for Patrick, his identical twin,
Patrick asked Arthur to grow a beard so
that Patrick, the groom, would be easily
distinguishable at his wedding. I’m assuming
that by fulfilling his brother’s request,
Arthur either has a great sense of
humor or thoroughly enjoyed the new
identity, and I suspect it was probably
a bit of both. The Arthur I saw at the
Pasadena reading was clean shaven and
with his wavy gray hair looked more like
a 1960s English professor. And he was as
helpful as any teacher guiding a student
as he interrupted our brief interview to
spend time with a young Asian writer
who had mailed him a chapter from his
novel. Arthur is responsive to his fans
and his willingness can reap interesting
results such as this fascinating tale he
told me during our interview:
Arthur Nersesian: I got an email
from a fan who told me that my book
The Fuck Up was translated into Turkish.
I said ‘No.’ It was translated into several
languages but never Turkish. He suggested
I go on the Internet and type in
The Fuck Up in Turkish and tell me what
you see and I see this strange language
and did not recognize it, so I contacted
my publisher suggesting that my book
had been pirated or stolen, and they informed
me that they had sold the rights.
‘To Turkey?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ they said. But
whenever they sold the rights they always
sent me a copy of the contract, but
in this instance they did not. ‘How could
you do this without even telling me,’ I
asked. I’m Armenian and I don’t know
how I would have reacted if I had known.
They did it behind my back with no indication
that they had done this.
Kay Mouradian: Did they pay you for
the translation?
AN: Yes, they lumped it into my royalty
check without telling me. There
was absolutely no indication that they
had done this. Soon afterward some
Armenian friends said this isn’t a bad
thing. There is a humanist and liberalist
movement in Turkey and seeing that
we Armenians are human beings and
we are writers is important and is good
for our cause. From now on people who
are reading my work are going to know
I’m Armenian. Chinese Take Out was the
only story where I mentioned I was Armenian
and from now on there will be
some kind of Armenian insignia in my
stories because I don’t want people to
think I’m not aware. What my publisher
did really pissed me off. If they had contacted
me I would have thought about
it and I don’t know if I would have accepted
the offer.
KM: Have you been to Turkey?
AN: My father’s father is from Harput
and his mother was from Constantinople.
I remember my father would
say he’d come home from school in the
1920s and his parents and their friends
would be somber or crying about their
lost ones and there was a heavy humidity
in the air. I think it had a really traumatic
effect on him. I went to Turkey
in 1994 because I wanted to see these
people. I wanted a first-hand experience
and I found it weird, a strange mix, and I
was getting ill. I wanted to see the place
where my grandmother was from. I still
think of it as Constantinople. On a tour,
Turkey still presents itself as a victim as
they said we were invaded by five armies,
the English army, the French army, the
Russian army and the Armenian army.
They actually said that. Wow, the Armenian
army really did a job on you guys!
After about a week when I was leaving,
a Turkish official took a look at my passport
and pulled me out of the line, let
everyone go and then with a smirk he
handed me my passport. I’m glad that
happened because any notion of reconciliation...
those people there don’t have
any perception of what really happened.
Jennifer Belle, author of High Maintenance,
describes Nersesian as this generation’s
Mark Twain and the East River
as his Mississippi. My own intuition predicts
that we will be hearing a great deal
more about this Armenian author. He
has a great talent. f
connect:
www.arthurnersesian.com
Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture November 8, 2008 C3

At National Veterans Creative Arts Festival
Karnig Thomasian wins first prize
by Lola
Koundakjian
Air Force veteran Karnig Thomasian, of
New Jersey, won first prize in this year’s
National Veterans Creative Arts Festival.
Thomasian had also won second prize
(in the monochromatic category) at the
same festival in 2007. There are 130 categories
offered in the competition.
Thomasian and his spouse, Diana,
were in California October 20–27 to
attend the event and accept the prize.
“Every VA hospital, in each of the states,
holds a competition,” Karnig Thomasian
said. “The winner then gets to go to the
national competition, all expenses paid.”
This year’s event was held in Riverside,
California, hosted by the VA Loma Linda
Healthcare System.
In his autobiography, Then There
Were Six: The True Story of the 1944
Rangoon Disaster (reviewed by William
A. Rooney for the Armenian Reporter
– February 2005), Thomasian
wrote about his experiences training
to be a gunner and flying around the
world in B-29s. At the time, the B-29
was the largest and most complicated
aircraft ever built – the Enola Gray,
which dropped bombs on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, was a B-29.
Thomasian quit high school to volunteer
for the Air Force during World War
II. He trained as a riveter, then a special
B-29 gunner. After numerous training
stops and forming a team, Thomasian
served in Asia, where he survived the
Rangoon disaster and was captured by
the Japanese when he was 21 years old.
Upon his return to New York City as
a former POW, he continued his studies
under the G.I. Bill. Having been brought
up by a pianist mother and in a household
full of visiting artists, Thomasian
attended the Arts Students League (ASL)
for four years. Those were the golden
years of the institution, where the ghost
of Arshile Gorky held court – the artist
used to visit Stuart Davis there
prior to the war. Another war veteran
studying at ASL was Manuel Tolegian,
who became a close friend of Jackson
Pollock’s.
After graduating from ASL, Thomasian
married and continued his studies in
layout and typography, which gave him
opportunities to work in agencies all
over New York City. A successful career
ensued. He retired in 1996.
All was not easy for Thomasian who
grew up in a loving three-generation
household in Kew Gardens, N.Y. The
family moved to Washington Heights,
an Armenian enclave in northern Manhattan,
after his father lost his business
during the Crash of 1929.
Both of Thomasian’s parents hailed
from Istanbul. His mother moved to
Venice and then Paris, where she graduated
from the Conservatoire de Paris.
When Thomasian was growing up, his
parents held musical soirées on a regular
basis. They would invite musicians
Above: Karnig
Thomasian during
an exhibit of his
work. Photo: Diana
Thomasian.Left:
Karnig Thomasian
during the Reporter
interview, October
2008. Photo: Lola
Koundakjian. Below:
Portrait of Alfred
Goldstein – charcoal
drawing by Karnig
Thomasian. Right:
Portrait of a police
officer who perished
on 9/11. Pencil
drawing by Karnig
Thomasian. Below left:
The charcoal drawing
that won the first prize
of the 2008 National
Veterans Creative Arts
Festival.
such as Maro and Anahid Ajemian,
the co-founders of the Friends of Armenian
Music Committee in the 1940s.
The Ajemian sisters were closely linked
with the avant-garde composers of the
time and invited them along. Thoma-
sian’s memories from his teenage years
include watching composer John Cage
prepare a piano for one of his famous
pieces, which is played by altering the
sounds via various objects placed in the
strings of the instrument. Composer
Alan Hovhaness, another Ajemian
protégé, was also a frequent visitor to
the recitals.
As a former POW, Thomasian eventually
acknowledged suffering from posttraumatic
stress disorder. He joined
the American Ex-Prisoners of War
Organization and received treatment
from VA therapists. With the support
of his immediate family and other veterans,
he made it through it all. Today
Thomasian is a lecturer and an accredited
National Service Officer for the
American Ex-Prisoners’ Garden State
(NJ) chapter. Throughout the years,
he has helped over 50 combat veterans
with their needs, including getting
their disability compensations. In addition
to helping former soldiers and
POWs, Thomasian regularly lectures
in schools and teaches drawing classes
in an art school in New Jersey. f
connect:
portraitsbykarnig.com
1.va.gov/vetevent/caf/2008/Default.cfm
axpow.org/
C4 Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture November 8, 2008

The thrill of flying high
Hrair Hawk’s aerial
photographs of Armenia
by Betty
Panossian-Ter
Sarkissian
YEREVAN – The result of Hrair Hawk
Khatcherian’s flight over Armenia is a
dynamic new collection of photographs
which were on display in October, at the
Children’s Gallery in Yerevan.
“Heaven on Earth”
Heaven on Earth: Armenia Hawk’s Eye View
will be the title of Hawk’s album, a compilation
of aerial photographs of Armenia
and Nagorno-Karabakh.
The album will be the seventh by Hawk.
It will include a magnificent photo of
Lake Sevan, where the blue of the water
and the sky mingle with the beige
hues of the terrain. It will most probably
grace the cover of the album.
Lake Sevan “is a beautiful symbol of
Armenia. At the same time, this particular
photo will surprise the viewer. I want
my audience to see the pictures and say
‘This couldn’t be Armenia,” Hawk says.
The element of surprise is what makes
this collection even more interesting.
Unusual locations, hidden views of high
mountains and colorful visuals of terrain
punctuate the photos of churches
from new angles and aerial photos of
historical monuments. In a marvelous
picture, gray dots encircled with the
white of the snow are joined with canals
Great Aghi and Small Aghi Lakes.
of water shaping an out-of-the-ordinary
pattern. The photo was taken from the
skies above Karvajar, in Karabakh. “The
melted snow has no place to go and it
forms small ponds and canals, which
dry as soon as the weather gets warmer.
It looks like an abstract painting,” explains
Hawk. From Karvajar comes another
beauty, the photos of Great Aghi
and Small Aghi Lakes.
Flying over the Armenian sky, Hrair
Hawk is once again drawn to churches
and has photographed them from angles
never before seen in pictures. “One
needs to fly to get Garni in a photograph
from this angle,” says Hawk pointing to
a photo. He has also captured a rare picture
of Khor Virab, the result of his daring
flight as near to the Turkish border
as possible.
There is a shot of the ancient church
of Noravank pictured from the same
altitude as the mountains surrounding
the monastery, which has more than a
single message. “When one approaches
the monastery from the ground, it overwhelms
the visitor with its grandeur,
while from this height it looks as if it
is gulped by the mountain. It is simply
a small particle to the magnificence of
nature,” explains Hawk.
For this project, Hawk has partnered
with the Armenia Tree Project (ATP).
Many of the photos on exhibit, including
the one of Noravank, show swaths
of land that have become green zones
thanks to the ATP. Another such photo
is that of the dome of St. Gevorg Monastery
of Moughni, nestled among lush
trees also planted by ATP. The same photo
embraces the city of Ashtarak with
Mount Ararat in the background.
Land observed from the sky has no
border lines. “With this exhibition I
Temple of Garni.
want to make a point that in the sky we
really are liberated. There are no boundaries,”
states the artist.
Hawk is also interested in showing
the life that bursts from these lands
he has flown over. There is a photograph
showing a modest and comfortable
farm house amid green fields and
orchards which could be anywhere in
the world, except that it is in Armenia.
Another one draws a contrast between
life and death; in the foreground are
khachkars (stone crosses) of Noratuz,
those masterfully carved headstones of
the long-forgotten deceased, separated
by a green line of agricultural life in
the background.
Hawk first started to take aerial pictures
back in 1982, when he was a pilot
in the United States. His first opportunity
to take a helicopter flight over
Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh was in
1995, when “I noticed that Armenia indeed
has a very interesting topography,”
says Hawk. The result of that first aerial
journey was the album Flying Hye published
in 2006. This new aerial compilation
will complete the circle of Hawk’s
flight over the Armenian landscape.
“For my journeys over Armenia, I have
to thank the Ministry of Defense of Armenia,
which provided me with a helicopter,
and the members of the crew,
who we eager to assist me in my journey,”
he tells the Armenian Reporter.
Hawk plans to fly over the Armenian
skies sometime this fall, to capture the
autumn beauty of the Armenian landscape.
“I will concentrate on the region
of Lory, where thick forests will surely
display beautiful shades of red and gold,”
he says with a glint in his eye.
“Words cannot describe the thrill of my
flight. I can only attempt to express them
through my photographs,” says Hawk. f
Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture November 8, 2008 C5

Mapping Armenian literature of the diaspora
Questions of
language, hyphenated
identities, and politics
representation in
Armenian-North
American literature
by Talar
Chahinian
This is the third of a four-part exploration
by Talar Chahinian of issues in modern Armenian
literature. The previous parts appeared
in the September 20 and October 11
editions.
As we cross the Atlantic in our project
to map Armenian literature of the diaspora,
we find ourselves unable to continue
tracing literary production through
the notion of urban centers that serve
as the nucleus for an entire region or for
a distinct cultural narrative. Particularly
in North America, the history of Armenian
literature not only evades geographic
fixations, but urges us to extend our
cartographic project to both linguistic
and thematic realms. As such, in tracing
Armenian literature of North America
produced in the Armenian and English
languages, and by focusing on the latter’s
emphasis on the theme of genocide, we
will be confronted with the question of
what constitutes Armenian literature in
the diaspora. Within this larger inquiry,
a subsequent, and a more specific, question
befits the scope of the article more
appropriately: When does literature as
a mode of representation or resistance
cease from being art?
A large number of Armenians came to
the Americas from the Ottoman Empire
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The pattern of immigration and settlement
consisted of two main waves: first,
following the Hamidian massacres of the
mid-1890s, and, second, following the
1915 massacres and mass deportations.
Aside from these two major influxes, in
the in-between years, the immigration
movement continued to grow annually,
as Armenians left Turkey due to continuing
political persecutions. According
to historian Robert Mirak, 67,000
Armenians had migrated to the United
States and Canada by the outbreak of
World War I, with another 23,000 arriving
by 1924’s U.S. Immigration Act,
which imposed a quota system. Most of
the Armenian immigrants in the United
States settled in northeastern states like
New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
Connecticut, and New Jersey, with another
significant portion settling on the
farmlands of the West Coast, in Fresno
County, California.
In many of these states, an active
immigrant press emerged to aid in the
process of community-building, alongside
religious and political institutions.
Michael Arlen born Dikran Kuyumjian on the
cover of TIME magazine.
Peter Balakian.
Among the various periodicals of the
time were Hayrenik, the political and literary
journal that began publication in
Boston in 1922, and the literary journal
Nor Kir, which began publication in New
York, in 1936. Both of these monthlies
gathered around their respective publications
groups of prominent writers
from both the surviving and orphaned
generations. Although many writers
from the Middle East or Europe contributed
writings to the journals, Hayrenik
and Nor Kir showcased also new voices
emerging in North America. This first
generation of Armenians in America,
which included Hamasdegh, Penyamin
Nourigian, Aram Haigaz, and Vahe Haig,
wrote their prose in the Armenian language,
often recounting stories of childhood
memories, of pastoral life set in
their native Armenian villages.
In time, there emerged a new generation
of writers for whom English had
become the language of choice for literary
expression. Although they wrote
and published in English due to their
limited access to training in the Armenian
language, they often drew from
their families’ immigrant experience for
the content of their prose and poetry.
Consequently, they developed a claim
to a hyphenated identity, the duality
of which lent itself nicely to the growing
discourse of an ethnically pluralistic
American society. The prototypical example
of this generation is the Pulitzer
Cover of Peter Sourian’s At the French Embassy in
Sofia.
Prize-winning William Saroyan, who is
soon followed by the likes of Peter Sourian,
Richard Hagopian, Agop Hacikyan,
and Peter Najarian.
It is not uncommon to find a translated
work of Saroyan, whose works are
incorporated into the American literary
canon and taught in high schools across
the nation, as well as featured in Armenian
literature textbooks and taught in
language and literature classes in private
Armenian middle and high schools
of the diaspora. Then, one might ask,
to which literary tradition does Saroyan
belong? To frame the question as such
will undoubtedly produce a futile and
reductionistic answer. In fact, the crosscultural
quality of his work increases
its significance and readability. Nevertheless,
within the Armenian diasporic
context, the issue of language-choice
vs. content, inherent in the question of
belonging, becomes detrimental to conceiving
any notion of literary history.
Lorne Shirinian, a poet and a scholar
of Armenian-North American literature,
disagrees with French-Armenian writer
and critic Krikor Beledian on this issue.
Whereas Beledian believes that the
Armenian language is the only site of
Armenian presence in the world, Shirinian
is reluctant to discount content and
a writer’s ethnic identity as markers of
an Armenian dimension in a work. He
argues on behalf of Armenian writers
who cannot speak the language but see
themselves as Armenian.
As valid and accepted as this latter
viewpoint is, especially within the discourse
of ethnic-American studies, it
can be dangerous to Armenian diasporic
culture, if either privileged as the preferred
mode of self-expression or seen
as the future Armenian literature of the
diaspora. The Western form of the Armenian
language, of course, will be particularly
at stake.
The increasingly preferential status
given to English-language works written
by Armenian authors derives in part
from the question of audience. In the
last few decades, second- or third-generation
Armenian-Americans have contributed
to the burgeoning publication
trend of memoirs by writing autobiographical
narratives on the theme of the
Armenian Genocide. Under the shadow
of Turkey’s denial and the United States’
William Saroyan.
refusal to officially recognize the events
of 1915 as “genocide,” English-language
works written on this theme are welcomed
by Armenians for serving a pedagogical
function and thus aiding the
cause for recognition.
A new generation of writers
for whom English had
become the language of
choice developed a claim
to a hyphenated identity,
the duality of which lent
itself nicely to the growing
discourse of an ethnically
pluralistic American society.
Two of the more widely read works in
this memoir genre are Michael Arlen’s
Passage to Ararat, published in 1975,
and Peter Balakian’s Black Dog of Fate,
published in 1997. Written in English,
these works attempt to approach the
theme of genocide through a two-level
narrative that presents the crisis of
hyphenated identity of its Armenian-
American authors, who, after undergoing
a process of self-discovery, arrive
at the moment of the 1915 Catastrophe
and feel compelled to narrate the story
of “the forgotten genocide.” The combination
of the personal narrative with
the historical one produces a hybrid
text that seeks to reconstruct the missing
archive of the Catastrophe, though,
I would argue, at the cost of representation.
The works become locked in the
impulse of providing proof and thus
writing from the perspective of the
executioner and his agenda of annihilation.
Both narratives begin by revisiting
the childhood and young-adulthood
years of the respective authors
and presenting their lack of awareness
about their Armenian heritage. Arlen
writes, “I became conscious of being accompanied
by a kind of a shadow of ‘being
Armenian.’” Armenia lingers in the
background of their everyday lives as a
mystical realm, which for the most part
Continued on page C11 m
C6 Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture November 8, 2008

Studio visit: Zadik Zadikian
by Christopher Atamian
Humanism by an(y) other
name
The female form never looked better than
this past week at Tom Otterness’ Brooklyn
studio, where Zadik Zadikian exhibited
his 2008 “Erotic Gold Sculptures.” These
ten exquisite works – made of fiberglass
with gesso and French clay and gilt in 24carat
double gold leaf – were laid out in
rows at waist height. They appeared to
leap out at visitors, so taut were their contours
and so vivid their energy. Measuring
about one foot in each direction, they
are built on a perfectly human scale, bold
but never intimidating. For Zadikian, who
spent much of his youth at the forefront
of the downtown New York art scene, the
show was a homecoming of sorts.
One shouldn’t make the mistake,
however, of thinking that these sculptures
are mere eye candy. Quite the contrary.
Aztec Queen sits on her haunches,
legs splayed, her bullet-shaped breasts
powerfully thrusting outward. Straight
Flush, on all fours, arches her muscular
posterior into the air, waiting to be
mounted. And the elegant yet terrifying
Sex Machine recalls Fritz Lang’s robots
in Metropolis. The sculptures fuse classicism
with a Brancusi-like respect for the
geometry of the curve. Hot (and cold to
the touch simultaneously), sensual yet
removed in their perfection, classic yet
kitsch, streamlined yet intimate, they
are Zadikian’s answer to both the machine
age and to the postmodern crisis
in representation.
Independent curator Neery Melkonian
suggests as much when she comments:
“Zadikian never abandoned modernism’s
love for the sensuous qualities of an art
object.” Zadikian is first and foremost a
humanist, someone deeply in love with
the human form, a worldview that puts
him squarely at odds with certain contemporary
art-world trends: “Zadikian’s
new sculptures,” Melkonian continues,
“simultaneously dematerialize and
rematerialize both form and content.
They are painstakingly and purposefully
crafted […] to bring us back in touch
with our humanity.” Zadikian also cleverly
subverts our basic associations with
both gold and the female body as objects
of sin and desire (for wealth, the flesh,
pleasure, etc). In doing so, he creates
objects that exist on their own aesthetic
and semiotic planes.
Zadikian has perfected his technique
over many decades of trial and error. To
make his erotic gold sculptures, he first
casts his clay molds in fiberglass. He
makes a gesso undercoat, sands layers of
red clay, and then brushes on the gold
leaf with a water-based mixture of gelatin
and alcohol. The entire process is both
time- and labor-intensive.
Escape from Armenia: calling
007
A bit of biographical backtracking helps
to shed light on Zadikian’s particular life
choices, his brash confidence as well as
his single-minded artistic vision. His life
story reads like a cross between a James
Bond movie and a John Le Carré spy novel:
the fact that he has emerged seemingly
unscathed from his past stands as a testament
to his inner fortitude.
Zadikian was born in Yerevan in 1946,
where he received his early training at
one of the many “youth palaces” established
by the Soviets. This was followed
by intense classical study at the Panos
Terlemezian Art Academy, Armenia’s
equivalent of RISD or the Beaux Arts.
It’s here that Zadikian first developed
a love for Western art and here as well
that he first had thoughts of escaping to
the West: “All the training we received
idolized the West. The Greeks, the Egyptians,
the Renaissance… Of course, they
tried to downplay what was happening
in Europe by telling us that Cubism, for
example, was trash. But we knew better.
We could sense the excitement of a
Picasso or a Miró.”
Soviet Armenia was no place for a
young, rebellious mind, particularly in
the early 1960s: “Yes, it’s in the Soviet
Union that Armenians rebuilt their culture
after the horrors of the Armenian
Genocide,” Zadikian explains, ”but
you have to remember that I grew
up at the height of Brezhnevian
Communism. It was the most conformist
time. Even someone like
[Martiros] Sarian, who had a brilliant
fauvist period, was forced
to paint along naturalist lines
eventually.” Zadikian concludes
simply: “Every young person
had a romance with the outside
world.”
So one night in the winter of
1965, as if writing their own Hollywood
adventure script, Zadikian
and four friends – Remi, Garo,
Razmik, and Pavlik – jumped into the
Aras River and swam towards freedom.
This was no easy task. They misjudged
the strength and temperature of the
river and almost froze to death. Razmik
and Pavlik were shot dead by Armenian
border guards, while Zadikian’s childhood
friend Garo was captured, imprisoned,
and tortured for the better part
of a decade. Emerging stark naked from
the Aras, Zadikian and Remi Manoukian
crawled through the mud, dodging bullet
fire from some one hundred Armenian
guards. Half dead, they jumped over a
second, smaller fork of the Aras onto
Turkish territory, where they eventually
found asylum. While being detained in a
refugee camp in Istanbul, Zadikian made
money selling clay pots that he fashioned
during his free time. He used these savings
to bribe a Turkish guard and obtain
papers that eventually brought him to
Beirut, San Francisco, and, finally, New
York. There, through a set of fortuitous
circumstances, he ended up working side
by side with Richard Serra, first as an assistant
and eventually creating work with
the now-famous artist.
The Midas touch
Gold has been on Zadikian’s mind
for a long time. Given his youthful
idealism and his Near Eastern
background, this fascination
makes perfect sense.
While gold is fraught with
all sorts of representational
and metaphorical symbols
and trap(ping)s (money,
greed, idolatry, success),
Zadikian associates it in
almost pagan terms with
the Sun and uses the
color and leafing in
large part for its
aesthetic qualities:
“To me
it’s a
positive,
M e d i -
terra-
nean force,” he says.
Once in New York, Zadikian quickly
caused a stir in the art world. At the
112 Greene Gallery show in 1973, he
spray-painted the whole gallery gold.
Gold dust fell to the floor, covering
it in a magical gilt carpet. He then
painted a 60-foot gold billboard at
the entrance of the Holland Tunnel,
lighting up this gray, predominantly
industrial neighborhood like a beacon
in the night sky.
The next step was to paint his studio
and living space gold: “When I painted
my interior space gold, I was creating a
positive energy field,” Zadikian explains.
In 1977, he gilded the entire entrance
to PS 1 in Long Island City, reaching
an apogée of sorts that coincided with
Straight Flush,
18 ½" x 21 ½" x 13,
burnished gold on
fiberglass, 2007,
pictured from three
different angles.
Aztec Queen,
18 ½" x 14 ½" x 8 ¾",
burnished gold on fiberglass,
2007.
his showing at the Tony
Shafrazi Gallery in the
closing years of the 70s.
In 1978, he exhibited
with Shafrazi’s Teheran
gallery. The title
of the show, “1000
Gold Gilt Bricks,”
speaks for itself. In
1980, it was the turn
of Tigran the Great, as
Zadikian exhibited gilt
coins of the Armenian
emperor at Shafrazi Gallery
in New York. A welldocumented
rift with the
controversial dealer and
the desire to start a family
eventually brought
Zadikian to Los Angeles,
where he now resides.
New York,
2008
Back in
his old
stomping
g r o u n d s ,
Z a d i k i -
an’s work
s e e m s
m o r e
r e f i n e d
t h a n
ever. His
Erotic Gold
S c u l p t u r e s
exude a timeless
sexual energy,
something
remarkably aesthetic
that manages to avoid
being vulgar. The great King Midas,
legend has it, turned everything he
touched to gold. His gift, of course,
turned out to be as much a blessing
as a curse, as even his loved ones were
doomed to be encased in gold for eternity.
King Midas was left alone to
grieve. In Zadikian’s case, time will
tell what his long-standing love affair
with all things gilt will bring him.
Recognition of both his ongoing talent
and the unique role that he has played
on the contemporary art scene are
the least that Zadikian deserves. f
The exhibit at the Tom Otterness Studio, 96 Fourth
Street, Brooklyn, New York, closed October 29.
Go to zadikzadikian.com to see more of Zadikian’s
work.
Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture November 8, 2008 C7

Evelina Galli: fabulous designer
for glamorous women
Her journey from Yerevan
to the runways of Los
Angeles
by Shahane Martirosyan
Glamorous is the word, Yerevan is the
birthplace, Evelina Galli is the name.
And you best not forget the name because
she is the woman who makes clothes
for “glamorous and chic women who are
not afraid to stand out in the crowd and
feel comfortable being like that.”
I met Evelina Galli at one of her trunk
shows in Glendale late last month. She
was displaying her Evelina Galli Collection
at her friend’s backyard. As I arrived early,
I had the opportunity to interview the designer
before guests began to arrive.
“Evelina Galli redefined the meaning of
couture” during the Mercedes-Benz Show
Los Angeles Spring 2004, according to
fashionwindow.com. She presented only
12 designs there and was among a small
number of designers to bring haute couture
back to Los Angeles. Many fashion
critics were left in awe as they witnessed
her clothes on the runway.
Evelina’s unique journey to the runway
began at a very young age. Born
and raised in Yerevan, she always knew
what she wanted to be. “I didn’t have any
other choice” but to become a fashion
designer, she said. “I grew up in a family
of artists.” Her parents made printed
clothes and
created decorative
art
pieces. At 11,
she began
taking design
courses
after school.
She then
d e c i d e d
Evelina Galli adjusting one of her designs.
that she was ready to take her craft
more seriously.
As a young artist, at age 14, Evelina
began attending the best fashion design
school in Armenia, the prestigious Atex
Fashion Academy in Yerevan. Atex soon
turned into Evelina’s playground for
style experimentations.
“[Atex] was very strict, very professional.
I think that’s what really got me
started,” she said.
Within a year of entering Atex, Evelina
had her first collection ready to be showcased.
Her diploma collection, titled Flirting
in Springtime in Paris, was completed
in 1997. For this particular showcase,
Evelina began experimenting with higher-quality
materials such as silk. She used
pink and blue silk to create styles that
were reminiscent of 20s flapper girls.
“In Armenia, I didn’t have that many
resources, [and this] was to my advantage,”
Evelina said. “That pushes one to
be more creative.”
After graduating from Atex, Evelina
moved to New York City, where her
father was already residing.
“The plan was to go to the center
of fashion: Paris or New York,” she
said. “[But once I was there], I
thought, Los Angeles is so much
better, more fun, especially for
me to pursue my career.”
In Los Angeles, Evelina
continued her studies
at Otis College of Art
and Design. While there,
she won several fashion competitions
including the Rudy Genrick Award, the
Samsung Gold Medal (Seoul, Korea), and
the Onward Koshiyama Award (Tokyo,
Japan). To expand her resume, Evelina
also worked for major companies
such as Abercrombie & Fitch
and BCBG, to name a couple.
In 2002, Evelina launched
Absolutely Fabulous, Inc.,
which has two main
lines: Absolutely Fabulous
and Evelina Galli,
based in Los Angeles.
A year later, the
Evelina Galli line
was premiered at the
Mercedes-Benz Los
Angeles Fashion Week.
While most of the top
designers presented
laid-back lines including
T-shirts
and jeans, Evelina,
along with a couple
of other designers,
offered a smaller and
far more glamorous
collection. Overnight,
she became
a haute-couture
sensation.
Her designs are
one of a kind. She
primarily uses
silk to make her
shirts and dress-
es. In addition, all the silk clothes feature
delicately hand-painted prints. Evelina’s
mother, an artist in her own right, paints
on her daughter’s silk canvases, turning
each piece of clothing into a work of art.
At Evelina’s trunk show, I had the
pleasure of experiencing her designs
first-hand. Her line has vibrant colors,
and the prints are magical as they contrast
the silk beautifully.
Evelina’s recent line also includes dresses
and shirts knitted by Evelina’s mother
and grandmother. The collection displayed
at the trunk show included exuberantly
painted scarves – each, again, one of
a kind piece. Also, the collection has handmade
pillows that look too beautiful to be
classified as anything but works of art.
Evelina’s clothes are usually displayed at
trunk shows, as she prefers having full control
over the process of making and selling
each piece of article, created for “fabulous
people who go to fabulous parties.” f
connect:
evelinagalli.com
C8 Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture November 8, 2008

Brush strokes frozen in time
The art of Mary Zakarian
by Armina
Lamanna
During my interview with Mary Zakarian,
I was reminded of Francis Bacon’s words:
“I paint for myself. I don’t know how to do
anything else.”
A prolific painter of profound sensitivity
as well as an accomplished teacher, Zakarian
has depicted a wide array of subject
matter, with creations ranging from
complex emotional studies to reimaginings
of ancient Armenian architecture.
Zakarian’s family and its histories have
had a formative influence on the development
of her art. “My father [Movses
Zakarian] was a musician,” she reminisced.
“He played the zurna, the duduk,
and, later, the clarinet – when he came to
the States. He was excellent. We still have
recordings of him playing. Some of them
are at the Zoryan Institute.”
When asked if her mother, Areknaz,
was also an artist, Zakarian said, “Well,
we really don’t know. She was a witness
to a brutal massacre. Sometimes she
would pick up a pencil and do a little
drawing, but it never went anywhere.”
The massacre she referred to was the
murder of her mother’s first husband
and the horrific beheading of their two
children by the Turks during the Genocide.
Zakarian’s father, too, lost family
members – his first wife and four sons
– to the carnage. Movses and Areknaz
married a couple of years later.
“What inspires me to paint is my mother’s
sorrow,” Zakarian said. “She never
hugged or kissed us, because she witnessed
the murder of her [first] children. And I
didn’t know how to get close to my mother.
So I must’ve absorbed that pain and then
wanted to paint it. I painted heads all the
time. And I used my brush to caress her,
since I couldn’t do so in real life.”
Zakarian explained that she and her
three siblings eventually understood
why their mother refused to touch them.
“My father would play some music and
I would be painting in the next room,
then I’d hear my mom say that I didn’t
know what sorrow and tears were,” she
said, noting that those sorts of comments
added an element of morbidity to
her paintings. “The most precious painting
I have is that of my mother: the five
heads,” she said. “In the original painting
I had put myself in the middle, encased in
my mother’s sorrow. But later I removed
my head, because I thought that the five
heads told the story on their own.”
I had a difficult time getting Zakarian
to talk about her art in more detail. Susan
Jolley, her niece, who was with us during
the interview, provided this explanation:
“Mary’s art has always been a more eloquent
expression than her words – even
though now she is working on a book
about her life. My grandmother’s [Arek’s]
trauma became the driving narrative of
Woman with Candle.
The Clown.
Zakarian’s father.
the Zakarian family, even though it was
essentially an unspoken narrative. My
grandmother never spoke of the horrific
experiences she endured. We got bits and
pieces about her from other survivors. I
think that’s a really important point and
might explain the tormented expression
of my grandmother coming out again
and again in all of Mary’s portraits.”
Jolley added that Zakarian’s siblings
didn’t remember (or chose not to) their
mother’s emotional intensity. “They
would take exception to Mary’s depiction
of their mother – actually they
objected when Mary used to give lectures
on her art and the Genocide – but
Mary’s reality was very different from
theirs,” Jolley said. “She had a more
Zakarian’s mother.
Moghni.
conscious involvement in her mother’s
story. I think she probably has what one
might term the proverbial artistic temperament,
or at least a sensitivity to and
awareness of things most people learn
to ignore or filter out. That’s why I think
her art, at least her portraits, so closely
reflect the emotions of the massacre.”
In 1971, the artist opened the Zakarian
School of Art in Philadelphia. She taught
and inspired hundreds of students, many
of whom went on to study at prestigious
art colleges around the country. “You can’t
learn talent,” Zakarian said, referring to
her students. “Talent is God-given.” Three
years later, she visited Soviet Armenia and
painted it “top to bottom.” She returned
with 69 paintings, 47 of which she sold at a
single exhibition. In 1986, on the occasion
of the 100th Anniversary of the Statue
of Liberty, Zakarian was commissioned,
along with six other artists, to paint a representation
of the immigrant experience.
The painting she submitted, titled The
Face of Freedom, is featured on her website
(maryzakarian.com).
Today Zakarian is as ever prolific. “I
can’t stop painting,” she said. “I can put all
my joy and sorrow into my art. The brush
does everything for me.” And she added,
by way of offering a basic advice to aspiring
and practicing artists alike: “Give to
the world what God gave you to give!” f
connect:
maryzakarian.com
Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture November 8, 2008 C9

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Program Grid
10 – 16 November
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Monday TueSday WedneSday ThurSday Friday SaTurday
Bumerang
Armenian Wedding
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Movie
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Noraduz medieval cemetery
A khatchkar haven and
a place of ancient lore
by Nyree
Abrahamian
Noraduz is a medieval cemetery
with a huge collection of early
khatchkars (Armenian cross
stone carvings). Following the recent
destruction of khatchkars in
Julfa, Nakhichevan, by the Azerbaijani
government, Noraduz has
the largest surviving collection of
khatchkars both within the present-day
Republic of Armenia and
throughout historic Armenia. The
cemetery is located in the village of
Noraduz, in Gegharkunik province
near Lake Sevan.
Noraduz cemetery is spread
over a 17-acre field containing almost
1000 khatchkars, each with
unique ornamentation. The oldest
khatchkars in the cemetery
date back to the 10th century.
Many are from the 16th and 17th
centuries, when there was a revival
of the khatchkar tradition
under the Persian Safavid Empire,
with oriental influences seeping
into Armenian art. Each khatchkar
tombstone has a story. Several
of them are decorated with
intricately carved scenes depicting
weddings, farming, and life’s
happy occasions.
Today, the ancient khatchkars
of Nordauz are covered with moss
and lichen. A modern cemetery has
Noraduz Cemetery.
been built adjacent to the medieval
one, separated by a long fence. The
new tombstones have realistic portraits
of the deceased sandblasted
into the stone, but somehow, they
lack the spiritual aura surrounding
the mossy khatchkars from the
Middle Ages.
Cemetery turned
Battlefield?
There is a great deal of folklore surrounding
Noraduz Cemetery. According
to one popular tale, when
the army of Tamerlane invaded, the
villagers placed helmets on top of
the khatchkars and leaned swords
against them. From a distance, the
tombstones looked like strong,
sturdy armed soldiers, intimidating
Tamerlane and his army enough to
prompt their retreat.
Buried alive…
Another popular story is about the
19th century monk, Ter Karapet
Hovhanesi-Hovakimyan, who conducted
burial services at Noraduz.
When he was 90 years old, he asked
his fellow monks to bury him alive.
His last words were: “I do not fear
death… Never fear anything, but
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God alone. Let anyone who has fear
come to my burial stone and pour
water on it. Drink the water, and
wash your face, chest, arms and
legs. Then break the vessel that contained
the water. Fear will abandon
you.” To this day, people come to
Ter Karapet’s grave to perform this
ritual. f
C10 Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture November 8, 2008

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Mapping Armenian literature of the diaspora
n Continued from page C6
produces a sense of unease by disrupting
the authors’ hegemonic American
identity. In time, it becomes impossible
not to confront the “shadow” of being
Armenian, which ultimately ends up
being a confrontation with the Catastrophe.
For Michael Arlen, this turning
point arrives as a result of the death of
his father, who had survived 1915 but
hid his Armenianness for most of his
life. Random encounters with Armenians
in his community allow Arlen the
opportunity to obtain Armenian history
books and journey into the ancient
past. Arlen walks his readers through
his readings of these books, citing
them, summarizing them, and quoting
from them. Amidst the reading process,
he adopts feelings of nationalism, begins
to refer to Armenians in the collective
pronoun “we,” develops his curiosity,
and eventually takes a trip to
Armenia, the story of which makes up
the second half of the book. The sight
of the Armenian national symbol, Mt.
Ararat, which can be seen from the Armenian
capital of Yerevan but is found
on Turkish territory, prompts Arlen to
encounter Armenia’s more recent past,
hence the Catastrophe and its denial.
While in Armenia, Arlen begins to
read once again, this time picking up
books that deal with the Armenian
Question. In the latter part of his
book, Arlen recounts Ottoman history,
provides a character sketch of Sultan
Abdul-Hamid, who was responsible for
the massacres of 1895, and introduces
the regime of the Young Turks, citing
and quoting various sources very
much in the style of a research paper.
He presents himself as a sort of detective,
seeking to solve the “mystery” of
the past, the solution of which, according
to him, lies in the construction of a
coherent narrative of the murder of a
people. Upon arriving at the moment
of the Catastrophe, Arlen presents a
new set of sources that contributes
to the process of historicizing 1915.
Here, we read excerpts from German
eyewitness testimonies and first-hand
survivor accounts that allow Arlen to
understand the idea of being “hated
unto death” and thus enable him to
salvage the memory of his father, who
was marked by this hatred as a survivor
of the Catastrophe.
The turn toward discovery for Peter
Balakian is marked by the passing
of his grandmother, a survivor of
1915. Upon witnessing her traumatic
flashbacks and hallucinations on her
deathbed, Balakian claims it is his responsibility
to uncover the story of the
Catastrophe, which she had suppressed
throughout her life. He writes, “I realized
that she was my beloved witness,
and I the receiver of her story.” With
this, his search begins. First, Balakian
reproduces passages from the memoir
of Henry Morgenthau, who was the
American ambassador to the Ottoman
Empire and present during the siege of
Van in 1915. He then finds and reproduces,
photographically, a legal document
filed by his grandmother against
the Turkish government. Then he recounts
the survival story of her aunt
that explicitly narrates the victim’s experience
of the Catastrophe. And, finally,
he reproduces a petition that he
drafted, titled “Taking a Stand Against
the Turkish Government’s Denial of the
Armenian Genocide and Scholarly Cor-
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ruption in the Academy” and signed by
a number of distinguished writers and
scholars such as Susan Sontag and Arthur
Miller.
Toward the end of his memoir, Balakian
poses the question, “How is an Armenian
to live with the predicament of
Turkish denial? And how is one to heal?”
He offers “commemoration” as the answer
to these questions, for he claims
that it “publicly legitimizes the victim
culture’s grief.” Thus we can perhaps read
his memoir as a commemorative piece
that seeks to legitimize the victim’s grief
by informing an English-reading public
about the forgotten genocide.
By explicitly writing against denial,
Arlen’s and Balakian’s memoirs reinforce
the position of the Armenian as a
voiceless victim. I would like to propose
that literature, as an artistic medium,
can be seen as a site of mourning only
if it seeks to represent an experience of
catastrophe by demonstrating the paradox
intrinsic to the definition of catastrophe:
that of the need to represent
and mourn, coupled with the impossibility
to represent and the interdiction
of mourning. f
Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture November 8, 2008 C11

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C12 Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture November 8, 2008
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