I Have Spent My Life With The Characters And There Was No Time To Cr

I HAVE SPENT MY LIFE WITH THE CHARACTERS AND THERE WAS NO TIME TO CRY: “THE BOOK OF WHISPERS” ABOUT THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CONTINUES ITS TRIUMPHAL MARCH

09:46, 21 November, 2012

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. Varujan Vosganian’s grandfather’s
words, which served as a preface for his renowned “the Book of
Whispers” sound like this: “Not what who we are was distinctive for us,
but upon what deceased we were mourning.” The Mankind must not only
be conscious of the sufferings of our nation, but it also must show
all due submission towards our sufferings. The author is confident
that the memory of the Armenian people is not in the past, but they
live with us. In a conversation with “Armenpress” the Chairman of
the Armenian Union of Romania and author Varujan Vosganian stated:
“Our deceased ancestors live with us, especially when the majority
of them did not find even a grave under the heaven. For us the past
is not something to forget about, it’s present. As to the forgetting
it equals to suicide.”

On a question what it was that compelled him to write a book about
the Identity of the Armenian people, their fate and the biggest
crime of the Ottoman Turks – the Armenian Genocide, Varujan Vosganian
answered and said that he had been writing the book not in a single
period of his life, but during its whole course. Vosganian noted:
“I was carrying all those stories from my childhood with me during my
whole life and one day I decided that they must be written down and
live the life of their own. To tell about them was a unique necessity
and obligation for me, as there are some events, which would not be
known to the world, if not this book.” Varujan Vosganian told us a
story to prove what he said. When the ceremony of the presentation
of the book in the Library after Jorge Luis Borges in Argentina was
over an old man stood up and started crying. He said that his father
died in Siberia and in his opinion there was nobody who knew anything
about his father. Varujan Vosganian said: “I never feared death, but
when I started writing the book, I was afraid of dying and leaving
it unfinished. This was a personal question for me; I had to save
this all staff.” In addition he advised not to underestimate the
power of culture. There are cases when it becomes much stronger,
than what is enclosed in the history textbooks.

Varujan Vosganian is the Deputy Chairman of the Writer’s Union
of Romania and Senator. His book has already been translated into
Armenian, Italian, Spanish and Hebrew. Next year it will be introduced
in French, German, Swedish, Bulgarian, Russian, and Arabian. The
novel has been recognized as the best literary work in Romania and
won the main prize of the Romanian Academy. It is also listed among
the top five bestsellers in Columbia.

The interview by Arusik Zakharyan

Photos by Arevik Grigoryan