Book Review: Working through the Past to Embrace the Future
Arts | August 16, 2012
10:53 am
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The Armenian Genocide in Literature: Perceptions of Those Who Lived
Through the Calamity, by Rubina Peroomian, Armenian Genocide
Museum-Institute, 2012.
By Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
Reading Rubina Peroomian’s new book is not easy, nor is it pleasant. But
it
is necessary, and highly rewarding. This, her third volume on the subject,
deals with the reflections in literature of the Armenian Genocide.
Her first book on the theme was Literary Responses to Catastrophe: A
Comparison of the Armenian and the Jewish Experience (1993) and the second
was And Those Who Continued Living in Turkey after 1915: The Metamorphosis
of the Post-Genocide Armenian Identity as Reflected in Artistic
Literature(2008, just republished with a fore- word by Richard
Hovannisian).
Her aim is not to prove that the Genocide occurred; that has already been
documented by historians. Rather, her powerful work, which she
characterizes as `an outcry against man’s inhumanity to man’ (p. 14), aims
to `expose the human dimension of the crime’ (p. xv) and, in so doing,
to
help second- and third-generation Armenians deal psychologically with the
trau- ma passed down to them from their forefathers. She includes herself
most directly in this category. At the tender age of 6, she suffered the
loss of her father, a chemistry teacher in Tabriz, who was whisked away one
night by the Soviet People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) as
a
leader of the Armenian nationalist opposition. It was that experience which
contributed to her decision to learn about the tragedy that had struck the
Armenian people. And reading through the voluminous literature was a
painful experience, which left its mark on her psyche.
`I want to believe,’ she writes, `that the result that I will produce with
my work will cure me of my psychological tumult. I pray for a swift
recovery, that is the soon-to-come completion of my work’ (p. 16).
Why literature? one might ask. The author explains that she chose this
focus `because I believe literary art to be the form of cultural
representation that provides the place where the making and remaking of the
relationship of the self and the social can be recognized’ (p. 2). It is
her hope that, in completing her task with an upcoming volume, she will
achieve her `life- long endeavor to shed light on this unspeakable and
unforgettable collective trauma that is transformed into the struggle to
confront the past, to liberate the generations of survivors of their
debilitating victim psychology, and to sur- vive as a proud,
forward-looking, and free nation’ (p. 6).
As she examines the novels, poetry and memoirs and tells us about their
authors, she is also sketching a history of the Armenian experience. Thus,
in dealing with the legacy of the first generation, she shows how,
following the Hamidian massacres of 1894-96, the 1908 Young Turk revolution
generated hope in possible cohabitation, only to be dashed by the 1909
Adana mas- sacres. After hitting a `dead end,’ that hope turned into a
response articulated in the `language of violence.’
When, in 1915, the unthinkable occurred, it signified for Armenians the
loss of their home- land, which even the brief episode of Armenian
independence could not recover; and the trans- formation into a Soviet
republic only finalized the loss by erecting an iron curtain between
Armenians living there and those who had found refuge abroad. The central
theme dominating the literature thereafter was the question of national and
ethnic identity: how should Armenians preserve their identity? How should
they deal with the pressures of assimilation? In this context, Peroomian
highlights the role played by Hairenik (founded in 1922) and other
publications in keeping the memory of the homeland alive.
Especially in the 1920s and 1930s, Hairenik educated the new generation
about its past by issuing biographies and memoirs. Among the authors of
such writing were, in addition to established names from before 1915 and
the later `orphans of the desert,’ also ordinary people who simply wrote
down their recollections. This literature of the survivors, which described
the atrocities often in brutal detail, raised the fundamental question,
`why?’ – why had it occurred? The literary responses include concentration
on the perpetrator, often characterized as `the Turk,’ and, understandably,
also the search for a violent reaction. Armed resistance appeared as a
means of wreaking vengeance, or, as in the works of Shahan Natalie, as an
attempt to restore the nation’s honor.
One of the most painful responses encountered in the works of Natalie and
also Vahan Tekeyan, for example, is the existential despair of the victim,
who even goes so far as to doubt the existence of God, or who challenges
God for having permitted such injustice. Alternatively, the victim may turn
despair inward and even blame himself. Summarizing the spectrum of
psychological reactions, Peroomian writes, `In their futile search for an
answer or for the meaning of what happened, they turned to God,
prayed, catechized, anatomized, defied and expressed doubt in His oneness
or even His very existence. These writers became introspective, seeking the
source of the calamity in the Armenian psyche whose flaws and weaknesses
they pinpointed as they internalized the tragedy. In a state of utter
frustration, they preached vengeance’ (p. 75).
Turning to the `orphan generation,’ the author reviews the abundant
accounts left by those robbed of their families in the Genocide; these are
the street children in Damascus, reduced to filthy beggars, or the little
ones fortunate enough to be housed in primitive conditions in the
orphanages of Aleppo or Constantinople. Again, Peroomian delves into the
psychological dimension of the tragedy. In the autobiographical work of
Musegh Ishkhan, who was orphaned twice, at the ages of 1 and 5, Peroomian
identifies the victim’s apparent detachment from horrifying events. The
memory of those traumatic experiences however returns in nightmares, in
what psychologists call `hypermnesia.’ Another psychological phenomenon
observed in victims who had experienced the trauma of losing their mother
is the `separation anxiety disorder’ (p. 132), whereby the victim
experiences profound fears of separation from loved ones. In the literary
response, such emotions are expressed in the yearning for the lost homeland
or for the mother.
This generation of writers also related how their despair could lead to
total psychological breakdown, self-destructive tendencies and the
annihilation of the moral order, as in the works of Vazgan Shushanian. `The
Turkish atrocity did not end with the destruction and murder alone,’ she
writes; `it completely subverted the survivors’ world of moral order and
robbed them of their ability to conduct normal human relationships’ (pp.
170-171). Thus, Shushanian took up the theme of incest, while he and others
also treated unconventional brother-sister relationships. Often men who had
suffered the humiliation of deportation and witnessed the rapes and murders
of female relatives tended to view all women as `sisters.’ As for the
identity dilemma, the `orphan generation’ of writers offered two different
approaches: either assimilation or a flight into the past.
In her third chapter Peroomian considers in detail the plethora of personal
memoirs produced over the past 30 years, the `stories of blood and tears’
(p. 232). The 12 authors she considers in depth were motivated often by a
sense of duty to set the record straight; John Minassian, for example, had
been told by targeted Armenians that, if he survived, he had an `obligation
to tell the whole world how it happened and why=85.’ (p. 243). Others, like
Dirouhi Kouymjian and Bertha (Berjouhi) Nakshian K’etchian, were urged by
their children to record their experiences.
Often their children were engaged in the second generation’s efforts to
fight denial and the survivors thus saw their eyewitness testimonies as an
effective tool in that effort. A few survivors, like Hrant Sarian, had even
kept diaries which only decades later appeared in print. Significantly, it
was the act of putting their recollections into words on a page that served
a quasi-therapeutic function, `exorcising the trau- ma’ (p. 336). Many
survivors carried the burden of guilt and shame in their hearts in total
silence for the rest of their lives, guilt for having had to leave behind a
family member, or for having been forced to submit to humiliations they
would never ever reveal. Typical of such per- sonal recollections are
descriptions of the home town in the Old Country and of the extended family
members. Then come the accounts of the slaughter: how the men were taken
away and killed, how the deportation orders came, how townspeople were
herded like cattle into the death marches, how women in despair chose
suicide rather than slavery while others were
abducted, how women clinging to the bodies of their starved children went
insane and so on. All the stories are different, yet they all bear
similarities and Peroomian points out that `these commonalities testify to
the truth of the Genocide’ (p. 330). Furthermore, the detailed descriptions
of the Armenian homeland prior to 1915 provide precious testimony to the
extensive civilian infrastructure of Armenian communities, with schools,
churches, agricultural and industrial activity.
The `happy ending’ – if one can dare to call it that – appeared for the few
lucky ones in the form of survival, considered a `miracle,’ and migration
to America, which they experienced as `a dream come true.’ In these
stories, the figure of `the good Turk’ may appear, the discreet individual
who intervened despite all odds and perceivable danger to save Armenians.
In her final remarks, `in lieu of a conclusion,’ the author speaks with
bold candor of her own experience with the subject.
`I tried to study the Armenian literature of atrocity,’ she writes, `as
much as I could, to read as many stories as my nerves could tolerate. No,
it is not easy to read these stories. These macabre scenes of cold-blooded
murder and rape, starving children and unspeakable orgies of Turkish
officers feasting on Armenian maidens, can leave the reader depressed and
bewildered for a long time’ (p. 394).
Although her readers encounter the stories at a certain distance, so to
speak once removed from the totality of the narratives, still the emotional
and psychological impact is weighty. It is, as I said at the onset, not
easy nor pleasant to read this book. Yet it is extremely important as a
means of liberation, and therein lies the reward. It is not only a personal
experience, but also a political message. As Peroomian redefines it, `I see
this literature, responses to the Armenian Genocide, as a monument erected
to the memory of that Genocide, to the Armenian aspiration to become a
nation again, not a nation of victims but one with a tragic past that has
been acknowledged and duly redressed. That is the way to resolve the burden
of the past in order to make national survival and perpetuation possible’
(pp. 394-395).
We can only be grateful to Peroomian for having assumed the painful task
and the burden of working through the extensive literature of atrocity and
facing the emotional and psychological challenge it represents. She has
succeeded in mediating the struggle of Armenian authors to deal with the
Genocide, and in transmitting the substance and tenor of their struggle,
with courage, honesty and that special quality of insight accessible only
to those who have engaged in the same struggle on a personal level. Thus,
in completing her book, the reader is neither depressed nor overwhelmed,
but, on the contrary, experiences a certain sense of therapeutic relief,
and hope in the future.
(Muriel Mirak-Weissbach is the author of Through the Wall of Fire: Armenia
– Iraq – Palestine: From Wrath to Reconciliation, 2009, and Madness at
the Helm: Pathology and Politics in the Arab Spring, 2012. She can be
reached at [email protected] and )
www.mirak-weissbach.de.