DIANA DER HOVANESSIAN: ‘I WRITE ALMOST EVERY DAY’
By Artsvi Bakhchinyan
December 27, 2011
Diana Der-Hovanessian, New England born poet, was twice a Fulbright
professor of American Poetry and is the author of more than 25 books
of poetry and translations. She has awards from the National Endowment
for the Arts, Poetry Society of America, PEN/Columbia Translation
Center, National Writers Union, Armenian Writers Union, Paterson
Poetry Center, Prairie Schooner, American Scholar, and the Armenian
Ministry of Culture.
Diana Der Hovanessian Among the several plays written by
Der-Hovanessian, two (The Secret of Survival and Growing Up Armenian)
were produced and in 1984 and 1985 traveled to many college campuses in
the 80s telling the Armenian story with poetry and music. After 1989,
The Secret of Survival with Michael Kermoyan and later with Vahan
Khanzadian was performed for earthquake relief benefits. She works
as a visiting poet and guest lecturer on American poetry, Armenian
poetry in translation, and the literature of human rights at various
universities in the U.S. and abroad. She serves as president of the
New England Poetry Club.
The following interview by Artsvi Bakhchinyan was conducted in the
poet’s home in Cambridge.
***
AB: This year, you added three new books to your publications. How
many does that make?
DDH: Fifteen of my own books and 10 volumes of translations.
AB: The new translations are compiled in Armenian Poetry of Our Time.
And the book starts with 20th-century greats such as Daniel Varoujan,
Siamanto, and Tekeyan, and goes on to young contemporary poets such as
Vahe Arsen. Do you think of translating as part of your own work? Do
you consider it an obligation? Or is it a way of being part of great
poetry you admire?
DDH: I’ll answer yes to all those questions. Translating isn’t as much
fun as creating something new. And, it has a lot of responsibilities
attached. But I started because there was no contemporary anthology of
Armenian poetry in English. Some individual poems had been translated
by past poets, even Henry Longfellow. But in 1896, working from
literal prose translations from Armenian scholars and friends, Alice
Stone Blackwell produced the first edition in English of Armenian
Poems. Then in 1917 for Near East Relief, and to call attention to
the murder of Armenian poets in 1915 and the genocide, she added more
poems and published another edition.
AB: Alice Stone Blackwell was a great friend of Armenians and a
humanist. But she was not a poet. Do you think her translations
hold up?
DDH: Of course, they are dated. She uses 18th- and 19th-century
phrases. For instance, she begins Bedros Tourian’s Little Lake:
“Why dost thou lie in hushed surprise, Thou little lonely mere?” It’s
too bad that Julia Ward Howe, who was also active (she was president
of the Friends of Armenia), did not do some of the poems. She was a
known poet.
AB: Alice Stone Blackwell’s book has long been out of print, I
believe. Was that why you started?
DDH: Before I had any book publications, but was publishing poetry
in journals and newspapers, a Bulgarian poet asked me to work with
him on an anthology of Bulgarian poetry. And I said, “No, I can’t do
that…when there isn’t a modern Armenian anthology.”
AB: And you began…
DDH: I started it with my father. We had already done a few
translations together. The first were for a concert the Boston Pops
was doing of Armenian sharagans for his friend, the conductor Rouben
Gregorian. And the second, for a lecture on Daniel Varoujan my hayrig
[father] was giving and wanted six poems in English for that program.
I was publishing poems already in those days…and when I saw how the
Varoujan turned out, I sent them to one of my editors who surprised
me by taking the whole batch.
AB: And that’s how you started?
DDH: No. Actually another editor of mine invited me to lunch and
said she was thinking of starting a page, at the Christian Science
Monitor, of international poems and wanted me to do some Armenian,
I told her I didn’t know Armenian that well. This was a long time
ago. And she looked at me, and said, “Well, you’re young. Learn it!” So
I did, I took every course offered at Harvard. And every course at
Boston University. But, also, I had lots of help. After my father’s
death many friends sent me poems, or read to me. And of course,
my students in Armenia would run around gathering books. And poets,
of course, would come to read to me. The only book I did all alone
was the volume of Derian. I did it with a dictionary and then had it
checked. The Koutchag, too. Strangely enough, I didn’t find Koutchag’s
dialect difficult. It sounded similar to the dialect my grandmother
had spoken to me. But Sayat Nova was hard. And most intimidating was
Narek, even though I worked from modern Armenian translations of the
old krapar (classical Armenian). For the first anthology, I did the
Narek with the help of Hayr Oshagan, a priest at Holy Trinity Church in
Cambridge. And for the book of Narek, translations were done with Tom
Samuelian… He would send a driver every morning with word-for-word
translations done by a priest when I was in Yerevan on a Fulbright.
And then when I returned to Boston the rest were sent by e-mail.
AB: How do you choose which poems to include in an anthology?
DDH: I think a translator often does a poem he wishes he could have
written himself. Or else it is a very important poem, pivotal in some
historic aspect, and must be done. For instance, I had to translate
Bedros Tourian for the first anthology because he was important
historically… He was the first to use vernacular Armenian and write
about personal themes.
AB: But you didn’t like Tourian?
DDH: No, although he was my mother’s favorite. He did have one great
poem, “Drdounch.” My rules for translating include three debts the
translator owes: 1) The translator owes the reader the poem the
original poet wrote. 2) The translator owes the original poet the
best possible version in the second language. The original poet’s
reputation is in his hands. 3) The translator owes the poem a vibrant
second life in the second language.
AB: You did a large volume of Charents with M. Margossian. And some
of those translations were used in a recent film made in Yerevan. Is
Charents one of your favorite poets?
DDH: Not when I started. During the five years I was translating
Charents, I would dream about him. We would have arguments in these
dreams. On my first trip to Armenia I was working on that book…and
met his daughters and spent a lot of time with Anahid.
AB: During another trip I took you to meet the late Regina Ghazaryan,
a friend of Charents’s who had buried some of his papers.
DDH: Oh yes, yes, yes. That was an unforgettable meeting. It
is important to meet people who personally know the authors you
translate. I hope they remember Regina in Armenia.
AB: One of your new books is Dancing at the Monastery. It has a lot
of prosy poems. Have you abandoned formal verse and rhyme?
DDH: No, my very newest manuscript has a larger share of sonnets and
villanelles, etc.
AB: But the brand new book, just out this month, from Cervana Barva
Press, NOW I SEE IT, is in shapes.
DDH: Actually those poems are just published, but were written a while
ago. My editor at Sheep Meadow Press would also take out any light
or humorous verse, any strange shapes. But in the last few books he
allowed sections of light verse. By the way, I’m a great admirer of
Charents’s light and satiric verses. I enjoyed translating those.
AB: And you didn’t have dreams then about arguing with him about those?
DDH: (Laughs) No! But to get back to the shaped poems, in the 16th
century, English poet George Herbert did some religious poems in the
shapes of altars and wings, and more recently in the 50s in Brazil
and Germany some artists were combining strewn words on posters and
art and calling the movement Concrete Poetry.
AB: Tell me a little bit about your writing habits. Do you write
every day? Do you rewrite? Do you keep old versions? You did a recent
program with an American poet, X.J. Kennedy, titled, “Where Does a
Poem Come from?” Did you two decide where poems come from?
DDH: We decided, of course, that they come from poets. And they come
to poets from the most unexpected places: a news item, a remembered
conversation, someone else’s poem you wish to answer, a dream. A lot
of poems used to come to me when I was half-asleep and I would get up
to write them down. Now…I just ignore them. But I do write almost
every day…mostly rewriting. And I throw most of it away or my house
would be filled with paper. Even more than now! I do write on paper
first. Then type it into the computer and keep changing it. What takes
up most of my time is the New England Poetry Club: planning programs,
finding judges for contests, introducing speakers, answering mail. I
am hoping to retire from it soon. We have a good vice-president.
AB: Well I hope the Varoujan Prize and programs on translations that
you started will continue.
DDH: I hope so, too.
AB: I have one last question. I think you have often been asked, Have
you thought of writing a memoir? After all, you have known and worked
with some of the biggest names, not only in Armenian poetry but world
poetry: Andrey Voznesensky, Bella Akhmadulina, Tomas Tranströmer,
Yevgeni Yevtushenko, CzesÅ~Baw MiÅ~Bosz, Seamus Heaney.
DDH: (Laughs) Mmm.
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2011/12/27/diana-der-hovanessian-i-write-almost-every-day/