RETELLING DAVID OF SASSOUN: AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID KHERDIAN
By Aris Janigian // February 12, 2014
In Fresno, where I grew up just a couple of blocks down from William
Saroyan’s childhood home, there was a sculptor named Varaz. His studio
was near my house, and once in a while I’d pass by and see him pounding
and chiseling away at one of his many wild and wonderful large-scale
pieces. During the summer he’d work in his shorts and shoes, his bare
chest and legs glistening with sweat. Then one day, my parents said
that Varaz had sculpted something important, that they had given it
a prominent place near Fresno City Hall, and that we should go see it.
The cover of ‘David of Sassoun’
The bronze sculpture was huge and powerful: David of Sassoun rears
back on a horse readying for a charge. His sword is drawn and his huge
eyes are full of fire and resolve. I asked my parents, “Who is David
of Sassoun?” And they said, “Our greatest folk hero.” Tell me more!
They looked at each other and laughed uneasily. Something like,
“He lived a long time ago and defeated our enemies,” was about all
that my father could give me.
As I grew older, I was surprised to discover that although nearly every
Armenian knew of David of Sassoun, hardly any could say much more than
what my father had told me. Sometime during my 20s, I stumbled upon
The Daredevils of Sassoun by Leon Surmelian. As I turned the pages,
my delight at having finally discovered the story quickly petered
out. The words were there, but the thrill of the story seemed to
have leached away in translation. I had a very similar reaction to
Mischa Kudian’s Saga of Sassoun, and though I enjoyed Tolegian’s
version of the tale, especially his attempt to capture the rhyming
patterns of the original, the story stumbled until it ultimately
fell apart. I might have turned to Shalian’s definitive translation,
except the length and the scholarly nature of the production daunted
me. I wanted to enjoy the tale, not use it in a dissertation.
Although I’d admired David Kherdian for many years [Kherdian is
perhaps most known by Armenians for his The Road from Home: A True
Story of Courage, Survival, and Hope], I was frankly doubtful that
his version could do much more than any of the others. The reason the
writer/translators hadn’t been able to make David into a compelling
story–I had concluded–was because it was actually a kind of mosaic of
stories with many missing pieces, and to artfully arrange those stories
together into a unified picture, even for a writer as accomplished
as Kherdian, would be nearly impossible. But as I began reading his
book, I felt the sense of adventure and playfulness and wonder that
I’d always hoped to find in this tale. For the first time, David came
to life for me, and, as it turned out, in a way that did not really
match Varaz’s sculpture.
Kherdian’s David was powerful and courageous, yes, but he also
possessed the all too human flaws that the gods and demigods usually
possess. Varaz’s statue embodied the fantasy hero inside of every
Armenian, the Savior that might have repelled the savagery that befell
them during the genocide, but this David had a sense of humor, was
a victim of temptation, and suffered from poor judgment; this David
actually embodied the realities of Armenians through their long and
tumultuous history at the crossroads of civilizations, a reality that
they continue to face to this day. What makes epics great is that
they seem to be borne outside of time altogether, personifying the
essence of a people if not the essence of humanity–and Kherdian’s
David of Sassoun does just that.
I conducted the following interview with Kherdian via e-mail exchanges
over a period of a week.
***
Aris Janigian: What inspired you to do this book?
David Kherdian: I don’t know that there was a moment of inspiration
as such, as there was theknowing that a retelling was possible. This
happened while I was reading Shalian’s word-for-word translation. I had
already tried the Surmelian and Kudian translations, which I found not
only worthless as writing, but after reading Shalian, I saw that they
were totally false as translations of the original. But it was only
after I got into the Shalian that it occurred to me–like a shot–that
I could bring this tale to life, and do it brilliantly, even better
than my retelling of the Asian classic, Monkey: A Journey to the West,
because it was Armenian and I had it all in me: the sensibility, the
psychology, the humor, the pathos and bathos, the sentiment and sorrow,
and the need, even if tragic, of delivering it to a higher truth.
Kherdian
AJ: How long did it take? What was the process like?
DK: I began the writing in early 2012, and I’m guessing it took from
six to eight months to complete the first draft. I spent the next two
years re-writing, revising, reshaping, and polishing the manuscript.
My original intention was to drop the concluding tale, “Mher’s Door,”
for the same reason, I realize now, as the writers in Armenia,
because the harshness of the last tale, which denotes the end of a
civilization, was something almost no one was willing to face. And
so idealized versions were presented, at the expense of facing its
actual truth–that ends and beginnings cannot be separated. This
misunderstanding then accounts for my own struggles with David, as
well as the reasons for its obscurity. I seem to be the first, or
possibly only the second writer, who wanted to decipher what it was
the originator of this tale was saying to the world. As I explained
in my previous answer, its meaning can only be found in the epic’s
purpose, which might not necessarily be in its direct service of the
people, but as an explanation as to the evolution of the planet, of
which we are a part, which in turn places us correctly in scale and
value: that the planet is not here for us, but that we are here for
the planet, in ways that as yet we do not understand. If I am right,
then David of Sassoun is an objective work of art, as I believe the
other existing epics are. It is through our deciphering of these
works that our own consciousness can grow.
AJ: The cover of the book reads, “David of Sassoun: Retold by David
Kherdian.” Can you tell us what you mean by “re-telling?”
DK: When you change languages, you are automatically doing a retelling
because everything has to move at once: syntax, metaphors, similes,
expressions, figures of speech. And so the dialogue is altogether
new, as are the descriptions of sights, scenes, people, etc., and
not only new but different, because all of it must become natural in
the language you are working in. There are times when you can make an
almost literal translation of a figure of speech, for example, and make
it as poignant as the original, where it feels literally translated,
yet is just as strong as the original (as in, “horruh eengav,” or
“fell into the hole,” meaning “completely failed,” to “don’t fall in
the hole,” as the maireg says to the two travelers; the reader knows
it is a translation, because of the quirkiness of the English, and so
the figure of speech is retained along with the humor of the original).
There are many times in the straight narrative of the original where
the psychological underpinnings, as well as the philosophy, were simply
absent, so these had to be applied. The moral of the story can’t be
provided alone by the actions; the tale-teller must inject these in
order to keep himself connected to the reader. This has to be done
with great delicacy, and this is the art of story telling. When and
how to do what. In the end it must not read like a translation, which
means that the teller must become its author, not its translator. For
example, I had to rewrite the first genealogical tale of Sanasar
and Baghdasar three or four times before it became my story. Nonny,
my wife, would read the early versions and pronounce loudly, “It’s
not you! It’s not you!” Until one day (because I couldn’t always tell
myself) she announced, “You’ve got it, now it’s yours.”
AJ: The story occurs in four parts, each building on the last. In
some ways, it could be the story of the birth and decline of any
civilization, but there is definitely something “Armenian” about it,
a particular cultural sensibility that you capture in your re-telling.
DK: With Armenians there is always this feeling, axiomatic in their
makeup, that they have been wronged, that they are too good for this
world, and should be exempt from its worst nightmares, simply because
they are who they are and therefore stand above the fray–and yet
again and again they find themselves caught up in it and, being small,
are overrun time after time.
The superhuman giants of Sassoun have their own laws and codes and
badge of honor, and never get mixed into the politics that nevertheless
engage them, and although they win battle after battle, they do not
collect the grapes of wrath because they stand above the world that
they find themselves living in. They remain psychologically detached
in their ideal world, but must enter and even invade the world of
their enemies, which they disdain and repeatedly destroy, each time
they are challenged by them.
In short, they are beautiful dreamers, whose ideals can only be
preserved by extraordinary means, by being sterling, undefeatable
giants. But in the end they succumb to the earthly, human seductions
from which they are finally not exempt. Thus they pay for their sins
in isolation, because they have no place in the ordinary world.
Armenians have always sustained themselves with humor and disdain for
the absurdities of life, which only humor can leaven, finding comfort
in ideals, while preserving their sorrows in music that strains to
find peace in beauty, however agonizing–that yearns for understanding
from a world within reach but out of touch.
AJ: There is also a sense in this masterpiece that civilization itself
is a burden. The giants would always rather be hunting and scouting
through the forests. Outside of their total devotion to their mothers,
even women don’t seem to interest them much, and when they finally
get around to them, they treat them badly or get treated by them badly.
DK: Would a giant not carry an extra burden of discomfort, along with
the expectation that, being bigger, they should know or do more than a
normal human being? Most men would prefer hunting and scouting as boys
to shooting and killing other human beings. The transference is put
on them; hunting and scouting they chose for themselves. I suppose
women were included in that transference they were dragged into;
most men remain boys into young manhood, so in that sense I do not
find them unusual, and Armenians have always kicked at civilization.
AJ: This is a fascinating observation. In the book, time and again,
all the Armenians want is to build a society where they can live
peacefully and honorably. And just because of that, it sometimes
seems, foreign kings are keen to cause them trouble. Does this dynamic
describe the inner life of the Armenian people even today?
DK: In the sense of being dispossessed I would say it is true. Any
people without a country, or one that has been lost to them for so
long, as well as lost to itself, I think does something to the psyche.
I remember as a little boy arguing with other little boys in the
neighborhood about God’s nationality, with their concluding that
God did not have a nationality, but I decided in silence that if God
was my father he must then be Armenian. In time I gave up this idea,
but the estrangement I felt that night has never left me, and I have
never had a sense that I could call any nation mine. I believe most
Armenians outside of the Homeland feel this way. The scorn that was
directed at me as a child by the established order only deepened this
feeling. Hence, I have worked to become invincible.
AJ: There are so many attributes possessed by David and his forefathers
that characterize Armenians even to this day. I’m particularly struck
by his oversized generosity, which seems to me to be an Armenian
trait. On more than one occasion, he announces his presence to his
adversaries, so that they will not later claim that he “came like a
thief in the night.” One wonders whether these traits are part of
our so-called “genetic code.” Is there a lesson we can learn from
this reality if it is in fact so?
DK: To be an underdog aligns one with others who have suffered,
which accounts for the compassion many Armenians feel in the face
of injustice, the sufferings of others. By offering a hand up,
we assuage some of our own pain, while also placing ourselves on the
right side of the equation. This natural sympathy comes not only from
our own experience but from racial memory. Most Armenians have this to
one degree or another. We can also become obsessed with the idea of
fairness, addressing past hurts with a countering action that says,
“This is how it should be,” which can lift us out of a posture of
inferiority into one of superiority, but this can also lead to acts
of hubris, as we have seen time and again in this epic. However,
when this action is right and comes from a clean heart, we move from
selfishness and self-serving, to one of simple honor–then the very
order of life moves onto a different scale. The giants codify this
change by announcing to the adversary that they are going to attack,
to make themselves ready. By leveling the playing field, they are
effectively rewriting their own history, not only with righteous
victories, but by offering instant pardons to the vanquished, freeing
them of guilt and humiliation. There are variations on these actions
throughout the epic.
AJ: This makes me think how different David is from the heroes
in the ancient epics, including the Greek epics, whose heroes were
“raised” so to speak in the pre-Christian era. David possessed a kind
of chivalry consistent with early middle-age norms of conduct for
heroes and warriors. He is innocent at heart and yet a consummate
killer. He does not pick fights, but is courageous to a fault when
demanded. He conducts himself with honor at home, and yet struggles
with temptation abroad.
DK: How can it be that as old as we are we have remained naive?
Because we are innocent at heart, uncomplicated, like children
who refuse to grow beyond their games into harsh reality, with its
humorless edicts, presumptive conduct, and learned behavior–but
remain, partially hidden in a corner, making faces at the adults with
their fancy dress and ideas, their rules and regulations.
Gurdjieff, the spiritual teacher, said the entire cause of our misery,
of our fall from grace, was our “educations”–the way we were taught to
lie, to pose, to pretend, to envy, to betray, and hide behind authority
figures, ad infinitum–which is the “civilization,” so called, that
controls us. Is there no way out of this, excepting perhaps on the
back of a magical horse, transcendent of the beliefs of man with
a power that is outside of theirs, a power that does not fear the
extraterrestrial, and is able to enter the domain of the supernatural,
that children trust, the way they cannot trust the laws of man–that
Way, which tests bravery over fears, challenges us in our faith,
our hope, our love–that which is truly sacred in us, that we can
only enter as a child…the myth now enters the Christian era.
AJ: I asked you what I hoped would take us into the historical aspects
of the tale, particularly the chivalric medieval world view that I
suspect shaped the sensibility of the narrator(s) and construction
of the characters, but you chose to answer it with a poetic philosophy.
This poetic worldview, I think, is your unique contribution to this
tale and allows you to re-tell David of Sassoun with such artistry. In
the past, when this story was told in English, the “translator” either
treated it as an historical text, which made it uninteresting to all
but a handful of academics, or hadn’t the poetic power or prowess to
unlock its magic, which made the tale unwieldy and uninspired.
DK: I have to confess that history never interested me, but it wasn’t
until I wrote The Road From Home that I realized why: History was
telling the story of everything everywhere, or all of it outside
of time, with the larger lens turned on themselves, that is, the
historian at his dais–instead of on the storyteller, going down
onto the ravished field, hoisting one casualty onto a stretcher,
taking that person to the sidelines and asking to hear their story:
What happened and how and, if you know, what was the reason, and what
are you thinking right now, and where can you/we go from here?
That’s the person I want to meet, not what the general did that the
politicians arranged under instructions from the power-possessors, that
evil cadre that will always be with us–with the academics following
after to professionalize. They are still producing books from talks
and lectures and conferences on David of Sassoun; I got a new one in
the mail just yesterday, and they are still at that old occupation
of five against one. Leafing through this tome, I was shocked to
learn that all these people seem to know or are interested in is
how things got assembled, dissembled, re-assembled, and forgotten,
to be re-remembered, ad infinitum. I was shocked to learn that the
genealogical tales that make up this epic were published in different
combinations, some singly, and then in various combinations, but only
in one instance were the four tales collected into a single volume,
which is the unadulterated epic itself. This worked out beautifully
for these academics, who would never have to answer the question:
What does this epic mean?
Fortunately, Artin Shalian, also an academician, performed a
word-for-word translation of the complete epic. Just think what might
have happened if they came to an actual realization–that this epic
was about the rise and fall of a civilization. When I asked the editor
of this latest volume if there was a consensus by them of the epic’s
actual meaning and value to humanity, to the Earth, and finally the
planet, he had nothing to say.
Aris Janigian is author of three novels, Bloodvine, Riverbig, and This
Angelic Land, and co-author, along with April Greiman, of Something
for Nothing.
David of Sassoun: An Armenian Epic Retold by David Kherdian (Tavnon
Books, Jan. 1, 2014; illustrator: Nonny Hogrogian) can be purchased on
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2014/02/12/retelling-david-of-sassoun-an-interview-with-david-kherdian/
http://www.amazon.com/David-Sassoun-Armenian-Retold-Kherdian/dp/0985134607.