CC BY
0DOI 10.24412/cl- 37222-2023-2-338-343
LEGEND AND REALITY IN VARDGES PETROSYAN'S FICTION
M. Sarinyan
Russian-Armenian (Slavonic) University Institute for Humanities manesarinyan@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
A myth presumes an unchangeable circulation of things and phenomena; reality demonstrates the transience of the substance. However, each moment of reality becomes a legend after a while and is passed on to generations as an archetypal reminiscence. In the syntagma of everyday events, the paradigm of recurrent masks and situations is disclosed. Albeit, the unique, typical nature of every situation and mask cannot be denied either. Every instance of life is transient, on the other hand, in every instance, perpetuity is encapsulated.
In most of Vardges Petrosyan's works the folkloric layer is an inseparable element of his style. Tales and legends are naturally incorporated into his fiction deepening the perception of reality and adding to the aesthetic integrity of his fiction.
Keywords: Vardges Petrosyan, folkloric layer, legend, reality, reminiscence.
Introduction
The mythical vision of reality perceives life in fusion with arche-situations and arche-events. What are the dimensions and distinctions of myth and reality? Myth implies permanence, whereas the real implies a permanent flux. In myth, time is static, in the reality, time flows and seeps. The mythical presumes an unchangeable circulation of things, while the real demonstrates the transience of the substance; however, each moment of reality becomes a legend or myth after a while and is passed on to generations as a time-honored reminiscence. The present becomes past, the real intertwines with the mythical merging with the ethnic memory.
In the sequence of everyday events, the paradigm of recurrent masks and situations is disclosed. However, the unique, typical nature of every situation and mask cannot be denied either. It bespeaks the dialectical unity of the temporal and eternal. Every instance of life is transient, on the other hand, in every instance, perpetuity is encapsulated.
The interest towards myth and mythical neither implies nor entails the re-emergence of prehistoric gods, demiurges, or folktale characters. It demonstrates the repetition of archetypical patterns, the reoccurrence and return of unchangeable states
and figures, as it is stated in the Scripture, "There's nothing new under the sun", "What has been will be again." The quote emphasizes the cyclic nature of human life, in the sense that human nature and the state of things have remained unaltered.
The aim of the article is to manifest the folkloric layers in Vardges Petrosyan's fiction. Myth-ritual critical methodology is applied in this analysis. Many of his works are interpolated with tales and legends that condense the wisdom of the nation. There are no composite structural elements framing his works. Everyday accounts are interpreted in the light of folklore. These elements of style expand the dimension of reality to a broader understanding of life. The juxtaposition of the real and folklore realia gives a deeper insight to his narrative.
Moreover, living in a tale breaks the stiffness of harsh reality. In the novel "The Last Teacher", Mamyan says to his pupils: "Do have tales. Your tales. Let part of you live in a tale".
These words have a conceptual implication in the writer's poetics. Though mostly employed as a stylistic device, tale becomes an integral part of his fiction reflecting the writer's aesthetic perception of life. His characters do not invent tales, they live in them. The combination of tale and reality has its vivid manifestation in such works as 'Why Flowers Die So Soon", "The Old Man Who Has Forgotten to Die", "Letters from Childhood Stations", in which the psychological states and emotional experiences of the characters are interpreted in the light of tale, and events are validated through moral truth encapsulated in lore.
The epigraph to the story "Why Flowers Die So Soon" hints on something unreal, and takes to a place where the events and narrative are cut off from reality, and step into a conventional paradigm. "These words are for a girl who knew nothing about my love. Or didn't believe that I loved her... These words have gathered under the earth and turned into a scream. Yes, under the earth. Are you surprised? Now I'll tell you how I died on a stuffy day, when the trees were rustling in our street."
The protagonist appears in three spatial dimensions: his earthly existence, his afterlife, and his flower-shape transformation, where he identifies himself with a flower.
"One day I saw the sky again, our cemetery was destroyed, and in its place, there was a garden, grass, and flowers. I was a flower. I looked around delightedly, hoping to find her and give the words that were hers. But she could be found nowhere, there were flowers around me, who I didn't know. I realized that I had been under the earth for a hundred years and, perhaps, she was a flower, grass or a handful of wheat God knows in what fields. I was ready to cross the Earth to find her, but I was merely a flower and died at once when I tried to pull my feet out of the soil. I died for the last time. And when I turned to dust again, I understood why flowers
died so soon. Once all flowers were human beings, who in quest of somebody came out of the earth and unable to find them, died soon, died for the last time."
According to a tale, the flowers could have grown side by side and continued the legend of their love. However, the story has a different ending: devastation caused by loss of the most precious ones in life is the main motif of the story. In the allegory of flowers, the author exposes the artistic intention of the story, where reality fuses with a legend.
"The Old Man that Has Forgotten to Die" is a fable-story. The main motif has features common with a tale. In order to gain notoriety, the main character burns houses, allegorically reflecting the idiosyncrasy that the old Greeks expressed in the legend about Herostratus.
In the story "Letters from Childhood Stations" V. Petrosyan chooses his favorite form of a tale narrative ("A small tale that can become an epigraph to this story"). The form becomes a style. Maintaining that the style is the writer himself, the form might be perceived as an element inseparable from the writer's entity. Looking back on the bygone days, childhood appears as a dream, as a tale. At the beginning of the novel, the writer devises a tale-plot that allegorically interprets the philosophical and artistic intent of the novel.
In an interview, John Updike noted that when man reminisces his past and childhood, his memories interweave with folk beliefs, legends and myths. In Petro-syan's novel, Hovik's childhood memories blend with the legend about the Karm-ravor, Spitakavor and Tsiranavor. It accounts of the tragic love story of the three sisters who fell in love with the same boy, Sargis. After letting out their secrets to each other, the elder sisters dressed up in white and purple, and flung themselves into the gorge from the top of a mountain. The youngest sister, who was dressed in red, died learning the news on the way to the gorge.
The sisters died on the same day, and three churches miraculously appeared overnight: the Tsiranavor (a church having a purple color), the Spitakavor (a church having a white color) and the Karmravor (a church having a red color). When Sargis became aware of the tragedy, he swore to stay away from females. He built a shack at the top of a mountain and spent the remaining years of his life there.
At first Hovik (the protagonist) did not capture the essence of the legend. Many years had passed before he could understand the morality of the folk memory. He realized that they had been brought up by certain ethical values, spiritual purity, and knightly devotion when "after the last school exam they gathered at the top of the Aklorakar, collected dry wood from the canyon, made a fire and after writing the names of their beloved girls on papers, burnt them. The girls, in their turn, wrote down the names of their beloved boys ... and burnt them. The papers turned into a
flame, then into ashes, and the wind blew them away, blending them with the waters of the River Kasakh; and it was good, "as two-three friends could have loved the same girl, as two-three girls could have loved one of us. There was something honest, tender and heathen in that ritual, and now I see that all these years the Tsira-navor, Spitakavor and Karmravor have lived in our fragile souls."
In the book "The Poetics of Myth", the literary critic Meletinsky writes that the terms "mythologism" and "mythmaking" have broadened their meaning and imply not only the presence of myth motifs and mythical realia in the narrative, but also allusions to literary heroes and personalities. Characters like Hamlet, Don Quixote, Faust and others appear as prefigurations in works of many writers. The literary critic calls them "mythical", because they have become generalized characters and served as "paradigms" for later literatures (MeneTHHCKHH, 1976:105).
In Petrosyan's poetics, along with folkloric parallels there are also literary analogues which symbolically interpret the idea of a literary work. For example, in the novel "Lived and Unlived Years", the tragic end of the two young people having committed suicide is paralleled to the love stories of Romeo and Juliet's, and Sos and Varditer's. There is another literary prefiguration in the novel "The Last Teacher", in which the "Manon Lesco" plot as an artistic allegory runs parallel to the events. Typologically Manon's character has affinities with one of the heroines, Mary Melikyan, who stripped off in the classroom raising the question of morality and decency. The writer does not denounce Mary but explains the episode from her perspective bringing personal and psychological reasons for her intentional and conscious deed.
In the novel "The Lonely Wall-Nut Tree", the writer discusses the question of the Armenian village of the 70s - 80s of the 20th century. People moved to towns and cities abandoning rural areas where for hundreds of years their ancestors had cultivated the land, created songs and tales. The problem is viewed from two perspectives: from Sahak Kamsarian's and his son Armen's, for whom the process is natural and justified.
The novel begins with the legend of a lonely wall-nut tree, the moral value of which serves as a guiding principle in evaluating and conceptualizing future events. It recounts that in olden times the mountain was adorned with flowers, and the wallnut tree was at the top of it. Both the flanks and the canyon were full of people. They used to listen to the old sage who dwelt on the tree. He told people wise and bitter things. By some miracle, he knew all their sins and faults, and people believed him. But the day came when they got tired of the truth and began to hate him seeking pleasure. The old man waited for them long and one day disappeared. Soon the villagers became bored with pleasure. They went back to the tree to listen to the old
man's wise advice. The mountain was covered in stones and thorns. The springs and flowers had perished. Only the majestic wall-nut tree stood there proudly. They called the old sage, but the tree did not respond. People fled panic-stricken. The canyon was abandoned, only the wall-nut tree and the legend about it remained.
The legend serves as an artistic analogue. The deserted gorge is paralleled to the abandoned village of Lernasar, and Sahak Kamsaryan is the old sage himself trying to establish an eternal truth. Naturally, the desolation of the mountainous old village brings to the loss of human values that were of ages old. Being a social one, the problem also acquires a moral significance.
However, Sahak Kamsaryan envisages the resurrection of the village Lernasar in the vision of the three blacksmiths, where the grandfather, son and grandson light up a fire in the forge again and awaken the world from the nightly drowsiness. In this ancient village, dreams, legends and reality intermingle. The nature of the village appears in an exotic palette, and the events reveal primordial authenticity and naturalness. The novel is characterized by the matter-of-fact inclusion of tale elements into the texture of the narrative.
To sum up, it can be stated that in most of Petrosyan's works the folkloric layer is an inseparable element of his style: tales and legends are naturally incorporated into his fiction, on the one hand, deepening the perception of reality by giving a larger dimension to the plot, and on the other hand, adding to the aesthetic integrity of his fiction.
REFERENCES
1. Мелетинский Е.М. Поэтика мифа. «Наука», М., 1976.
2. Далгат У.Б. Литература и фольклор. «Наука», М., 1981.
3. Аверинцев С. С. Притча. Литературный энциклопедический словарь, «Советская энциклопедия», М., 1987.
4. Померанцева Э.В. Сказка. Литературный энциклопедический словарь, «Советская энциклопедия», М., 1987.
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ЛЕГЕНДА И РЕАЛЬНОСТЬ В ТВОРЧЕСТВЕ ВАРДГЕСА ПЕТРОСЯНА
М.С. Саринян
Российско-Армянский (Славянский) университет Институт гуманитарных наук manesarinyan@gmail. com
АННОТАЦИЯ
Мифическое предполагает неизменный, вечный круговорот вещей и явлений; реальное демонстрирует их быстротечность; однако каждое мгновение реальности через некоторое время становится легендой и передается поколениям как архетипическое воспоминание. Так настоящее переплетается с прошлым, реальное с мифическим, сливаясь с этнической памятью.
В большинстве произведений Вардгеса Петросяна фольклорный пласт является неотъемлемым элементом его стиля. В его поэтике сказка и легенда органично входят в художественную структуру его произведений, переплетаясь с действительностью и углубляя эстетическое восприятие мира.
Ключевые слова: Вардгес Петросян, фольклорный пласт, легенда, реальность, память.
