“A HANDFUL OF ASH, A NATIVE HOME…”

(Excerpts from HRANT TAMRAZYAN’s “Siamanto” monograph)

Continued from the previous issue

Contemporaries, knowing the Siamanto family closely, left touching memories of the poet’s mother. “This old-fashioned primitive woman,” Arshak Chopanyan remembers, “was a conceivable example of an honest Armenian woman, and especially an Armenian mother, who had all the qualities of our people, without having any flaws in her.” The shrewd woman, from whom Siamanto inherited great mental wealth, did not believe in the loss of her son for a long time, waiting for years for the return of her beloved Atom. It is said that many years later, at a time of great agony, the mother inquired about her son, thinking that his lost son had returned and was waiting in another room. Who is in the room inside, the mother constantly asks, and that word is half-hearted …

After the heavy news of the loss, Mrs. Nazeni planted a mulberry tree in the yard of her house on Gayserlioglu Street in memory of her son. The years passed, every spring it grew greener and higher, it gave branches to the mulberry tree, but the lost child did not return home from afar. The mulberry tree bears fruit, the first fruit of remembrance is sweetened, and the mother is still waiting …

… Siamanto lived for the people, saw dawns and sufferings through suffering and blood, believed in the eternity of his homeland. The homeland of children who die with such a high consciousness and receive such honest earnings cannot disappear from the winds of centuries. This viable, living, creative, dreaming people will always carry with them their merit and name.

During the days of the Patriotic War, when the Armenian warriors were attacking the Germans, the ruthless enemy of our land, Siamanto’s military call “Blow, Caucasus” appeared on the front of the Armenian newspaper. “St. Mesrop” becomes especially close to the heart. When you go down from Nork and pass through the university district, see the flow of thousands of young people to the temples of thought, feel their strength and the health of their spirit, when you walk through the native fields, you can not help but remember the bright visions and thoughts of the poet.

There are generations thirsting for wisdom,

There are young brains waiting for the seed,

There are cities that will ride under the ruins in awe,

And the land is still there, loaded with pregnant luxuries,

A database of secret hope  flames …

Generations can not forget the poet who with his magnificent talent has sculpted the image of national suffering for centuries, to write the pain of the people and the strength of the people on clean newspapers.

When you think of the poet’s merits and fortunes, you inadvertently remember Oscar Wilde’s wise tale of the rose and the onion.

In the cold of winter, when nature is asleep, the young man, caught in the heavy anxieties of love, is looking for a red rose. The onion is shot with the young man’s pain, he sings his most delicate, tender, eternal love song on the dried rose bush all night, but the rose does not open. And the onion squeezes the thorn in the chest. The onion sings, the rose petals burn. As the wound grows, the thorn deepens in his chest. The rose opens with the song and blood of the onion. The owl dies to make the young man happy and his love is eternal. But the young man, rejected by love, throws away the rose, forgets the dead onion and love.

Isn’t he like the dying onion of Siamanto … In the cruel cold of our history he sang the songs of suffering and eternal love with his talent and blood, injecting the feeling of love for the homeland to the generations. He sang, the swords of evil squeezing his chest, he gave a young life for the dawn of his country.

But something in the fairy tale does not fit our story. Despite the evil and dry spirits, the roses opened with the blood of Siamanto, his wonderful poems were not thrown away. Armenian generations are not like the ungrateful student of Oscar Wilde, who at the very moment of donating onion blood found it convenient to think. “In fact, he is like most artists. Great mastery, not a drop of sincerity.” Our generation presses on its chest the roses grown with the blood of the heart of the great poet of the homeland. …