It was about a year ago I started my search for the Armenian Sonnet. It was a description of the work of Vahan Tekeyan (1879-45) by Diana Der-Hivanessian, poet and translator, in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics: "… his painstakingly honed sonnets have earned him a reputation as a visionary" (page 100) along with a translation of "We Shall Say to God" (1917).
The thought that moved me was less to do with Tekeyan's work, and more with the basic question: "What makes an Armenian Sonnet different from all other sonnets?" Is it simply written in the language, and thus Armenian? Had it something to do with the ending of Armenian words and thus followed a different beat or rhyme pattern than the sonnets I knew? The more research I did, the less I learned. I e-mailed Armenian Literary professors at the University of Michigan, Fresno State, Stanford and UCLA. I learned nothing more than a little chiding for my use of the Armenian phrase, "bari luis" (բարի լուս); literally, "good light." I was told in no uncertain terms that it never goes at the end of a letter, always the beginning; this coming from a doctoral professor.
This got me thinking about my time spent in Armenia, from 1995 to 1997, as a Peace Corps Volunteer. It is strange how memories will trigger certain things. I worked in an orphanage for mentally and handicapped babies and witnessed many of them die due to a lack of medicine and proper care and I went insane. Literally.
But that was almost ten years ago. I have Bach's "Die Kunst der Fuge (Art of the Fugue)" on the CD player. A mug of hot chocolate is by my elbow. Life is still good. Still, in a letter I sent to a friend today, I wrote down as many memories as I could find:
Peace Corps can Medi-Vac (Medical Evacuation for short) a Volunteer if the regional medical services are not up to modern standards — in other words, getting sent to Washington DC for a week so you can get root canal is a lot more fun than normal. In Peace Corps slang, the Psycho Vac was the Medi Vac for Volunteers suffering under great emotional distress and unable to function at their jobs. Three days before my 27th birthday our Peace Corps doctor came for me and asked if I wanted to be sent home for a while to de-thaw and reassess my situation. You see, somewhere in the second year of my tour of duty I had broken down and was so miserable I didn't even know I was in pain.
It was the day one of the nurses I worked with showed me a photo of where all the babies were buried after they died … the town dump. I had slowly realized to my horror than the orphans under my care were not even considered human by the locals, that they were considered "things" and it was better if they died sooner than later. But it was that photo that did it to me — the realization that the children I had been caring for over a year and a half would die and be buried in the town dump. It was middle winter and the snow was everywhere. Armenia is high up in the mountains; Gumri, the earthquake-devastated city I lived in lay between a mountain range from Yerevan, the capital. I recall walking out in the middle of a blizzard and just starting to walk (this was November 1996, I believe) to Yerevan; 150 kilometers away. A priest who didn't speak a whit of English (and my baby-talk Armenian was pitiful) picked me up half way there but I walked until my feet bled and my hip creaked in its joint. I remember seeing things in the whirling snow, shapes and voices and strange forms. I ended up three days later at a fellow Volunteer's village on the outskirts of Yerevan, Karpi, where I promptly fell asleep for three more days.
After that it was only a matter of time before Peace Corps Administration saw me a hazard and put their gears into motion to do something. They sent me to DC for a month where I stayed in the Peace Corps hotel with all the other medical evacuated volunteers (80% of Medi Vac volunteers are female and of that I'd say 90% are there because they are pregnant and have to decided if they want to have an abortion or drop out of Peace Corps). My first meal (I arrived on my actual birthday itself) was a pint of chocolate milk and cottage cheese — the two things I couldn't get in Armenia.
After a month of hearing therapists tell me it wasn't my fault that the babies all died and that yes, I could return to finish my tour if I made sure I wasn't in an isolated city with no support system and working with an infant population with a high mortality rate, I returned to Armenia. I lived in Yerevan for the remaining half year of 1997 and helped train the new set of Volunteers.
That's one way of looking at what happened to me in Peace Corps. But I don't mention any of my friends, or the adventures I had (wandering the hills one summer night and coming up a hidden Russian nuclear base and getting chased by robot security drones; driving with friends by the Armenian-Azerbaijan border and finding ourselves surrounded by Azerbaijan troops who had snuck into the country, etc.) or my work teaching English at the Lord Byron English School or the Teacher's Pedagogy School (both in Gumri) or even the food. Though Armenians cook heavily with salt and pepper, they make a lovely grilled sandwhich wrap called "hori'vatz" (հորիվատս) … on a cold day you could buy steaming sandwhich wraps on the corner for 50 cents. But for years my Psycho Vac had been the all-consuming feature of my Peace Corps experience. I defined myself as … not necessarily a failure, but … being one who had gone insane; I now had returned, ready to talk.
As to what makes an Armenian sonnet purely Heyeran, I am still not sure. In the autumn of 2004 I began work translating Federico Garcia Lorca's Sonetos del amor oscuro (Sonnets of Dark Love) into Armenian. The collection I used was Obras (1981), though the poem can be found on-line. In effect then, I present one version of an Armenian sonnet, a sonnet translated into Armenian, though not what I was originally looking for.
Since my Spanish is malo I consulted Willis Barnstone's Six Masters of the Spanish Sonnet (1993) and Christopher Maurer's edition of Garcia Lorca's Collected Poems (2002), though the English translation is my own. I include all three versions here for simplicity's sake.
“El Poeta Habla Por Telefono Con El Amor”
“The Poet Speaks with His Beloved on the Telephone”
«Թանաստեղծը խոսում Է Հեռախոո իր Սիրելիի Հետ»
Tu voz rego la duna de mi pecho
en la dulce cabina de madera.
Por el sur de mis pies fue primavera
y al norte de mi frente flor de helecho.
Your voice watered the dunes of my chest
inside the sweet wooden telephone booth.
South of my feet was spring
and north of my brow ferns sprouted plumed crests.
Քո ձայնը ջրում էր ավազաբլուրն իմ հոգու
փայտյա թաղցրավետ հեռախոսակրպակը:
Ոաբերիս հարավում գարունէր
և փթթուն հոնքնրիս հյուսում բողբոջում էին փետուրները:
Pino de luz por el espacio estrecho
canto sin alborada y sementera
y mi llanto prendio por vez primera
coronas de esperanza por el techo.
A pine tree of light in the narrow space
sang with no music of dawn, no seed bed,
and my lament learned to calm and soothe,
hung crowns of hope above the roofs.
Լուսպփայլ սոճին նեղ մակերեսում
երգում էր առանց լուսաբացի մեղեղու կաարծես սերմն առանց մարգի,
և իմ հառաչանքը սովոր է հանդարփվելն մերմանալ,
տանիքներըի վերեվում կախվաճ իուսո թագերի պես:
Dulce y lejana voz por mi vertida.
Dulce y lejana voz por mi gustada.
Lejana y dulce voz adormecida.
Lejana como oscura corza herida.
Dulce como un sollozo en la nevada
¡lejana y dulce en tuetano metida!
Sweet and distant voice poured out for me.
Sweet and distant voice I tasted.
Sweet and distant swooning voice.
Distant like the dark wounded deer.
Sweet like a sobbing where a snowfall spread.
Sweet and distant placed in the marrow quietly!
Քաղցր և հեռավոր ձայնը հնչլմ էր ինձ համայր:
Քաղցր և հեռավոր ձայնը, որ համտեսում:
Քաղցր և հեռավոր ձայնը, նվաղումով:
Հեռավոր, սարճես գորշ վիրավոր եղջերում:
Քաղցր, կսարճես հեկեկ անքըձյան:
Քաղցր և հեռավոր հոգուվ անդորրու:
