BAROUYR SEVAK

Armenian News Network / Groong
By Eddie Arnavoudian

June 15, 2009


PART ONE: the poet as political activist

	`I am a postcard, addressed to the world!
	Do not envelope me, do not shut and seal me!'


Barouyr Sevak (1924-1972) has been acclaimed as one of the great  
Armenian poets of the 20th century. But he has also been judged a  
mere versifying propagandist and even a miserable plagiarist. Not  
surprisingly partisan dispute continues well into the post-Soviet  
age.  A roaring celebration of human creativity and passions, Sevak's  
poetry is at the same time a forthright assault on the moral  
corruption of all social elites that distort the existences of men  
and women, suppressing their creativity and reducing them to  
passivity. Sevak's offensive that was so telling against the corrupt  
Soviet elite remains as powerful against those of today whose  
immorality, greed, egoism and indifference to the fate of the common  
man and woman often puts their predecessors in the shade.

As with any prolific and socially committed poet Sevak is hugely  
uneven. But at his best he is a sort of Herbert Marcuse of poetry  
devoting himself to the business of humanising a dehumanised world,  
to the business of liberating alienated individuality and recovering  
a lost sense of communal solidarity. He dreamt that we would one day  
`return to ourselves, we...to ourselves' so that once again `humans can  
be human to humans'. Announcing himself as `a builder of joy', a  
`salesman of deep delights', a `corner shop of healthy laughter' and  
a `half closed store of smiles' Sevak set about `smashing all the  
chains that restrain the spirit'. Driven by the instinct to challenge  
and risk he was ready to even `leap and dance upon even the wobbly  
collapsing bridge'. `No lines of mine will imprison thought'. Even if  
my `hand is denied a pen', it `makes no difference' `I will not stop  
singing... to refute the lie' so that `man and woman, with spirit free,  
can nurture and cradle their hopes for the future'.

Sevak wrote primarily to contest the abuses of the Soviet elites. But
in poetry that has a remarkable capacity to focus essential human
relations free of all ephemeral detail his better poetry speaks to the
21st century man and woman as effectively as it did to his own
contemporaries.  Propelled by an overwhelming love of his fellow man
and woman, by `love before everything, and love after everything,
always love' Sevak assails all that is inauthentic and the false.
Today above the racket of consumerism that threatens to silence the
music of the soul we can still hear his powerful call to arms. In
opposition to the contemporary transformation of emotion into
commodity, to the hypocrisies of our politicians, the deceits of
commercialism and the lies of its advertising agents Sevak's song of
authentic humanity is as beautiful and as wise as it ever was.



I. BATTLE AGAINST THE USURPERS

Barouyr Sevak could hardly restrain from expressing his abhorrence  
for the morally degenerate Soviet bureaucrat, the apparatchik, the  
sycophant:

	`The thousand believers, all false believers
	The thousand believers, all lying believers'

Well before the post-Stalin Soviet thaw he had noted something amiss  
in Armenian society, hinting clearly at the decay, the falsity and  
the fraudulence that was afoot:

            `It was the same old monastery
            But it did not look saintly anymore
            It was the same bell that sounded
            But there was falsehood in the resonance.

Sevak was to thereafter devote himself to exposing those responsible  
- the political elite, the party leadership and their henchmen all of  
whom concealed ugly selfish ambition with the ideology and rhetoric  
of those collective principles of life they were themselves  
destroying. Their professions of socialist faith were nothing but  
self-legitimating deceptions, `endlessly recited and calculated  
prayers learnt off-by-heart to delude not themselves but you!'  
Ideological declarations were fabrications and slogans of social  
solidarity and internationalism mere clouds that spread a `darkness  
that without thread and needle has sewn up our eyes, and even mixed  
its colour into our blood.' The men in power, at the head of the  
state, in control of the media, publishing, industry, culture,  
education:

	Speak in the name of the sea of society
	But flow towards their private lake.

They are all `burdens upon the back of the world' removed from the  
lives of the common people. They `never risk or sacrifice', and have  
`never once experienced sleep on a damp floor'. Cruel and greedy  
graspers they:

	 `would wreck another's home
	 for the for the sake of a single beam
	 they want for themselves'.

To secure their own privilege they made of society a system of  
`poisonous moulds in which men and women have been forced to live'.

As heartless and selfish as their masters are the army of fawning  
sycophants ready to even interrupt and tell `a child mourning his  
parent's death with some sorrowful tone' `that he sings out of tune'.  
The lot of them, bureaucrats, opportunists, careerists and sycophants  
are:

	Liars. They love neither their father nor their mother
	Neither child nor grandchild is valued
	More than anything and above all else
	He loves in love, his status/chair

Reserving the utmost contempt for those who remained passive in the  
face of this abuse, for:

	`...the dog, who though
	Ceaselessly kicked by a vicious master
	Licks this master's feet,
	Instead of biting the beating torturing limb
	He merely moans

Sevak called on all to join him in `disputing the label that is not  
appropriate but still sticks stubbornly and refuses to be removed'.  
He urged all to challenge illicit privilege - that `legacy that has  
been purchased not inherited', to expose fraudulent ideological  
legitimisation - `the paint that merely covers but does not renew'  
and to expose the self-appointed guardians of society - those  
`lookouts that sleep instead of watch'. To live within the `moulds  
they have fashioned' and `to buy their false goods' with `their false  
money' was an insult to one's dignity and integrity. Sevak refused to  
`shut his eyes endlessly, helplessly and simple-mindedly as if dead'.  
(76:12).

	I am no longer prepared to participate in this
	Not in the game
	Nor in the sacrificial offering
	If that which is being skinned
	Is humanity

For the health of the `sea of society' Sevak sought to eradicate  
the egoisms of power, to put an end to secret selfish plots, to  
hypocrisy, opportunist careerism and obsequious crawling. He prayed  
for the elimination of this stratum:

	`If you are God
	Blow out all their candles
	Extinguish all their lanterns
	Put out all their fires
	So that there can be light!

Light, so that men and women can be free to flourish, so that from  
`the heat of the light and from its silent beat, every dream yet to  
be fired can burst forth to bloom'.

For all his angry criticism of the Soviet elite Sevak was not however  
an anti-socialist dissident. He did not question the political, the  
economic or the ideological foundations of society. His focus is the  
behaviour, the moral conduct, of the elite that he held responsible  
for subverting the egalitarian principles that underpinned Soviet  
society. Sevak's ambition was not revolutionary transformation of  
existing structures and foundations but their cleansing.

	`Do not fear
	To scrape clean the rusted mug
	The mug will not be destroyed.'

This rust is defined clearly as the pitting of the corrupt elite's  
narrow, minority selfish interest against that of the broad  
collective and common interest. Reminding us of the medieval Armenian  
poets, Sevak's own moral passion represented a formidable threat to  
Soviet officialdom, not only because he was not an anti-socialist and  
could not therefore be dismissed and persecute Sevak as a counter- 
revolutionary but because he wove in his poetry and persuasively so  
both a vision of possibilities outside the `poisonous moulds' and an  
affirmation of individual and collective potential and capacity to  
reach beyond.



II. THE POWER AND POTENTIAL OF THE HUMAN

Sevak had unshakeable `faith in men and women's dreams'. `Dreams are  
called dreams and they are deemed impossible only because they are  
yet to be realised.' With `no respect for resurrection that ends only  
with ascension' to heaven rather than `with a return to life' he  
insisted that:

	`Man/woman could feel the beauty and the delight with him/herself
	That was akin to the grand music in the cathedral
	That was like the light on a master painting
	Like the toy in a child's hand.

To the horror of the bureaucrat of his day Sevak communicated this  
conviction contagiously and as unquestionable truth.

In the faith and the optimism there was nothing bookish. It was born  
of witnessing those colossally creative and energetic efforts of men  
and women rebuilding and celebrating life even as they crossed its  
cruellest paths.  Witnessing human striving to surmount barbarism  
enabled Sevak to see beyond the ugliness and the alienation, the  
prostration and the defeat.

	I not only know
	I believe
	That it is impossible to imprison the sun

In his early poetry he registers the recovery of the Armenian people  
from the 1915 Genocide and the recovery of the Soviet people from the  
barbarism of Nazi invasion. Here Sevak brought freshness to subjects  
dulled by mediocre handling and by the prevailing formulaic and  
turgid didacticism. In characteristically unusual and catching images  
he depicts the Soviet Armenian state as the `surviving and enduring  
witness to slaughter', as the `sands that have absorbed' the `waters  
of sorrow'. The new Armenian state in its strength and stability is a  
rebuff to the Young Turks:

	A limpid eye when the crying has stopped, and
	The imposing testimony to justice

Though not old enough to fight at the front during World War II, 
Sevak's reaction was poetically and politically sophisticated. `The  
Fallen', with touches that recall Daniel Varoujean, echoes no arid  
abstractions of national glory but the vital, immediate life  
preserving dreams of the common man and woman. They fight the war not  
for the glory of the abstract flag but so that:

	Henceforth there be not a single chair
	Either at tea-time or dinner
	In any family whatsoever
	That cries out its emptiness

They fell so that:

	Instead of the thunder of grenades
	Instead of the awesome flame of fires
	They would hear
	The sound of the silver spade
	And the hot whisper of longing

The Genocide and World War II certainly registered the destructive  
and the brutal in the contradictory structure of man/woman. But  
neither could eradicate or fatally suppress an opposite potential for  
grandeur. Genocide and Nazism had freed Sevak of illusions but they  
did not cause him to `despair in human lapses'. However dark the past  
and even the present, men and women by their very nature retain the  
`potential to cleanse themselves the way the ocean cleanses itself'.  
They have indeed shown that they `know how to destroy', but they have  
also shown that they `know how to build'. `With one hand they will  
extinguish the light of life, but with the other they will light the  
camp fire'. `The same hand that thrust in the knife writes a novel'.  
The `same hands that pen the notes of betrayal also produce the  
richest of gifts' (57:6) for its neighbour.

Post-Genocide and post-Nazi recovery generated his `hope in human  
nature' and his faith in the `endlessly repeated renewal of humanity  
in the image of its children. They `armed' Sevak's hope `in the living  
man and woman and even more so in their child yet to be born'. In its  
rich abstraction an early poem dedicated to the Armenian revival can  
be read as his credo of the durability of intrinsic human nobility.

	`You are like your grapevines and  your grapes.
	They have broken you up and buried you in the soil.
	But when the cold of winters passed
	Your buried roots have burst powerful shoots.
	Your bent branches are again erect
	And if you bent again, then
	With the weight of those diamond grapes
	That are cracked open from your sweetness
	Whilst your bitterness...has become wine.

The same conviction is registered in a later poem honouring the ones:
Who have faltered and fallen

	Fallen, but never brought down to your knees
	But have crawled back to scramble from peak to peak



III. POET OR PAMPHLETEER?

It is often argued that socially engaged, polemical and didactic
poetry, however brilliantly written, is condemned to remain meagre as
art having little purchase beyond the era of is composition. Sevak
himself gives encouragement to the aesthetic disqualification of
committed poetry in a comment on 19th century Armenian poets Smbat
Shahaziz and Kamar Katiba. Noting their immensely valuable social and
patriotic contribution, he adds nevertheless, that given the
`publicist' character their poetry `it would be stupidity...to insist
that...it had any artistic merit.'

Whatever Sevak's qualifications, he himself however `could not reject  
publicist poetry, even if I wished to.' He was after all first and  
foremost a man of action and social being. He hurled himself with  
unbridled enthusiasm into public life driven by a sense of duty to  
community and society. For him the artist, the writer, the poet and  
the person of exceptional talent could not remain indifferent to the  
fate of his/her fellow beings. The poet he writes must be `a willing  
servant of the people' ready to risk everything, even at the expense  
of being `condemned to eternal darkness'. At the service of the  
people the poet as `a new ambassador of the ancient gods working:

	`So that you attain sight of the shores of truth
	So that you realise the treachery of the concealed lie
	So that you do not fear nor falter
	And whip the face of injustice

In its essence poetry and literature in general is framed by terms of  
social morality and social responsibility.

	That which is called literature
	Is not a diplomatic mission
	Where you feel and think one thing
	And say another.
        And if you are an ambassador
        Then an ambassador for life,
        To be sure for life today,
        But more so for life in the future

It is in the name of this future that the poet must be an eternal,  
perpetual critic. The poet:

	Cannot, in any way what so ever love
	The kings of any and all ages
	Who seek to destroy them not only by exile and imprisonment
	But by inviting them to the palace
	And...declaring false love.

For Sevak such intervention and engagement is assumed in the very act  
of creativity. Even as the artist `sits alone, she/he talks with the  
whole of humanity', helps `free ourselves from ourselves', `unites us  
with ourselves' and then `unites us with the grandeur of the  
unknown.' Such views do not of course make Sevak's poetry popular  
with intellectual and artist elites of our day who are not inclined  
to challenge kings and quite the contrary happily rest in his royal  
court consuming the rich crumbs from his table.

In our own times the poet as political activist has become rather  
unfashionable, reflecting perhaps contemporary elite fear of and  
contempt for the collective and public sphere. Yet the pubic, social  
and collective sphere, despite claims of the elite's ideological  
fashion designers, remains as central to human and individual  
existence as that of the private. The fundamental reality of human  
interdependence remains. To live genuinely demands an engagement with  
the community in which one exists, with one's fellow men and women  
and with the fortunes of society of which individuals are part. The  
world of art would be that much poorer if literature and poetry are  
disqualified from the battle to uphold collective, communal social  
solidarity as a condition of all life.

Sevak, along with countless others walks in the tradition of Milton,  
credited in a recent biography to have `almost single-handedly  
created the identity of the writer as a political activist'.  A  
reviewer's remark on this biography by Anna Beer could with necessary  
qualification apply to the best of Sevak's as well, noting as it does a:
`...fully armed assault on corruption' characterised at its best with a  
`peerless combination of imaginative reach and political  
analysis...and its marvellous organ-blast hymn to (and vigilant  
support of) liberty.'



IV. SEVAK THE POET

Baroury Sevak's particular achievement was to be simultaneously poet  
and pamphleteer, artist and social critic.  He successfully removes  
barriers between art and politics, between emotion and reason,  
between the private and the social to produce poetry that with its  
critical edge is also a glorification of all life - social, communal  
and individual. This merging of the public, political and social  
polemic with a celebration of life is thrilling because it draws its  
strength not from some intellectual system, not from the desire to  
impose some alternative political or social theory but by the  
impulses of passion, creativity and pleasure. As he raged against  
suffocating oppressive authority and its immorality, he insisted that  
`even with the coldest fingers' he would continue playing:

	...the ancient lyrics
	Of love and
	Of joy
	And lyrics in honour of the craziness of the spirit

There is in his best poetry nothing dry, rhetorical or formal. Sevak  
called the bureaucrat and state official to account and denounced and  
exposed them as heartless inhuman egoists not in the name of abstract  
political principle but in the name of intellectual, creative and  
emotional freedom. Immorality and vice are not condemned for  
contravening a finished formal system of moral law but for staining,  
dulling and deforming the harmonious flourish of individual and  
social creativity and passion. Political and social criticism was not  
programmatic criticism but the affirmation of life and creativity.

Sevak's poetry has in addition a rich all-embracing abstraction. With  
a single metaphor, simile or image he readily captures the  
fundamentals of a corrupted social relation that gives his poetry a  
resonance beyond the phenomena that first inspired it. Denunciations  
of the bureaucrat, the censor, the crawling sycophant, the abuser of  
power, the illegitimate pretender and the egoist capture the  
essential substance that fashions even the villains of our own day.  
Sevak's poetry floods forth not just against Soviet bureaucratic  
socialism but against all the ossification and corruption, the  
deception and hypocrisy, the sycophancy and lack of integrity that we  
are witness to in our own day. It exposes all forms of power that are  
beyond the control of communities and individuals. It exposes as  
illegitimate, as a diminishing any form of power that is beyond  
authentic democratic and collective determination.

Enhancing Sevak's poetry is his almost unrivalled mastery of the  
Armenian language. His linguistic versatility and his capacity for  
word creation adds a whole body of new images, metaphors, imaginative  
constructs and forms to the Armenian poetic thesaurus. Halted in  
their tracks by what at first sight appear as combinations of the  
utterly inappropriate, extraordinary and even incongruous word  
constructions readers are then delighted to travel fresh paths as  
extraordinary writing hurls them into thinking upon and considering,  
evaluating and judging possible meanings. In this there is nothing of  
the inauthentic posturing that passes itself off as `higher order'  
art whose complexity is but the pretence of wisdom and sensibility  
apparently beyond the common person. Even in his almost unorthodox  
imagery Sevak remains close to life. Where Medzarents draws from  
nature his richest metaphors Sevak enters the realm of the ordinary  
artefacts of life, transforming the apparently mundane - the finger  
nails, tight shoes, hearing rain - into images rich with meaning and  
significance.

It is in this poetic brilliance that Sevak's voice sounded so crisp  
and fresh in his day of decaying bureaucratic socialism. For the same  
reasons it echoes as distinctly in our own days of decaying democracy.
In the charade of our own parliamentary chambers, editorial and
executive offices and at the pulpit of public sermonising, we
encounter the same selfish grime, the same egotistic muck that Sevak
sought to cleanse in his time. Denouncing those who `force us all to
sing with the voice of another' he brings into sight the corrupt
messiahs of modern consumerism and advertising. It is poetry in which
we hear the hollow echoes of our own times and feel the passion to
resist. Be yourself, his poetry cries out:

	Take off your masks
	So that you can breathe a little easier


--
Eddie Arnavoudian holds degrees in history and politics from
Manchester, England, and is Groong's commentator-in-residence on
Armenian literature. His works on literary and political issues
have also appeared in Harach in Paris, Nairi in Beirut and Open
Letter in Los Angeles.