On Guest-Editing Armenia(n)s - Elevation: Tatevik Ayvazyan and Naneh V Hovhannisyan

We spoke to co-guest editors Tatevik Ayvazyan and Naneh V Hovhannisyan about curating, commissioning, and editing our winter 2024 special issue, Wasafiri 120: Armenian(s) – Elevation, which shines a light on modern Armenian identities and experiences. Alongside personal stories of love, loss, and memory, the volume speaks to current global issues – displacement, fragmentation, and conflict — all with eloquence, and all, ultimately, for elevation.

The issue foregrounds translation as a bridge between Armenian literature and global audiences, addressing the imbalance where Anglophone works are often translated into Armenian, but Armenian literature rarely finds its way into other languages. Alongside highlighting works featured in the issue by Zahrad and Arthur Kayzakian, among others, the editors also suggest various other Armenian poets, writers, and platforms that give Armenian writing a global audience.

Wasafiri: What inspired you to do this issue and co-edit it together?

Tatevik Ayvazyan: It was Naneh’s idea — she approached me with a warning about this huge undertaking (‘Your skull will crack’), and it was such an exciting, important idea that I immediately agreed. Then she sent me a few copies of the Wasafiri special issues (Korea, Palestine, Balkans), and the rest is history. By then, I had also read some of Naneh’s writing, so it was a privilege to work alongside her to create this anthology of Armenian voices.

As an Armenian, you have this constant drive to be the ambassador of your country, and we knew Wasafiri was the place where our stories could be told in the right way — boldly, without apologies or marginalisation.

Naneh V Hovhannisyan: I’d been frustrated with our cultural invisibility for some time. So, shortly after my 2020 essay was published by the then-Editor-in-Chief, Malachi McIntosh, Tatevik (whose work on Armenian cultural projects in London I’d admired), and I approached Wasafiri. It seemed an ideal place for Armenian stories told by Armenians, for carving out a space, I guess, to bring together the two parts of our lives – Armenia and Britain – in this home for contemporary international writing. I couldn’t have done this alone. And it’s been fun to approach things we deeply care about from different, even opposing angles.

What was the curation process like? Which topics, themes, regions, and voices did you wish to foreground and highlight through the issue?

TA: Diversity of authors and their writing was the precondition for me. Having voices from the Diaspora and the Republic of Armenia, different ages, genders, and backgrounds was paramount if we wanted a rich anthology of Armenian writing.

The wounds of the 2020 war were fresh when we started; then, the tragedy of losing Artsakh happened in 2023, and many decisions were dictated by the desire to be heard, subject to yet another genocidal attack.

I knew I wanted to include some pieces early on (translations from Zahrad, Arthur Kayzakian’s poetry, a conversation about two languages…), meanwhile others happened organically (the majestic art piece by four contributors, proposed by Khatchig Mouradian, and Sylvia Alajaji’s poignant essay, which was meant to be an academic article initially).

I keep repeating that it’s a ‘jukebox’ issue (a phrase stolen from Serge Pizzorno of Kasabian, my favourite band, who described their fourth album as a ‘jukebox record’ as opposed to concept albums) — meaning that there is no central theme. Within these pages, I hope that we have managed to introduce a rich and varied chorus of voices.

NVH: It was a constant testing of ideas, from what is Armenian writing, to who is an Armenian writer, and minutiae of particular texts. And, given that it’s a magazine, and not a book, we wanted to focus on what required reflecting on urgently. We wanted to heavily feature Armenian-language material, including as much Western Armenian as could be funded, and showcase emerging writers, translators, and artists, alongside established ones. The big themes – Nagorno-Karabakh, the Soviet legacy, the tradition of translation in Armenia, the diaspora, and women and other minorities – were all preoccupations. Sadly, we’re constrained by page numbers (though Wasafiri has been immensely generous), and linguistic barriers (most non-Armenian works on Armenian themes accessible to us are in English). Otherwise, I always wanted to share the pleasure of Vahagn Atabekian’s and Mher Arshakyan’s responses to the translation of Brodsky. And something about the 1940s’ Repatriation and Tigran Paskevichyan’s films on it. Ah, and we both wanted the issue not to be defined only by genocide and war.

In the curation process, what ideas emerged – or were altered – that perhaps surprised you or made a powerful impact?

TA: The notions of home and belonging became an (unintended) constant refrain in the volume – it was always a specific idea of a home – connected to a physical space. Almost every essay and short story talks about a past or present home. Many poems we chose ended up also being focused on places and spaces. We even curated a small selection of poetry to be published online, solely based on the placenames in the titles. And, of course, ‘Recreating Home in Exile’, the art piece, is the most detailed exploration of home. The theme of belonging is found in almost all the interviews too — stories of repatriations and migrations; writers defined by their homelands, places their ancestors came from and the new countries they moved to. The review essay, ‘Delimiting Diaspora’, by Myrna Douzjian is a fantastic summary of these themes, drawing from three recent books.

NVH: Most lasting revelation for me is our shared idea of Armenian identity as a multi-faceted, essentially undefinable thing — an idea Philip Marsden captured so well in The Crossing Place. Yes, we’re fractured across multiple geographic loyalties, with ruptures in our history, but that ambivalence about belonging, that internal conflict with modernity, is rich material. So, we’re an old people searching for new ways to formulate ideas about ourselves. And we both wanted to disrupt the narrative of one viewpoint, the tyranny of one story — both inside and outside Armenia. As Tatevik mentioned, the interruption, on top of the 2020 war, was the 2023 flight of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh. It made us determined to seek out voices on the ground that are as gifted as they are defiant and dignified — as an act of resistance.

In your editorial to the issue, you talk about rootedness and home, and situating Armenian identities as part of the wider literary landscape. What does ‘rootedness’ and ‘home’ mean to you?

TA: While ‘rootedness’ is a central issue in our volume, the idea of a home is not strongly connected to a real, physical space for me. Yerevan is home of course; I was born there, and my parents are there. London is home — that’s where my record player is, that’s where my son was born. My roots are simply everything that has made me – from my great-grandparents’ stories of Nakhijevan, Kars, and Vayots Dzor to all the places I’ve lived – Moscow, Beirut, Leuven, Oxford – and my beloved London. I’m with Rushdie on this: ‘I, too, like all migrants, am a fantasist. I build imaginary countries and try to impose them on the ones that exist.’^[i]

NVH: Still figuring it out! I feel anchored in and loyal to the Armenian language. My physical home is with my family (and my books!), in a green corner of England. But I have strong emotional and intellectual attachments to certain geographies of Europe and the Middle East, and their cultural heritage that I carry at least partly. Nonetheless, all these, I realise, are chance privileges in a time when countless humans have no safe place.

What would you say is the significance of this issue being published now?

TA: We live in difficult times: wars and genocides are happening; incompetent, ignorant, evil leaders are in power, and in Armenia the borders are being redrawn while the country is still grieving for Artsakh, and for all the dead. So, anything beautiful, anything hopeful, anything helping to deal with grief is important. And I’d like to think that all the writing, all the words we have included in the issue, will be illuminating, inspiring, healing, or intriguing for the readers.

NVH: Echoing Tatevik, when fascist instincts are unashamedly flaunted worldwide, and primitive rulers are trending, an issue like ours is a drop in the figurative pot of ‘optimism of the will’. Besides, amidst years of Armenia(ns) being reported on – for conflict and crisis – this is our artistic retort. ‘Elevation’ is also an act of self-help, of consoling ourselves, processing things, and licking our wounds, while creating something beautiful.

What kinds of conversations do you hope this issue will provoke?

NVH: We’ve much in common with other ‘minority’ literatures. I’d like a dialogue with outnumbered literary communities on the margins of the ‘global’ marketplace. We have shared problems: how to be seen and heard, the question of representation, or processing of colonial baggage. And I’m hopeful that these other perspectives, ways of seeing the world, living good lives, will intrigue and spur non-Armenian translators and researchers on to widen their lens and dig deeper. Because we belong to a common humanity.

TA: I want to mention something else very important to me. Our Armenian existence is so fractured – you can see from the variety of the backgrounds of our writers – that we need to get to know ourselves first. I hope this issue allows Armenian readers to discover new authors in other parts of the world. I also wish for more and deeper dialogues between the Republic of Armenia and the Diaspora, and creatives writing in Eastern and Western Armenian, in English or other languages.

In the editorial, you discuss how Anglophone literature is translated to Armenian but that the opposite is much less common; and a key feature of this issue is the works in translation. Could you kindly expand on that?

TA: Working with the translations in this issue was a particular kind of pleasure — seeing the words flowing from a vessel of one language to the other’s, forming a different shape but tasting as delicious. Historical and political reasons are to blame for the lack of translations from Armenia, and not the absence of great translators or, God forbid, literature. We both hope that the Armenian Special, and of course, Wasafiri’s impressive back catalogue, will generate new interest in translations.

Finally, which writers or texts would you recommend to readers who are interested in reading further?

TA: As this is a magazine of contemporary writing, I would say dig deeper back. Medieval Armenian poetry is delicious; there are lots of offerings online. Read Western Armenian authors: my beloved Daniel Varoujan, singing (as he called his writing) for humanity, not just Armenians; Roupen Sevag; Zabel Yesayan; Srpouhi Dussap; Bedros Tourian and marvel at the beauty of the language. Seek out Soviet Armenian writing — Aksel Bakunts’s poetic short stories or Paruyr Sevak’s philosophical works. And most importantly, read Hovhannes Tumanyan, the greatest and the wisest, whose every word makes you richer.

NVH: For sheer force of language, Narekatsi and Charents are unsurpassed (see our double review); Hovhannes Grigoryan and Avag Yepremyan — for post-soviet Yerevan. The brilliant Samvel Mkrtchyan, who translated countless classics into Armenian, also translated Armenian poetry into English — scour his anthology online. From prose, I’ve just finished Mkrtich Armen’s modernist novel, Yerevan — fascinating. For a humanist’s take on the 1990s Karabakh war: Levon Khechoyan, himself a veteran; for a fused Eastern-Western Armenian flair, Totovents and Gostan Zarian; Ler Kamsar’s bitter’n’witty memoirs of totalitarian life (see our article on other writers of the Gulag, including Gurgen Mahari); by all means, Hrant Matevosyan; for others, read Granish online and follow ARI Literary.

^[i] Rushdie, Salman. Home: Vintage Minis (p. 28). Random House. Kindle Edition.

Picture Credit: Tigran Kharatyan on Unsplash

You can read Tatevik Ayvazyan and Naneh V Hovhannisyan'd editorial for Wasafiri 120: Armenia(n)s – Elevation, , 'Light Through Our Ruptures', here.