Bulgaria: Literaturny Razgovory and Antonia Apostolova interview with the author of „The Book of Whispers”

Varujan Vosganyan: Literature writes the small story – of the minor and the vanquished

Forgiveness implies interlocutor, encourages dialogue. Forgiveness is an act of responsibility. You forgive when you know that what you have forgiven, even if it seems unforgivable, will never happen again

With the Romanian writer of Armenian origin, who is still a working politician, we talk about his latest novel, Children of War, published in our country (2019, published by Vanina Bozhikova – see review here). The book entered my 2019 bookstore at the end of last year because of its extraordinary depth and scale – historical and psychological. Two more books by Vosganyan have been published here: The Play of One Hundred Leaves and Others (ONM) and The Whispering Book (Avant-garde Print).

You have written a great Romanian novel, but it certainly transcends national borders to make several generations of Eastern Europe aware of history through their similar memories of post-war years, communism and the transition to democracy. What was your main job with The Children of War?

 

The idea of ​​writing the novel came from several studies of children of war that I read. They are descendants of mothers of the local population and fathers of the occupation forces. The Second World War created hundreds of thousands of such children who have lived with this trauma all their lives.

 

The main character in the novel is a similar child, born of a Romanian mother and a German soldier father. His biography, traced over a period of almost seven decades, is an occasion for tracing the entire post-war period in Romania, establishing the communist regime with all its atrocities, chronicling it in the 1960s and 1970s, and then the transition, started in 1989.

The novel includes a colorful gallery of characters, each with a different opinion of the times he experiences. It’s not the first time I’ve done such a literary experiment. The short novel, The Play of One Hundred Leaves and Other Narratives, also translated into Bulgarian by Vanina Bozhikova, also speaks of the untreated traumas of communism. Nor will I hide that some of the events that take place in the novel are autobiographical, most notably the Romanian Revolution and the ensuing period.

 

Write that those who defend the past are strong, and those who defend the future are often left empty handed. In the sense that I think of it, is this not too severe a sentence against the efforts of those citizens in Romania and Bulgaria who still find the strength today to protest in their attempts to secure a better future free of corruption and political machinations?

 

I think the meaning of my words is a little different. I say that in the clashes in the 1990s between the former communists and the generation of the Revolution, the former had a real advantage. Former communist activists, to whose side the past was, knew each other, had experience in government, and also felt the need to defend themselves against the sentence of history, which made them display a certain aggressive aggression, even fanaticism.

 

We, on whose side the future stood, did not know each other, we had only hope, and hope could not give rise to fanaticism. Unfortunately, history has shown that these considerations are correct. In the 1990s, the first decade of transition, my generation failed, despite some seeming changes, becoming mostly part of the political and governing elite of communism.

Romania focused on a market economy and an open society only after joining NATO and the EU. This process, at least as far as strengthening democracy and an open society, is not yet complete.

 

You say somewhere that peace is harder to cross than even war. Why?

 

The question explicitly conveys the meaning of my words; in the text of the novel the meaning is more complex. In general, the main character to whom these words belong, wants to say that during a war, one knows what one can hope for, why one hopes for peace. But when peace is unjust and makes you suffer, you don’t know what else can happen and what to expect. These thoughts relate to the post-World War II peace, which is again, in fact, a kind of war – accidentally called the Cold War – but without the hope of peace. As a Romanian, I have to admit to you, and I think that you Bulgarians feel the same: the traces of the Iron Curtain are still deleted, there is one border that Europe has not completely crossed.

 

Isn’t mixing blood like the children of war in some paradoxical way a chance for peace and reconciliation – have you thought about this possibility? And how exactly do you explain the insatiable hatred that your character Matthew is experiencing for his unknown German father?

 

Matthew’s hatred of his father comes first from the affection for his mother, whose life is fraught with trauma. Matthew believes that the German soldier is responsible for the humiliation his mother suffered after the war. He also feels it is unfair that people like his father, who have caused war and tragedy, live most peacefully, while those who have been victims of aggression continue to suffer.

 

In fact, „The Children of War” is about a prolonged slavery, in which the protagonist is confronted with the vicissitudes of history, for which his father and others like him are responsible. The tragic thing about the novel is that, without realizing it, as he rebels against his father, whom he accuses of historical crimes, Matthew begins to resemble him. The end of the novel marks the overcoming of this suicidal suicide.

At one of your premieres you talk about forgetting, revenge and forgiveness …

 

We must learn to choose between forgetting, revenge, and forgiveness. The one who forgets means that he has not understood and everything can be repeated again. The thirsty for revenge must know that revenge never heals wounds, only multiplies their number. And the forgiving one must understand that forgiveness is an act of responsibility. Forgetting and revenge as an attitude is something personal, a monologue. However, you cannot forgive yourself. Forgiveness implies interlocutor, prompts dialogue. Forgiveness is an act of responsibility. You forgive when you know that what you have forgiven, even if it seems unforgivable, will never happen again.

 

In the previous question, let me ask you what is worth remembering and what to forget. And how do we make the right choices that we bring to memory what you call „selective memory” in the novel?

 

I distinguish between the past and memory. Minalto is just a chronology. Memory is the understanding and acceptance of this past. That is, memory gives a moral dimension to the past. Unlike the past that remains behind, memory is part of the present.

 

We may all have the same past, but not the same memory. If we ask Jews all over the world about the Holocaust, everyone will say the same thing. The Holocaust is a common trauma for the Jewish people. If we ask Armenians around the world about the genocide in 1915, they will share the same pain. However, if we ask two Romanians or two Bulgarians about communism, they will probably say completely different things. Communism is not a common trauma for our peoples, it has its executioners and victims, winners and losers, joys and depressions. Unfortunately, our peoples have no common memory of communism. This is one of the great failures of the transition. That is why it is so difficult for us to cure the traumas of communism.

 

One of the central themes in the novel is „uniform”, as a metonymy for power, clothed in law. The uniform gives the protagonist certainty and confidence, power and justice, but deprives him of his freedom and justice. If, in the novel, the uniform belongs to the Communist police and the Securitate, what would you say is the predominant uniform today?

In fact, I do not associate the uniform symbol only with communism and the secret police of that time. It is true that then the uniform is present in one of its most abusive forms. But uniforms have always been, and very often they are an expression of some repressive power. Wearing uniforms think they are all-powerful and they are allowed everything. However, the truth is that they do not take advantage of the uniform, but the uniform takes advantage of them. They do not give a human appearance to the uniform, but the uniform deprives them of humanity.

 

It is no coincidence that several times in the novel, references are made to the Pact with the Devil, the sale of the soul, which implies the wearing of the uniform as a weapon. The whole novel is a fight between man and uniform, most often defeating the uniform. The end of the novel, however, shows that for the main character Matthew, the angel is stronger than the demon.

 

„Premonitions create history, not action,” you write. What do you mean?

 

The story is irrational. I do not say it, many philosophers have said it before me (I would point to Karl Popper, for example). The true story is that of feelings – of fear, of hope, of loneliness, or of panic – acts are the result of feelings. Take a look at what’s happening around the world today, on a much larger scale than in the past. The Internet and social networks create opinions that make up history. It is true that acts then give rise to new feelings, but this only confirms the enchanted circle of history. And nothing is more irrational than a vicious circle.

However, it is not true that all actions are caused by feelings. Many feelings are driven by fiction, propaganda, obsessive and fanatical messages. In Romania, for example, the term „post-communism” simply did not exist under communism. Romanians believed that communism was eternal. This belief is not based on facts. Looking back, it is clear that communism could not endure indefinitely. And the feeling that communism was eternal created the story, namely that the Romanians were completely unprepared in 1990. The revolution came just when they were already accustomed to communism, which is why the Communist Party’s second line took power and for a long time the post-communist transition was simply an illusion.

 

Only natural disasters have no prologue to people’s foreboding, staggering and utopian illusions. Historical catastrophes have always started with anticipation.

 

You say in the novel that fantasizing about alternate reality (as literature does) is a kind of solace to our inability to change actual reality. Is this one of the purposes of literature really?

 

History textbooks talk mostly about winners. Novels are mostly about the losers. Even when they talk about kings and emperors who describe the works of history as victorious, the works of art reveal the secret nooks and crannies of their souls, their torments and sorrows (such as in Marjorit Jursenar’s „Adrian’s Memoirs”). To explain the decline of the Austrian Empire, historical writings tell us of Franz Joseph’s excessively long rule. The novels tell us about Mr. K., about the brave soldier Schweik, about the man without the qualities of Ulrich.

 

Literature is a tribute to the vanquished. In telling more about the losers than the winners, one might believe that he writes more about the small story, the story of the minor, as opposed to the big story, that of the leaders. The truth is that like death, history cannot be small or large. Ordinary people have their greatness, though no one has erected a pedestal on which to place them. When you think about it, it’s easier to beat why the power is most often on the winner’s side. To die for your ideas, however, requires much more power.

 

I believe that recognizing such a major trauma as communism is mostly a cultural phenomenon. Humanity is aware of the tragedy of communism in the first place through literature (it is enough to reflect on the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Boris Pasternak). Literature is mostly about ordinary people. In historical writings, death is expressed by multiple zeros. The victims of the Holocaust are more than 6,000,000. The Armenian Genocide – 1,500,000. Only when the victims are named are humanity aware of the scale of the tragedy. In literature, death has no zeros. Literature gives the name of suffering. A literary work is far more convincing than political speech. Franz Werfel’s book „The 40 Days of Musa Dagh” is the most exciting pleading for the recognition of the Armenian genocide.

How would you evaluate the current state of Romanian literature? Are there any names you would like to recommend to our readers?

 

As in any other period, Romanian literature has its valuable points. The beauty of the Romanian language is mostly felt in poetry. Unfortunately, in translation, poetry loses much of its charm, but I can assure you that Romanian poetry is at European height. In recent years, the Romanian Cultural Institute has launched a large-scale translation program. Many works have been translated into Bulgarian as well, thanks to the efforts of translators such as Vanina Bozhikova, Laura Nenkovska, Vasilka Aleksova, Rumyana Stancheva, Ognian Stamboliev, Hristo Boev and others. There are numerous legislative provisions regarding the status of writers in Romania and the Writers’ Union includes more than 2,600 members.

I think there is much more to be done in terms of promoting our literature, Romanian and Bulgarian, among readers from both countries.