Category Archives: Armenia

salome: page 01

09 Thursday Jan 2014

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SALOMÉ
SALOME
ՍԱԼՈՄԵ

1893

PERSONNES
PERSONS
ԱՆՁԵՐ

HÉRODE ANTIPAS, Tétrarque de Judée
HEROD ANTIPAS, Tetrarch of Judea
ՀԵՐՈՎԴ ԱՆՏԻՊԱ, տետրարք Հրեաստանի

IOKANAAN, le prophète
IOKANAAN, the prophet
ՅՈՔԱՆԱԱՄ, մարգարեն

LE JEUNE SYRIEN, capitaine de la garde
THE YOUNG SYRIAN, captain of the guard
ԵՐԻՏԱՍԱՐԴ ՍԻՐԻԱՅԻ, դահճապետի [1]

TIGELLIN, un jeune Romain
TIGELLINUS, a young roman
ՏԻԳԵԼԻՆ, երիտասարդ Հռոմայեցի

CAPPADOCIEN
CAPPODOCIAN
ԿԱՊԱԴՈՎԿԻԱՅԻ

NUBIEN
NUBIAN
ՆՈԻԲԻԱՅԻ

PREMIER SOLDAT
FIRST SOLDIER
ԱՌԱՋԻՆ ՋԻՆՎՈՐ

SECOND SOLDAT
SECOND SOLDIER
ԵՐԿՐՈՐԴ ՋԻՆՎՈՐ

LE PAGE D’HÉRODIAS
THE PAGE OF HERODIAS
ՀԵՐՈՎԴԻԱԴԱՅԻ ՄԱՆԿԼԱՎԻԿԸ

JUIFS, NAZARÉENS, etc.
JEWS, NAZARENES, etc.
ՀՐԵԱՆԱՆԵՐ, ՆԱՋՈՎՐԵՅԻՆԵՐ, եւ այլն.

ESCLAVE
SLAVE
ՍՏՐՈԻԿ

NAAMAN, bourreau
NAMAAN, executioner
ՆԱԱՄԱՆ, դահիճ

HÉRODIAS, femme du Tétrarque
HERODIAS, wife of the tetrarch
ՀԵՐՈՎԴԻԱԴԱ, տետրարքի կինը

SALOMÉ, fille d’Hérodias
SALOME, daughter of Herodias
ՍԱԼՈՄԵ, աղջիկը Հերովդիայի

ESCLAVES DE SALOMÉ
SLAVES OF SALOME
ՍԱԼՈՄԵԻ ՍՏՐԿՈԻՀԻՆԵՐԸ

][][

SCÈNE
SCENE
ԲԵՄ’

[Une grande terrasse dans le palais d’Hérode donnant sur la salle de festin. Des soldats sont accoudés sur le balcon. A droite il y a un énorme escalier. A gauche, au fond, une ancienne citerne entourée d’un mur de bronze vert. Clair de lune.]

[A large terrace in Herod’s palace overlooking the banqueting hall. Some of the soldiers are leaning against the balcony. To the right there is a huge staircase. To the left, at bottom, an old cistern surrounded by a wall of green bronze. Moonlight.]

[Մի մեծ կտուր է Հերովդեսի պալատը նայող խնջույքի դահլիճը. Որոշ զինվորներ են հենվում է պատշգամբում. Դեպի աջ կա մի մեծ աստիճաններ. Դեպի ձախ, ժամը ներքեւում, հին ցիստեռնը շրջապատված է պատին կանաչ բրոնզե. Լուսնյակ.] [2]

LE JEUNE SYRIEN: Comme la princesse Salomé est belle ce soir!
THE YOUNG SYRIAN: How beautiful the Princess Salome looks tonight!
ԵՐԻՏԱՍԱՐԴ ՍԻՐԻԱՅԻ: Ինչ գեղեցիկ է Արքայադուստրը Սալոմե երեկո! [3]

LE PAGE D’HÉRODIAS: Regardez la lune. La lune a l’air très étrange. On dirait une femme qui sort d’un tombeau. Elle ressemble à une femme morte. On dirait qu’elle cherche des morts.
THE PAGE OF HERODIAS: Look at the moon. The moon looks strange! She looks like a woman rising from a tomb. She looks like a dead woman. One might think she was looking for the dead.
ՀԵՐՈՎԴԻԱԴԱՅԻ ՄԱՆԿԼԱՎԻԿԸ: Նայիր լուսնի. Լուսինը ունի տարօրինակ տեսք. Կարծես մի կին աճող մի շիրիմին. Կարծես մահացած կնոջ.Կարելի է մտածել որ նա փնտրում է մահացած. [4]

LE JEUNE SYRIEN: Elle a l’air très étrange. Elle ressemble à une petite princesse qui porte un voile jaune, et a des pieds d’argent. Elle ressemble à une princesse qui a des pieds comme des petites colombes blanches … on dirait qu’elle danse.
THE YOUNG SYRIAN: She has a strange look. She looks like a little princess who wears a yellow veil, whose feet are made of silver. She looks like a princess who has feet like little white doves … she looks like she is dancing.
ԵՐԻՏԱՍԱՐԴ ՍԻՐԻԱՅԻ: Այն նայում շատ տարօրինակ է. Կարծես մի փոքր Արքայադուստրը ով հագնում է դեղին վարագույրի, եւ որոնց ոտքերը են արծաթի. : Նա, կարծես արքայադուստր ով ունի ոտքերը նման փոքր սպիտակ աղավնիներ … կարծես նա պար. [5]

][][

notes:

Most of the footnotes here will be from my attempts at transcribing Vahan Terian’s original. I’ll state for the record here: there will be errors. I am neither a native speaker of Armenian nor particularly good at any language. But I follow the advice of the poet and translator Marilyn Hacker who said, “it is better to have a bad translation than no translation at all.” Cheers.

[1] Թիկնապահների Հրամանատար [VT]

[2] Հանդիսասըահին կից մեծ պատհգամը: Հռըովդի պալատում: Ջինվոըները կանգնել են պատհգամբի վանդակապատին Հռնված: Աջ կողմը’ մեծ սանդուղք: Ջախ կողմը, ըէմի խորքում’ մի ջըհոը: [VT]

[3] Որքան հքնա’ղ է այս երեկո արքայադուստր Սալոմեն: [VT]

[4] Նայեցեք լուսնիմ: Որքան տարօրինակ տեսք ունի լուսնյակը: Կարծես մի կին ե, որ գերեզմանից է ելնում: Սեռած կնոջ է նման: Կարծես մեռել է որոնում նա: [VT]

[5] Շատ տարօրինակ տեսք ունի: Նա նման է մի փոքրիկ արքայադստեր, որ դեղին քող է ծածկում [and] որի ոտներն արծաթից են: Կարծես նա մի արքայաղուստր է, որի ոտները սպիտակ աղավնյակների են նման: Կարծես նա պարում է: [VT]

salome: an introduction

09 Thursday Jan 2014

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Here’s a little unknown story.

In the summer of 1997, after I came back from my psycho-vac, I ended up teaching conversational English to a classroom of Armenian students in Yerevan.

In theory it should have been an easy job … one just talks and play word-games and get people to enjoy trying something as scary and illogical as English (seriously, who in hell came up with p-q and b-d as letters that won’t get constantly reversed or turned upside down in non-English speakers minds?) Anyway, I took the hard road and decided the best way to have fun in this class was to get them to perform a play … and, you say, after reading the title of the Oscar Wilde drama up above, what better way to approach Amateur Drama 101 than with something that hasn’t been updated into modern speak since it was first translated from French in 1900? Because trying to explain “thee” and “thy” to a classroom who were just hoping to be able to say hello to their cousin Aram in Glendale might not have been the smartest move on my part, though one of my students did say she had heard someone, at some point in time, had translated the play Salome (1893) into Armenian, but she had no idea who or when.

Jump forward in time to yesterday, around 10-ish in the morning while I was at work. The Internets is fabulous, for I discovered who it was who first translated the play. Not everyone is familiar with the name Vahan Terian (Վահան Տերյան), which is a shame since his original poetry is both sad and beautiful (though not necessarily in that order), but, in 1910, he translated the French original into Armenian. And not only is the Internets fabulous but someone sainted soul actually uploaded the original translation … sadly in PDF format, but still! The whole play! translated! online! hurrah for exclamation points!

Here is the mission I’ve given myself. I want to simultaneously translate the original French into an updated English version plus translate it into modern Armenian while transcribing Terian’s original. This won’t be easy for numerous reasons. First, I’m terrible at transcribing. My ability to read Armenian is limited, but the uploaded PDF file seems to be the only version I can find online, unless someone can clue me in to where to look. Also, my ability to translate Armenian is comically absurd. There are children laughing at my attempts in Gyumri right now and I haven’t even started. Perhaps, one day, someone will read this and think helping me is a good idea, but there aren’t a lot of native Armenians in the world, even less so on-line, so I never take radio silence personally.

What I am going to present here are three versions of the play. The first is the original, taken from Project Gutenberg. The second is my attempt at an English translation and the third will be the Armenian. I’ll add notes from the Terian transcription as I go along, though I haven’t figured how exactly (I’m making this up as I go along). There are about 30 pages to the original play, depending on the font, so I’m thinking of publishing a page at a time, just to avoid confusion (mine). Of course, as always, if anyone reads this and wants to help, correct and ridicule, any assistance will only make the translations better.

With that said, the game, Mrs Hudson, is on!

cinders and thigh bones

26 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by in Armenia, haiku, Illustration and art, Poetry

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staring at the sky
from a desert warm and still
abandoned child’s skull

][][

blank book pages filled with
caravan marching to hell
vultures circling

][][

let all my words burn
beacon fire for child’s soul lost
century ago

][][

simple things: laughter,
kissing, holding hands, all this
that she’ll never know

][][

written on the wind
her laughter, scent even name
has been lost to me

][][

silence before truth
before the question before
this desert’s secrets

][][

rocky hills sparsely
covered with ghosts of female
guerrilla warfare

][][

cinders and thigh bones
all girls who picked up a gun
stood up and fought back

notes:

We decided to play god, create life. When that life turned against us, we comforted ourselves in the knowledge that it really wasn’t our fault, not really. You cannot play god, then wash your hands of the things that you’ve created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can’t hide from the things that you’ve done anymore.
—Admiral Adama, Battlestar Galactica

Image

women with weapons, girls with guns, armenians with arms

09 Monday Dec 2013

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Super big shout out to Mafattiee for posting the original art I used to make this. The clothes are traditional Armenian, the gun a blunderbuss (a word I should try to work into more conversations). Cheers!

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holocaust angel

06 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by in Armenia, Poetry, sonnet

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Maybe my problem (I stop, think about
that and laugh. Then) is English. In Paris,

perhaps, I might find a teacher without
students, a great grandchild of the rootless

tribe that escaped Der-ez-Zor. Holocaust
angel, I’ve seen photos of you holy

in a torn sack dress. I’ve seen your bones, frost
white, dug up across Erzurum, Ani,

Van. Teach me French, teacher, then the ancient
tongue. The one that I wish to know. I wait,

I wait, I wait. In English there are none
who will speak. I don’t want to be silent

like a photograph. I wish to translate
this whole dark world into Armenian.

][][

note:

Let’s call this an obsession. The whole problem with wanting to learn a language that no one who lives near you speaks is that it is very hard to find a tutor. There use to be an Armenian community in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but not any more. I know this because in the city’s museum there is a display of a store run by an Armenian shop-keeper. But whoever they were and wherever they went to I do not know. One day I will meet an Armenian-speaker who will love poetry as much as I do and help me translate all the dark poems of my heart into the language I want to love but can’t speak. One day …

wanted: armenian typewriter for poetry

23 Wednesday Oct 2013

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armenian underwood
……….. early 20th century underwood typewriter with armenian keys

DOES ANYONE KNOW: where I could buy an Armenian typewriter? I’ve looked on eBay to no luck. It might seem silly since there are free fonts for the computer online, but I want the machine, with buttons and those crazy insect-leg keys and the satisfying “t-chunk” sound each time I hit a key. Maybe someone’s grandparents have one up in a closet somewhere just dying to be loved again. I’ll send you copies of hand-typed poems, in Armenian. How cool would that be? Cheers!

martyr’s ancestors

14 Monday Oct 2013

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photo by katie aune

I lived near the ruins of All Saviors
Church. If this were an altar for the dead,
worshiped since 3000 BC, martyr’s
ancestors, then I would have prayed and fed
them as I once fed the dead of Ani’s
ruins, across the border, a different
city of ghosts. But it is not. What frees
all these dead from Arcadia’s ancient
curse? They entered into me, sick larvae
in a ripe fruit, and now I can’t leave it
alone. If I could call on some unknown
fury to heal this I would. But fury
and loss is what binds these cast-off spirits;
and now, like them, I can’t leave this alone.

][][

notes:

If metaphors are the engine that drives a poem then the problem with writing about a city that 98% of the free world has never heard of is, like trying to make sense of out-of-date pop cultural references, 98% of the free world won’t get what you’re trying to say. The metaphor, in other words, fails. I’m trying to avoid that here, but I realize that if I need to write several paragraphs in my notes explaining what each reference I use means then … perhaps I need to rethink how I can “talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand.” (thank you, Living Color).

So, as a quick reference guide, here goes:

The poem is set in the earthquake-devastated city of Gyumri, Armenia; a part of the world that archaeologists have determined has been continually inhabited since 3000 BC. All Saviors Church was a ruined church down the street from where I once lived. Ani is an abandoned, ancient Armenian city just across the border between Armenia and Turkey. As a metaphor, Arcadia usually refers to the idea of an unspoiled, utopian wilderness; sort of like what your hippie parents (or grandparents) might talk about when someone mentions California in the 1960s. Needless to say, the 1960s have never been “all that,” in much the same way that modern-day Turkey has never been the cradle of anyone’s crescent civilization.

The photo I use here was taken by Katie Aune.

the path into purgatory

10 Thursday Oct 2013

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… at the midpoint of the journey of life, I found myself in a dark forest, for the clear path was lost.
—Dante Alighieri, Inferno

All roads to Hell start like this, Dante tells
us. The path into purgatory, though,
the ghost realm, is much more difficult. Hell’s
Nine Circles are sick and flash, we all know
Hellz da bomb. Limbo, though, is a bus ride.
We wound through the farms on the Hrazdan,
then north, near Aragats. I had no guide,
no blessed Virgil. I could not speak more than
baby-words. But, as the bus turned the last
mountain pass, there it was spread out below:
empty, vast, flat. A gray valley so vast
it was all horizon. But there—a glow
on the edge—ghost ruin that had survived
the ’88 earthquake—I had arrived.

notes:

Inferno is the first part of Dante’s epic poem Divine Comedy. It is an allegory telling of the journey Dante took through Hell, guided by the soul of the Roman poet, Virgil.

Hrazdan is a river that flows through the Ararat valley, irrigating many apricot orchards and farmland. It divides the city of Yerevan in half. Once, during a very drunken party, a bunch of us Americans went skinny dipping in the river because what’s the point of having a river in your city if you can’t strip off all your clothes and jump in it now and then?

Mt. Aragats is the highest peak in Armenia, forming part of a mountain chain that separates Gyumri from Yerevan. To travel between the two cities required me taking a big red autobus that traveled roughly 15 miles an hour, it felt like, worming its way up and down high mountain roads. The city I refer to at the end of the poem is Gyumri, which in 1988 was totally destroyed in an earthquake that killed 25,000 people. When I arrived seven years later it was still rubble, looking like something out of a war movie.

shadows follow

10 Thursday Oct 2013

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Most people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.
— Elie Wiesel

If my memories could have only slept
in Yerevan; if I would have never
faced the sky’s worrisome slackness, windswept
spirits swept between mountains and further
rocks; if the swifts and skylarks had only
saved me; then telling you of what happened
would be utterable. My skull’s memory
feels like an oak-beam ripped in two, opened
by force. Hesitantly I step forward.
I want to tell you how this all began
but pain is potent and drives everything
away. There is no magic, no numbered
spell to ease this. No. I left Yerevan
and went north, which was all my undoing.