DANIEL VAROUJEAN: KEEPER OF THE FAITH IN THE HUMAN DREAM
Armenian News Network / Groong
December 27, 2003

By Eddie Arnavoudian


PART TWO: THE CELEBRATION OF FREE LABOUR AS CREATION
[Part One is available here.]


When Daniel Varoujean was arrested in Istanbul by the Young Turk
government on 24 April 1915 he was working on a cycle of poems to be
entitled 'The Song of Bread'. What would have been his fourth volume
of poetry was never to be completed. Not released from captivity,
Varoujean was murdered four months later, on 26 August 1915. His
papers, along with them the manuscripts of the finished poems, were
seized by his arresting officers and survived only by virtue of a
bribe tendered to an Armenian accomplice of the Young Turk regime.

Published posthumously in 1921 'The Song of Bread' takes one by
surprise. On first impressions it seems to have little in common with
his earlier volumes - 'Trembling', 'The Heart of the Nation' and
'Pagan Songs'. One feels here no throb of inspired and defiant
confrontation with national and social oppression. One hears no echo
from battlefields of political freedom, social emancipation, national
liberation and individual desire or fulfilment. As if faithful to his
claim that 'with each new project' he 'totally replaced the strings of
his lyre,' Varoujean now sounds, apparently, an entirely new chord. In
a 1914 letter to Vartkes Aharonian, he appears to contrast 'The Song
of Bread' to his previous poetry explaining that he now wished 'to
sing of the peaceful grandeurs of rural life' that were inspired by
'the land of my fathers' and by 'the labour of its peasants'. So 'The
Song of Bread' sets out to chart the process that produces 'sacred
Bread', from the ploughing of the land, the sowing of the grain and
all subsequent stages to its consumption at the family table. The
adventure alas came to a halt after the threshing and milling, with
the remaining journey being indicated only by titles Varoujean left us
- 'The Flour', 'The Cattle Shed', 'The Kneading', 'The Oven', 'The
Family Table' and the final celebration 'The Song of Bread'.

For all its indubitable originality this last poetic endeavour arises,
nevertheless, on the very same foundations as Varoujean's earlier
work. If earlier he had considered social, individual and national
relations targeting them with the angry passion of his emancipatory
ambition, in 'The Song of Bread' he sculpts a utopia of emancipation.
Finely etched images of labouring men and women in the full bloom of
consciousness, perception, sensation and movement produce an
invigorating and refreshing panorama of life in its potential vigour
and creativity.  This utopia is however a 'realist' one, that designs
in poetry an imagined world of truly possible human relations when
these are freed of exploitation and oppression.

'The Song of Bread' unquestionably acquires additional layers of
meaning when grasped with Varoujean's other work in mind. But it also
stands magnificently alone as poetry of remarkable ilan and panache.
Flamboyant and infused with passion and sensuality, touched by colour
and moving with a musicality, pace, rhythm and verve that reproduce
the sound and motion of living labour it becomes a joyful, proud,
confident and easy song of free people living a life of free creation.
On a first encounter it is experienced as a rural epic ennobling
labour, honouring the animal world and glorifying land and nature as
life's foundation. But 'To the Muse' that opens the volume suggests a
broader and a deeper significance to the enterprise. Bread is not just
material substance or biological sustenance. It nourishes not just the
body but the spirit too, 'distributing countless joys and creative
vigour'. So the poet defines it as 'sacred Bread' and turns to his
Muse for inspiration to learn the secrets of this sacredness; to learn
how the 'barren field becomes fecund' as it lies 'opened up by the
muscular arm of labour' and touched by 'the swift motion of the sun'.

Through the scope of its endeavour, the dramatic intensity of its
narrative, the power of its searching and surprising metaphors 'The
Song of Bread' flourishes into a celebration of free, unalienated
labour that, as it produces Bread, generates the very foundations of
life and community. Needless to say, as with Varoujean's conception of
emancipation, his conception of labour is not narrow, exclusively
political or economic. Its joyous rhythms woven into strikingly
accurate and detailed portraits of both nature and the physical
processes of labour shows it to be a pivotal, all-embracing and
creative sensual, emotional and spiritual moment of being
human. Expressed in the relation between labour and land 'The Song of
Bread' also affirms the immanent and indissoluble unity between
humanity and nature without which all life's promise would come to
naught.

On the modern reader the impact is immediate. In a world where men and
women are increasingly removed and remote from the land, where labour
is abused, held in contempt and reduced to stultifying,
soul-destroying, wearying servitude 'The Song of Bread' recovers faith
in and revives the ambition for labour as essential creativity; a
faith and a hope that, as Zabel Yessaian would express it, endures but
is forced by harsh reality to seek refuge in the farthest reaches of
the human soul. Moreover the rich realism of 'The Song of Bread's
portraits of our necessary communion with and enduring dependence on
nature cries out against the contemporary abuse of the land that
diminishes not just nature itself but humanity too.


I. A DRAMA OF CREATION

The 29 completed poems of 'The Song of Bread' constitute an unfinished
three act drama of creation taking in the labour of ploughing and
sowing; the land working its miracles; and then those stages that
transform the harvest into Bread.

Following the opening 'To The Muse', three poems - 'The Inviting
Fields', 'The Labourers' and 'The Oxen' - introduce us to a trinity of
creative and collaborating protagonists. The land is a living,
sensitive being and exists in a directly, indeed explicitly, sensual
relation to labour, a relation of procreation. In early spring 'when
mornings now have April's smell', the retreating snow reveals it in
its 'naked fertility', full of 'silent desire' beckoning the 'labourer
to return to its embrace.' The labourers' relation to this land is
elemental, almost instinctive, for, 'strong sons of the fields' they
are wrought from the same essential nature. Beneath their matted
chests 'throbs the heart of the soil', through 'their veins flows the
sun' and 'knitted on their brows in beads of sweat they wear nature's
crown'. The oxen too that will help plough the land and pull the
harvest are companions in a joint endeavour tended and cared for
during the winter months 'like fertile idols of the Temple'.  Touched
by nobility, their 'foreheads are of light' and their eyes
'reflect dreams of calm fields', 'their 'horns thrust down into the
sunrise of dawn' as they plough.

Varoujean does not oppose this trinity of natural forces to that of
the Christian Holy Trinity. But the inference is unavoidable. In 'The
Song of Bread' the whole cycle of life - in its material, spiritual,
emotional and sensual manifestations - flows directly from human
endeavour in collaboration with nature and beast, with not a hint of
external intervention be it divine or otherwise.  In this process
labour is the conscious, organising and guiding force. It is free and
creative men and women, assisted by nature, fashion their lives and
their hopes for the future. Drawing powers from their own inherent
nature and from their relationship to land and beast they bring about
that condition of human freedom and fulfilment first hinted at in
'Trembling' and portrayed with greater power in 'The Heart of the
Nation' and 'Pagan Songs'.

As the protagonists embark on their endeavour their very first steps,
the ploughing and the sowing, already contain the promise and the
foundation for the future of life, family and community. Undertaken in
'the name of the labourer's family table' the poet hopes that the
'ambit of the arm that sows will be limitless'. Its final fruit will
serve to also sustain 'society's needy' and so the poet also prays
that the labourer's 'hand never emerge from the seed bag half-empty'.
Later when the harvest is threshed and piled on carts the grain
proclaims a promise of 'Joy to the cottages! Peace to the cottages!'
This harvest now become, 'a mount of Hope' is 'treasure that protected
within the embrace' of village stores sheds a 'silent contempt for
winter or tomorrow's famine...'

In 'The Blessing', perhaps one of the most beautiful of modern
Armenian poems, the yield from the collaboration of land, labour and
oxen is honoured as the guarantee of life's promise through all
generations, for the present and for the future. The head of the home
prays that when his 'valiant son, the belt to my waist', 'sows by the
sum of his fingers he will reap by the sum of the stars'. For his
grandson, the 'freshly blooming grip to my stick', he hopes that as he
'opens his corn-filled palm a thousand sheep will stretch to it.' A
hand full of corn for his son's young bride is offered with the hope
that in the cots she rocks 'scores of brilliant new dawns will sleep
in glory.' And for the generation that is passing the harvest offers
confidence for the family future and so therefore the expectation that
'the soil in which they will finally rest will have a touch of
softness too.'

In the second act nature plays its own independent role. As it deploys
powers beyond human control, from within 'the womb of mother-earth'
budding shoots of wheat 'touched with the dew of sweat' emerge 'with
pearl in the mouth'.  'Decorating the empty land with the first flower
of the bread' it transforms fields first to 'carpets of green and then
to seas of gold' that 'burst into flame yet do not scorch'. Labour
here acts as guardian to creating, pregnant land.  It is 'the terror
of any who endanger the fields', who dare disturb 'the flow of the sun
or who seek to trample underfoot tomorrow's bread.'

Besides the three protagonists almost the entire universe is drawn
into a single constellation of creation that contributes something to
the labour around which we weave intricate patterns of social
existence in all their richness and diversity. The sun 'feeds the
newly ploughed furrows from its fire filled veins', the rain 'pours as
if stars melted by the sun', 'rich with blue, with delight and with
jewelled laughter' and nourishes land already fertilised by mountain
streams. Trees shade labourer and cattle at rest and field pools
quench the weary oxen's thirst while at the mill 'stones that hug and
gnaw at each other' 'absorb froth to produce flour'.

Beyond that which serves the protagonists directly, nature's wild
roses are 'plucked for village celebrations'. The tulips 'that
decorate the fields of wheat', 'aflame like lovers' hearts', become
the chalices from which people 'absorb the fire of June', drink 'the
waves of the sun', and even 'the secrets of the husks'. Later,
dancing, they will also drink from this chalice 'the wine of passion.'
And as the night sky affords repose in the hay that will feed the
cattle. There is the ready made bed for those like the poet's
'labouring parents' who conceived him 'in a rush of passion' 'beneath
the bubbling stars'.


II. THE POETRY OF FREE LABOUR AS CREATION

Though the artistic reconstruction of the physical process of labour
in 'The Song of Bread' is not complete, its projection as free and
creative activity is as comprehensive as it is profound. In 'The Song
of Bread' labour is not conceived of as divine punishment for
humanity's transgression of divine will.  Labour here is not
traumatised by pillage or plunder. The blood that is spilt on the land
is not that of the labourer but of the snake 'struck by a mighty blow
of the plough'. It has ceased to be abuse of muscle, nerve and
intelligence. It is not experienced as the tragedy that in 'Trembling'
leads to babies dying in their emaciated mothers' wombs or as the
oppressive and exploitative shackles that Varoujean raged against in
'The Heart of the Nation' and 'Pagan Songs'.

'The Song of Bread' is the nemesis of all this. Here labour is
voluntary, self-determined activity. The seed that from the labourer's
palm 'unfurls over the field like sunrise' returns to it and its
community as rich yield. Working in harmony with both land and nature
'not a single bud withers beneath the movement of labour's sturdy
heel'.

This vision unfolds with compelling force throughout 'The Song of
Bread' and particularly so in its remarkably vibrant grasp of the
detail of nature and of physical labour and in its profusion of pagan
allusions. Vivid imagery, metaphor, rhythm and music ennoble and deify
the 'braves of the land' who 'sing along' as they plough 'in lines as
straight as their souls'. They return to their villages standing
'upright like gods' atop carts that laden with harvest appear 'as
moving pyramids furbished with light'. Later the cattle rest 'like
marble idols moulded by moon silver'. Such is not the stance or the
circumstance of serfs and of broken spirits nor of unjust social
arrangement. These are the postures and the relations of people
beholden to none but themselves.

The images are powerful and persuasive for the ease with which they
are seamlessly woven into the most ordinary and endlessly repeated
physical postures of labourers at work. For Varoujean such pagan
references did not serve to applaud any reactionary Nietzschean
individual striving for power over others. In his poetry pagan
metaphor and allusion with its deification of nature, man and beast
and its preoccupation with terrestrial concerns and carnal desires
affirmed instead the rights of all men and women of all nations to
live freely and fully. This affirmation of freedom and fulfilment is
underlined with descriptions of their own harvest stored as their
security against possible adversity and through the association of
their labour with their communal celebrations, love making, dancing,
merriment and then repose and dreaming.

These preoccupations flow forth with an overwhelming beauty in 'The
Cross of Wheat'. If elsewhere in the volume man and beast are deified
in 'The Cross of Wheat' the Christian Virgin Mary is refashioned as a
pagan goddess before whom labour's 'first fruit is sacrificed'. The
Virgin Mary becomes 'the sacred defender' of 'ancestral lands' that
she herself has 'endowed with the immortality of paradise'. It is the
Virgin Mary who in the lives of men and woman and in nature too
'creates 'the bud that flowers' and 'transforms hope to Dawn'. Thus
she is assimilated into Anahit, Armenian Goddess of Fertility and is
appropriated as an icon to express humanity's social, earthly desire.
In the process even the Holy Cross loses its religious significance to
become symbol for society's 'hopes and desires' as the poet weaves it
from husks of wheat and by doing so imbues it with 'the motions of
the field', the 'fire of the sun, the 'sparkle of the plough, the
'energy of my arm' and 'the pleas of my grandchildren'.

Varoujean's vision develops even deeper and stronger roots in the
masterly orchestration of those most ordinary and frequently
overlooked yet peculiarly defining details of nature and labour. 'The
Ploughing' is vivid and sensuous in its apprehension of the rhythmic
flow of labour as it cuts the furrows, leaving them lined with mounds
of soil still steaming with the inner warmth of the land. Almost every
poem is injected with a detail or two that captures something
essential about rural life and labour whether it be the 'darkened and
charred beams' of village sheds upon which 'the spider has laid its
ash covered cloak', the 'cattle jostling and locking horns' for 'a
place at the watering hole' or the 'newly hatched birds balanced on a
hovering branch' and 'hens pecking at corn left by the roadside'.

As the cycle of 'The Song of Bread' flows, it becomes impossible to
dismiss the notion and the vision of free and creative labour as
fantasy and unrealisable illusion, for were it so, it could hardly be
depicted so integrally and so harmoniously alongside the real and
rough detail of the life of land and labour.


III. THE INTELLECTUAL FOUNDATION OF VAROUJEAN'S REALIST UTOPIA

Totally at variance with the often daunting and unforgiving struggle
for life with which labour is associated for the vast majority,
visions of labour as a free and creative activity embracing all
dimensions of human existence are easily dismissed as absurd illusion
or crass sentimentality. Even Hagop Oshagan, a brilliant literary
critic who penned one of the most perceptive commentaries on
Varoujean, dismissed 'The Song of Bread' as little more than a
romantic rural idyll of no artistic value. It did 'not offer' he
asserted 'a realistic' or 'an authentic picture' of the Armenian
village that one reads of, for example, in Tlgadinzti. Armenian prose,
Oshagan concluded, 'has given us some more or less accomplished
depictions of rural life, but not Armenian poetry.' 'The Song of
Bread' was in his view no exception.  (An Overview of Western Armenian
Literature Volume 6, page 200-201).

This rather astonishing and vulgar evaluation masks an unusual and
comprehensive artistic, philosophic and intellectual lapse. Oshagan,
who in his novels proves capable of penetrating the almost
inaccessible recesses of the human psyche, reveals a remarkable
aesthetic incomprehension of Varoujean's poetic excavation of the
creative, spirit enhancing and emotion-generating world of labour.
Unlike Varoujean, Oshagan's intellect and imagination could not in
this instance comprehend anything beyond the immediately evident grind
and cruelty of Armenian village life marred as it was by Ottoman
oppression, social exploitation, prejudice and superstition that
Oshagan himself depicted so brilliantly in his novels both in their
social and in their psychological forms.

'The Song of Bread' is not of course devoid of meaningful, critical,
realist references prominent among them the threat of poverty and
famine. Also chiselled into its gallery of pictures are scores of tiny
details, such as 'the smell of cow sheds that cling to the labourers'
jackets' that add to the authenticity of the rural world that he
recreates. But Varoujean's aim was not to reproduce the authenticity
of the village as it existed but as it could exist. This he could not
through a realist reproduction of the then existing Armenian village
that Oshagan seems to demand. But neither did Varoujean pluck his
vision of 'grandeur' from thin air or construct it by cheap leaps of
imagination.  Rather by peering behind that veil of tears woven by
exploitation, oppression and alienation, he reconstructed the world of
work and labour in a pristine form free of contamination.

That there is here no plunderer, no feudal lord, vicious landlord or
greedy usurer to seize labour's yield or uselessly exhaust its
energies does not in any way render the vision illusory. For in
Varoujean's visualisation and imagination there is nothing that is
inherently contradictory or unrealisable. In 'Trembling, his first
volume, he had already alluded to the immanent possibility of
unsullied human relations as they are expressed in the 'undeceiving
goodness' that flow naturally and almost instinctively within those
relations of filial and fatherly love and loyalty; social relations
born of the very cycle of procreation and life. In 'The Song of Bread'
this notion is enhanced, enriched and branches into his vision of men
and women's emancipated life. Before the predator wields the whip or
seizes the yield or before it is transformed into mindless and
purposeless drudgery, labour, as the first means to life, is sensed in
its creative essence even by the most downtrodden. However iniquitous
the social conditions, its 'sacred Spirit' is rarely destroyed.

As individuals we endlessly measure our experience of labour as mind
numbing and soul-destroying against our consciousness, of our own
stifled creative potential. Socially, this consciousness is recorded
and preserved in song and myth, epic and fantasy, in art and in
science and persists as a living impulse in human consciousness and
its dreams.  Examples are countless. A relevant one that defines an
important dimension of the 19th century Armenian national revival is
from Stepan Oskanian, one of its outstanding intellectual
representatives.  In his short story 'An Armenian Heroine' written
some 50 years before 'The Song of Bread' the protagonist at one point
proclaims: 'I shall go forth and sacrifice myself so that everyone can
enjoy the fruit of their labour in peace, so that the tears of young
children cease to flow and when they ask for bread we do not have to
reply: "There is no bread. What we had has been plundered. They came
and took it...'

In 'The Song of Bread' Varoujean brings vision and this ambition to a
level of artistic excellence that inspires sense and intellect with
the confidence to conceive and imagine in unchallengeable terms a
world of labour as creative freedom. Written as song, each encounter
with 'The Song of Bread' generates new streams of meaning, new channels
for the flow of emotion. It grows constantly into a startling,
sparkling and living criterion against which to judge existing
reality. It stands as a superb magnification of that hidden core of
creativity in labour that demands release from all alienations.  'The
Song of Bread' is the trumpet that announces the alternative to the
exploitation and suffering against which Varoujean endlessly urged the
common people to battle.

The circumstances of the composition of 'The Song of Bread' raise some
important social and political issues, among them the attitude and
progressive expectations that Varoujean harboured for the Armenian
people in the aftermath of the 1908 so-called 'Young Turk
Revolution'. However evaluated, these expectations, shared with
countless other Armenian intellectuals, artists and political
activists, do not alter the substance of poetry which, though arising
from immediate experience and hopes, soared with a majesty far beyond
into independent song that echoes across the ages.


--
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.