To the Peasant People of the Armenians

Papik and Tornik — Grandfather and Grandson — I have set down for you and dedicate to your name, my beloved plain-dwelling laboring people. The Hayrik of the Armenians,¹ who has now grown old and become a papik himself, was pleased — and did not count it beneath him — to put on for a while the guise of a peasant grandfather: as though he had been born in the village of Archak in Vaspurakan,² had been plowman at the monastery of Varag,³ had gone many a time to Bolis⁴ and back, and, without any schooling, had learned a little something merely by listening and by reading books, and now hands down what he has learned to his darling tornik.

And what is Papik's single aim in composing this little book for you? That you should read it, and learn, and come to know your own significance — know, and feel at the same time, your poor life and condition.

You are fortunate, yet you live in misery; you are master of an abundant treasure, yet there is not a coin in your pocket; you are the great landholder of the country, yet always hungry for bread and always in debt. It is you who supply every vital good to the whole townspeople of the land: from the sovereign down to the last townsman's table you give bread, you give butter, you give meat; you work the stuff of clothing — you give wool, you give cotton, you give flax, you give silk, and many things besides, which I do not care to number here. But do you know the reason why you remain forever deprived of all those goods you have given? Read Papik and Tornik and you will learn it well: the sole reason is ignorance — coarseness; not knowing how to read, to write, to reckon, to manage. And what is the reason of your ignorance, and of your remaining so in that condition? That too let me tell you and explain. Listen well, that you may know and understand.

It seems to me that you have become a forgotten land, as the Psalm says.⁵ You dwell upon wide-spreading plains and mountains — what wonder is it that the city folk do not see you? Your back is bowed low, level with the earth, and you labor like the unwearying ant.

The townsman carries his neck high; he does not see you, and many a time — ah! — he passes trampling over you, and you are crushed under his foot.

The city folk have become philosophers and men of letters, but they do not condescend to write books for you — though editors and agronomists do dedicate many an article to you; do not complain. Why, even a villager's own son, who by some benefactor's grace goes off to Europe, finishes his studies and returns from the university — tell me honestly, where does he go? To the city! — without first giving greeting or a visit to his native peasant home and his parents. And if you say to him: Sir, why do you forget your birthplace, the cradle that swaddled you? —

then see what he answers: I come from the civilized, cultivated world; my life and my taste are wholly changed; I have light and learning — is it possible that I should live among the benighted, unlettered village folk, who can never appraise my worth? Ah, I remember our house, our hovel, and those wicked, shameless fleas that crucified and tormented me. So our university gentleman must dwell in the city and wait until his village grows civilized, the benighted villagers are enlightened, their hovels become mansions — and then our gentleman will return to his village. And if you say: do not wait for that unknown, far-off time; go now yourself, teach and enlighten the village children, and bring that happy time to your luckless village — have you not a duty of your own? remember the day you stood pleading with your benefactor: send me to Europe; I vow and I promise, if I return alive, to serve my fatherland with all self-devotion — no: for the gentleman, fatherland means only the city, and never the village.

Let us leave the gentleman of the European university, whose objections may sometimes even be just; what then shall we say of those gentlemen who, without ever seeing the world of Europe — here in our own land, after gaining some small polish of half-education — turn their minds and their hearts' secret longing toward the city, the greater part of them, again, villagers' sons? Is the fault in the manner of schooling? I know not. Is the fault in the tutors and teachers? I know not. Is the fault in the demands of the time and of life? Again I know not. This only I know: that the moment they are loosed from the bonds of school discipline, they run for the city.

I have heard the murmur and complaint of certain village fathers: Hayrik, with great longing I gave my son to be educated, that he might be the staff of my old age; he went and returned no more; he forgot his filial duty — nay, it is truer to say he disowned his parents — and so on.

This great question of education has many an untoward consequence of its own. If remedy and cure are not thought of, and we let things continue so, we shall see in a short time that this educational sickness will open a road of emigration for our village youth, from the school to the city — and what will become of us then, when the life of the greatest part of the Armenian people is the soil and the land?

See, then, what I have provided and prepared for you: Papik and Tornik, my beloved village people — that you may love your father-given soil and field and never be parted from them, knowing that your life is the soil, and the just and honest earnings of its husbandry. Read attentively that solemn chapter, "Papik's Crowning in the Field": how Papik, after wedding his Tornik with cross and Gospel, leads him out to the field and says — for a village bridegroom this is not enough; now I shall crown you⁶ a second time: to the soil and the plow-handle, to the gutan⁷ and to husbandry. You must vow before heaven and earth to keep this crowning indissoluble. See, I set upon your head this fair crown woven of wheat stalks; let our field hands be witnesses, our plow-boys, and our little buffalo and our oxen at the yoke.

Do you know, Tornik — God forbid it — if your wife Shushan dies, you can take another Shushan; but when the soil dies for you — that is, when you sell it, or let it out of your hands and are stripped of your inherited soil — then you too will die, Shushan will die with you, and Papik's house and hearth will be torn down.

Thus did Papik perform a double crowning over his Tornik; and Hayrik in turn sets his own crown — Papik and Tornik — upon the head of the whole village people, and prays that you keep this crown unfading; that you love your soil and the labor of its husbandry; that you love learning and education, so that the sweat-drenched toil of your tillage may bear fruit — for by this alone will your life be bettered, and you be freed from the bonds of suffering, which are the offspring of ignorance.

One last word I address to you, O land of Vaspurakan, my longed-for Fatherland. Papik and Tornik I wrote especially for you, in Jerusalem, on the mount of Zion, under the shadow of the Cross.⁸ Reading it, you will see that I have gathered the matter of Papik and Tornik from the flowers of the peasant people of the land of Vaspurakan; I have bound them into a little posy, and behold — what is yours I dedicate to you.

Breathing in this posy, you will surely know it, and say vash! — well done! — Papik of Archak is our flower; Ashugh Musho⁹ is our flower; the memorials on the khachkars¹⁰ of those great village headmen asleep in the field of the dead are our pride.

I seem to be very near you; only a five days' journey stands between. The mountain of the Cross of Varag is hidden from my eye. I was once the Eagle of Vaspurakan;¹¹ now I am old, my wings shed — and oh, who would grant me to be an eagle new-fledged, to fly, to soar, to look at least one last time upon my ruined little nest set upon the high rock?

But this longing is now in vain; it remains for me to be near you in spirit, and in spirit to pray for you.

And for you it remains to read Papik and Tornik — and to remember HAYRIK.

If I die and go to the grave and can no longer speak with you by living voice and pen, see, I leave you my book as an ever-speaking testament and memorial. Its single aim is this: that the Armenian never be parted from his father-given soil; for the land of paradise is his own inheritance, which the Lord our God gave to Adam our grandsire and to his heirs, saying: till the earth and keep it.¹²