I wrote Papik and Tornik, Grandfather and Grandson, for you, and I dedicate it to your name, my dear laboring people of the plains. The Hayrik of the Armenians,1 grown old now and turned into a papik himself, was glad to write it, and did not think it beneath him to play the part of a peasant grandfather for a while, as though he had been born in the village of Archak in Vaspurakan,2 had worked as a plowman at the monastery of Varag,3 had gone to Bolis4 and back many times, and, with no schooling at all, had picked up a little knowledge just by listening and by reading books, and now passes on what he has learned to his darling tornik.
And what is Papik's one aim in putting this little book together for you? He wants you to read it, to learn, and to see what you are worth. He wants you to see, and at the same time to feel, how poor your life and your condition are.
You are fortunate, and you live in misery. You own a great treasure, and there is not a coin in your pocket. You are the largest landholder in the country, and you are always short of bread and always in debt. It is you who supply every necessity of life to all the townspeople of the land. From the sovereign down to the humblest townsman's table, you give the bread, you give the butter, you give the meat. You grow the stuff of their clothes too. You give the wool, you give the cotton, you give the flax, you give the silk, and much else besides that I will not stop to count here. But do you know why? Do you know the reason you are kept, always, from all those many goods of your own making? You read Papik and Tornik, and you will understand it well enough. The one reason is ignorance, coarseness, not knowing how to read, to write, to reckon, to manage your own means. And what is the reason you are ignorant and stay that way? Let me tell you that too, and explain it. Listen, so that you know it and understand.
It seems to me you have become a forgotten land, as the Psalm says.5 You live out on the wide plains and mountains, so is it any wonder the city folk do not see you? Your back is bent so low it is level with the ground, and you work like an ant that never tires.
The townsman holds his neck high. He does not see you, and often, oh, he walks right over you, trampling, and you are crushed under his foot.
The city folk have turned into philosophers and men of letters, but they will not stoop to write books for you. Editors and agronomists, I grant you, do dedicate plenty of articles to you, so you must not complain of that. But take a villager's own son, one who through some benefactor's kindness goes off to Europe, finishes his studies, and comes home from the university. Tell me honestly, where does he go? To the city! Not so much as a first greeting, not one visit to the peasant house he was born in, or to his own parents. And suppose you ask him, sir, why do you forget your birthplace, the cradle you were swaddled in?
Look at what he answers. I come from the civilized, cultivated world. My life and my tastes are completely changed. I have light and learning. How could I possibly live among benighted, uneducated village folk who will never be able to see what I am worth? Ah, I remember our house, that hovel, and those vicious, shameless fleas that used to crucify and torture me. So our university gentleman has to live in the city and wait there until his village becomes civilized, until the benighted villagers are enlightened and their hovels turn into mansions. Then our gentleman will go back to his village. And suppose you tell him, do not wait for that long, unknown time that nobody can name. Go now, teach the village children and give them light, and bring that happy day to your luckless village yourself. Have you no duty of your own? Remember the day you stood begging your benefactor. Send me to Europe, you said. I swear and I promise, if I come back alive, to serve my country with everything I have. But no. For the gentleman, the country means only the city, never the village.
But enough about the gentleman from the European university. His objections may sometimes be fair enough. What are we to say, though, about those gentlemen who never saw Europe at all, who stayed here in our own country, and who, after picking up the thin polish of half an education, still turn their minds and the secret longing of their hearts toward the city? Most of them, again, are villagers' sons. Is the fault in the way we teach? I do not know. Is the fault in the tutors and the teachers? I do not know. Is the fault in what the times and life itself demand? Again, I do not know. I know only this much. The moment they are let loose from the harness of school, they run for the city.
I have heard the grumbling and the complaint of more than one village father. Hayrik, he says, I gave my son up to be educated, and I wanted it badly. I wanted him to be the staff of my old age. He went, and he never came back. He forgot what a son owes his parents. Or, to say it straight, he disowned them. And all the rest of it.
This great question of education has plenty of unhappy consequences of its own. If no one thinks of a remedy and a cure, and we let it go on like this, before long we will see this sickness in our schooling open a road of emigration for our village boys, straight from the schoolroom to the city. And what becomes of us then, when the life of the greatest part of the Armenian people is the soil and the land?
Here it is, then. I looked after this for you and got it ready, Papik and Tornik, my dear village people, so that you will love the soil and the field your fathers gave you and never be parted from them, knowing that your life is the soil, and the just and honest earnings of working it. Read that solemn chapter carefully, "Papik's Crowning in the Field." Papik, after wedding his Tornik with cross and Gospel, takes him out to the field and tells him, for a village bridegroom that is not enough. Now I am going to crown you6 a second time, to the soil and the plow-handle, to the gutan7 and to farming. You must make a vow before heaven and earth to keep this crowning unbroken. See, I set on your head this fine crown woven out of wheat stalks. Let our field hands be the witnesses, and our plow-boys, and our young buffalo and our oxen at the yoke.
Listen, Tornik. God forbid it, but 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 slip out of your hands and lose the soil you inherited, then you will die too, and Shushan will die with you, and Papik's house and hearth will be pulled down.
So Papik crowned his Tornik twice over. And Hayrik in his turn sets his own crown, Papik and Tornik, on the head of the whole village people, and prays that you keep this crown from withering. Love your soil. Love the work of tilling it. Love learning and education, so that the sweat of your labor bears fruit. That alone will make your life better and free you from the bonds of suffering, which are the fruit of ignorance.
And one last word, and it is for you, Vaspurakan, my own country, the country I have ached for. I wrote Papik and Tornik for you above all, in Jerusalem, on the mount of Zion, under the shadow of the Cross.8 As you read it, you will see that I gathered the matter of Papik and Tornik from the flowers of the peasant people of the land of Vaspurakan. I tied them into a small bouquet, and now I give you back what is yours.
Breathe in the scent of this bouquet and you will know it at once, and you will cry vash!, well done. Papik of Archak is our flower. Ashugh Musho9 is our flower. The memorials on the khachkars10 of those great, great village headmen asleep in the field of the dead are our pride.
I feel very close to you. Only a five days' journey lies between us. The mountain of the Cross of Varag is hidden from my eyes. I was the Eagle of Vaspurakan11 once, but now I am old and my wings are bare. If only I could be an eagle with new feathers, and fly, and climb the air, and look one last time at my ruined little nest on its high rock.
But there is no use in this longing now. What is left to me is to be near you in spirit, and in spirit to pray for you.
And what is left to you is to read Papik and Tornik, and to remember HAYRIK.
If I die and go down to the grave and can no longer speak to you with a living voice or with a pen, I leave you my book here, a testament and a memorial that will keep on speaking. It has one aim, that the Armenian never be parted from the soil his fathers gave him. The land of paradise is his own inheritance, which the Lord God gave to Adam our grandfather and to his heirs, telling him to till the earth and keep it.12
Notes
- Hayrik, "Little Father," is the name by which the Armenian people knew the author, Mkrtich Khrimian (1820-1907). Papik means "grandfather" and tornik "grandson," the affectionate diminutives that give the book its title and its two speakers. ↩
- Vaspurakan is the historic Armenian province around Lake Van, in the Ottoman east, and Khrimian's homeland. Archak (Arjak) is a village district northeast of Van. ↩
- Varagavank, the monastery on Mount Varag near Van, where Khrimian was abbot and kept a school and a printing press. The plowman (machkal) is the man who guides the plow by its handle. ↩
- Bolis is the Armenian name for Constantinople (Istanbul). ↩
- Psalm 88:12, "the land of forgetfulness." ↩
- In the Armenian rite, marriage is solemnized by "crowning" (psak), so to crown is to wed. Papik's "second crowning" weds the bridegroom to the soil itself. ↩
- The gutan is the great wooden ox-plow of the Armenian highlands, drawn by teams of buffalo and oxen. ↩
- Khrimian wrote the book during his enforced residence in Jerusalem (1890-92), before his elevation to Catholicos in 1892. ↩
- An ashugh is a folk minstrel. Musho is a bard of the Van country who figures later in the book. ↩
- A khachkar is a carved memorial cross-stone. ↩
- Artsvi Vaspurakan, "Eagle of Vaspurakan," is the journal Khrimian founded in 1855 and published at Varagavank. The title became his own epithet. ↩
- Genesis 2:15. ↩