«1904… THE MOUNTAINS HAD BECOME TONGUE, AND TSOVASAR WAS SPEAKING»…
«1904…
The mountains had become tongue, and Tsovasar was speaking. The village-world of Taron was seized by a spiritual conflagration»…
…«The underground houses were trembling, the phantom of freedom was setting the souls on fire, and the blood was boiling in the veins of the peaceful tillers of the soil.
The inner world of the Armenians was thundering»… (Karo Sasuni «Let Them Remain Alive»)
«Whatever is written about Sasun and its inhabitants is bound to be pages of epic. From ancient days it has come thus down to us»…
«…There is no need to adorn the pages of books with adjectives, to seek beautiful styles and to create types.
It is a world of heroes and of martyrs. There are graves that resemble beating hearts, there are names that resemble a carved khachkar, they are indelible. One may touch, kiss, kneel before them and cross one’s face and say: «Here there are ruins, here there are graves, but here there is no death».
…«Wherever the Taronetsi may be, with every child a Sasun is born in his house, in his son, in his grandchildren.
One day they took their storks and in a flock migrated northward, they met Mount Aragats and nested upon its slopes, and they remained Sasuntsi still. An invisible red ribbon has bound Aragats to Tsirankatar; they are the same people — old man and old woman, youth and maiden, boy and newborn, they speak the same language.
From the rocks of Aragats too they are now making new Sasuntsis; the creating artist is again a Sasuntsi.
People born on the heights of mountains, among rocks, have an unchanging heart,.a hard face, mighty arms, but a kind soul, which resembles God.
They took these hearts with them when they went to Armenia.
There too they found the rocks of Sasun, the stones, the mountains and the kindness. In place of Tsirankatar they looked to Aragats»…
…«The Sasuntsi on the slopes of Aragats too speaks in his own language, as if he lived cut off from the world, with his own manners and mentality»…
«At whichever end of the world they be born and reared, the Sasuntsi is always a Sasuntsi.
I know a Dalvoriktsi forgotten in an unknown corner of Europe; he did not know the local language, his wife did not know how to read and write, the children spoke the Mush dialect.
Every year he would take a local maidservant, would teach her his Mush language, then would send her off — to take another servant and to teach her his ancestral language»… (Fr. Vahan Hovhannesian, Bazmavep, 1974, nos. 1-2).
In 1904 the enemy had come out in a great campaign against Sasun. The Sasuntsis were in armed revolt — going into unequal battle…
Karo Sasuni’s story «Let Them Remain Alive» follows next…
