Achieving greatness: Antranig Zarougian

 Vahe H Apelian 

In Latin characters, Antranig Zarougian’s name is spelled in many other ways such as:  Antranig Dzarugian, Antranik Tsarukian. That is why in the ensuing text I deliberately spelled his name in different ways. I dedicate this blog to my mother who was so fond of Antranig Zarougian.

Courtesy Tsolag Hovsepian (see note 1)

One of my favorite books is Antranig Zarougian’s “The Greats and the Others”. I have read it more than once. I have also translated excerpts, if not whole chapters from the book. But I continue keep referring to it every now and then because both of the color of Antranig Zarougian’s depiction of the characters in his book but also, I am particularly drawn by a statement Antranig Zarougian made on an unnumbered pag, right after the title page. It reads as follows: “The Diaspora is an unstable and slippery ground, where the real greats fail to remain great, and the gifted younger ones are not allowed to achieve greatness”.(see note 2)

I have wondered what compelled Antranig Zarougian to make that statement and have it prominently stood out on the unnumbered blank page right after the title page, especially when the book, as the title notes, is about “The Greats and the others”.

The book is published in 1992. It is a recollection of Antranig Zarougian’s memoirs having dealt with those who stood prominent in the Armenian diaspora. Zarougian was a social activist as well and had personal dealings with each and every one of the greats he wrote about. It is fair that I cite the protagonists of each chapter of the book.

The first chapter is titled “Contrasting twins: Shant-Aghpalian” (pages 9 to 61). Naturally the chapter is about Levon Shant and Nigol Aghpalian. The second chapter is called “The Solitary Giant” (pages 65-118). It is about Hagop Oshagan. The third chapter is titled “The Patriarch of the Armenian Literature” (pages 121-169). The chapter is about Arshag Chobanian. The fourth chapter is titled “The Stinging Bee and the Tiger” (pages 173 - 227). This chapter is about Arshavir Shiragian and Trasdamad Ganayan (Dro). The fifth chapter is titled “A person’s picture and the picture of a person”, (pages 231 -257). The chapter is about Hamo Ohanjanian and Vahan Papazian (Goms). The sixth chapter is titled “The passenger and his ways”, (pages 261- 301). The chapter is about Gostan Zarian. The seventh chapter is titled “The Triumph of the plain” (pages 305 - 315). This chapter is about Shavarsh Missakian. The last chapter is more about the others who in their own ways were no less prominent. The chapter is titled “Road notes – they were and are no more” (pages 319-351). The chapter makes mention of his dealing wiht Aram Andonian, Levon Mozian, Shavarsh Nartouni, Arpeg Minassian, Aharon Dadourian, Vahan Yerjanian, Nigoghos Sarafian, Nshan Beshigtashlian. He ends his book reflecting on his visit to Avedis Aharonian confined to his bed for the past one and half decades under the loving care of his loving and nurturing wife, the gracious and the beautiful sister of Mikael Varantian, who had inflamed many a heart in her younger days and of whom Antranig Zarougian remarked that there still are men who look for angels somewhere else.  

Antranig Zarougian was a social activist and had dealt with each of them and wrote about them in a his beautiful prose, in the context of the diaspora of the day and in the context of the greats interacting with each other and with others. In my view only Antranig Zarougian could have written about these greats, not in lavish praise but as persons made of flesh and blood, like any other.

We should bear in mind that Diaspora came about after the Meds Yeghern and the fall of the first republic in 1920. These greats had already achieved their greatness or had already set their course for greatness and continued charting it in the diaspora. They not only led, but ruled the diaspora of their days. The statement I just made comes from the impressionable child or adolescent I was, growing up and getting to know the diaspora I knew and the these greats ruled.

But Antranig Zarougian, unlike the greats he wrote about, was a child of the diaspora. He was born in Gurun on October 4, 1913. In the ensuing mayhem he had lost both his father and his mother and was growing up under the care of an Armenian orphanage when by a stroke of good fortune in 1921, in Aleppo, he  reunited with his mother of whom he said was the unluckiest of all the women but the dottiest mother and grandmother. 

Antranig Dzarugian was the nature’s gift to his nation, a literary genius with boundless energy. He was a poet, a writer, an educator, a journalist and a publisher and underlying them all was his  persona. He was an activist. In fact he was a rebel with boundless energy. As a teenager he was among the few who were chosen from Aleppo and were sent to Beirut to be educated in Djemaran for leadership. Any other student would have acted in  his best behavior to continue receiving his subsidized education in the premier institution, but not him. He was kicked out of the school and departed with Nigol Aghpalian’s fatherly concern for this unruly teenager.

I imagine that Antranig Dzarougian, about whom much can be written, was cognizant of his literary genius and no less rightfully ambitious to achieve greatness and that is why he noted that “the younger gifted were not allowed to achieve greatness”. But I think that Antranig Zarougian missed the very underlying cause. The very reason that the greats failed to remain great he noted, was the very same reason that kept the ambitious, inordinately gifted rebel to achieve greatness. The cause was in his stars. He was born in the diaspora, although in Gurun in 1913,, and grew up in the diaspora and toiled in the diaspora.

Antranig Zarougian passed away on October 4, 1989 in Paris, the City of Lights, he liked so much. I do not think that there is any Armenian who is remotely interested in Diaspora has not heard of Antranig Zarougian and does not  view him among the Armenian literary greats.

Antranig Zarougian may not have realized when he noted that passage in his book “The Greats and the others”, that he was indeed destined to achieve greatness, and he did.   

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Note 1. The picture of Antranig Zarougian is from Tzolag Hovsepian’s album “Familiar Faces” (page 83). Tzolag Hovsepian was a professional photographer but he did not claim ownership of the pictures of the “familiar faces” he took, claiming that they belong to the Armenian nation. The picture is taken along the Mediterranean coast in Beirut.

Note 2: The original quote, բնագիրը՝ «Սփիւռքը անկայուն եւ լպրծուն գետին է, ուր մեծերը չեն յաջողիր մեծ մնալ, իսկ օժտուած կրտսերներուն թոյլ չի տրուիր որ մեծնան»