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The Long Lost Musings of Hovik T.

By Eric Nankervis

Two summers ago, during A8 PST, I went hiking in the mountains of the Lori region. As I was scrambling up a rocky crag my foot slipped, sending a shower of rocks down on the hikers below. Rather than turn to apologize to them—I am a very polite person by nature and did feel bad about the injuries they sustained—I became transfixed on what I saw under those loosened stones. It was a copybook. An old copybook, yellow and cracked from age. I picked it up carefully, tucking it in the front of my pants. I had hoped to read it when I returned home.

I couldn’t read it, of course. It was in Armenian. And I still can’t read it. But I have worked with some of my students at the university on translating it and what I have found, well, has been astonishing.

On the cover of the copybook is a drawing of a snow-capped mountain—possibly Mount Ararat. In the center is a boy’s name: Hovik T. It is dated XII 1877–VIII 1878, and in it are some of the most delightful passages I have read since being in Armenia.

Upon hearing of this copybook, a colleague of mine—a professor of Armenian language and literature—requested to see it. After examining it he became visibly excited and contacted some friends in Yerevan. Soon representatives from the Ministry of Culture arrived and demanded I turn the copybook over to them.

I adored the poems I had read and tried to keep the book, but they did not back down, not even after I offered them a 500-dram note. I relented and gave it to them. But by that time I had been able to stealthily make a copy of it in the Peace Corps office. And many of the poems had been translated as well.

Here I share with you two of the translations of the poems of Hovik T., of the Lori marz, written in the late 1870s. The original copybook, according to the professor “friend” of mine, is now safely kept in that museum up the road from the dorms.

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ARMENIAN HAPPINESS

Armenian happiness is a river,
A rolling, strolling path.
On that bright way, it will, my soul, deliver
Full of joy, never with wrath.
Now gently it flows
And the brown banks it churns,
Now peacefully is goes
Looking for [undecipherable] as it turns.
But neither can its end be had
Nor can its headwaters be seen . . .
In the river of Armenian glad
My soul floats in its sheen.

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THE GOLDEN DUDUK

I play for you, Mother Armenia,
With my golden duduk.
Long will I remember you, Mother Armenia,
With my golden duduk.
The solid firmness of the flute,
The hardness of the apricot wood,
Stirs a feeling that does take root
And makes me stand as proud as I could.
The gentleness of the note
When the horn is blown,
Creates a sound much like a goat,
The most beautiful sound that is known.
So blow together with me, Mother Armenia,
On my golden duduk.
Play forever with me, Mother Armenia,
On My golden duduk.

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