The Courage to look into the Mirror: Zaven Piperyan’s Novel “The Sunset of the Ants” in the Context of the Literature of Retreat
The Courage to look into the Mirror: Zaven Piperyan’s Novel “The Sunset of the Ants” in the Context of the Literature of Retreat
Piloyan Valery
Summary
Keywords: literature of retreat, diaspora prose, Shahan Shahnur, globalization, Constantinopolitan Armenian literary school, novelist Zaven Piperyan
Literature of the Armenian Diasporaconstitutes a literature of loss – both historical and contemporary. A persistent motif within it is alienation from the Armenian identity; it is within this context that Zaven Piperyan’s novel “The Sunset of Ants” (1921–1984) is examined. Retreat is conceptualized as a continuation of the Genocide, followed by the anxieties of globalization, under the conditions of which fragments of Armenian identity dissolve and lose their national belonging as a result of cultural and psychological defeat. The text also identifies a “pan-Armenian malaise”: flight from one’s own identity and natural living space, while the space of the “we” emerges as the only possible locus of harmonious existence. Increasingly frequent is the escape from one’s own identity, manifested in a willingness – or forced necessity – to become part of another community.A vivid articulation of this reality is found in Piperyan’s novel «The Sunset of Ants», which depicts successive stages of retreat: the first flight is followed by a second, and then by a flight from the self – a more radical form of loss. Within the novel’s system of artistic convention, the concepts of the “ant” and the “sunset” play central roles. In a globalizing world, the individual becomes a standardized being, deprived of individuality as well as national and personal memory, dissolving into an alien cultural environment. To look into the mirror and see soot on one’s own face is difficult; yet even more humiliating is to appear before others with a smeared face, presenting collective national pain as a source of pride. Piperyan appears to have consciously and soberly perceived the gravest anxiety confronting the diaspora, particularly Constantinopolitan Armenians – the threat of the loss of Armenian identity.