Very Urgent : Breaking News - First on your site - New Article for Publication

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A  Book unlike Any Other in the World

Being published in Yerevan - Armenia

 

by

 

Edwina Charles, BA (Phil), BSc (Psych)

 

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News has reached London from the Republic of Armenia that, to commemorate the 500^th Anniversary of Armenian Printing, a most extraordinary book is being prepared for publication in Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia.  There shall be simply nothing of the kind anywhere else in the world. 

 

Conceived by Mr. Artsvi Bakhchinian, the literary editor and project manager, it shall be published by Vahagn Sargsian, the CEO of theHayastan Publishing House, and both the prominent sons of very distinguished fathers.  Mr. Bakhchinian is the son of Henrik Bakhchinian, Soviet Armenia’s most distinguished translator of classical French Literature (Poetry and Prose) into (Eastern) Armenian.  Mr. Sargsian is the son of one of Soviet Armenia’s most important masters of Prose fiction.

 

The accumulation of a massive creative talent in the arts during the Soviet era is what keeps the cultural investment going in the socio-economically impoverished present of the Armenian Republic (typical of all the ex-Soviet Republics).  The Mafia-oligarchs that rule the roost nowadays, are culturally impotent hence infertile.  What culture there is in the former Soviet Union is owed to the cultivated creative fields falling fallow, but sprouting occasionally extraordinary mutations. 

 

Armenia, with its history stretching back to the dawn of mankind (and not only three thousand years, as ignorant American pseudo-Armeniologists think), predictably can still provide the seedbed for total conceptual originality, and original Mr Bakhchinian’s project certainly is, enough to render the projected book unique in world publishing history, worthy as a tribute to the 500^th anniversary of the first Armenian printed book celebrated last year (of 2012).

 

The book in question is a long poem by Professor Hovhanness I. Pilikian, of profound emotionality, commemorating the death in hospital of the professor’s mother, written in English, and published on the Net by Simon Aynedjian, The Founder and Editor-in-chief ofGibrahayer Internet Magazine.  Mr. Bakhchinian, moved by the wisdom and the philosophy of life expressed in the poem rich in self-explanatory classical references, conceived of having it translated into incredibly … 19 other languages.  Professor Pilikian himself is an eleven-language man, but refused to translate any of it, keen on providing a chance for other minds to shine brilliantly as his. 

 

When in the West, one thinks of commissioning a translation, one still thinks in terms of Eurocentric languages … What is extraordinary of Mr. Bakhchinian’s literary Management, is that he succeeds magnificently and gloriously breaking down the barriers of institutionalized racism of every Eurocentric kind with an admirable finality, procuring translations, let alone from China and Japan, but also … African Yoruba, and Peruvian Quechwa … It is precisely what shall make this book the first of its kind globally, create publishing history and become a collectors’ item. 

 

At a press conference, answering a question, Professor Pilikian explained;

 

“  In my youth, British publishers did not like authors to have agents, as they were determined to maximize profits by saving authors from the parasitic influence of middlemen  viz. literary agents who would negotiate higher fees … one of the disturbing social changes in the publishing world today (I have in mind Britain and America) is the fact that the Big Publishers insist on authors finding an agent first … they are happy to pay higher rates through agents, because they are now interested only in total mind control, and domination of intellectual taste they wish to monopolize, confident that their agents  know what they want to publish … it guarantees for the Establishment publishers the behavior intended by Big Brother.  Only a time-old country like Armenia, with cultural roots in pre-history, is capable of such a total originality of conception and mindset.  Messrs. Sargsian & Bakkchinian construction of my book, from a single poem and its 19 language-translations could never be published in our world, except where it is actually being published, in time-old Armenia, where you can visit and see the Homo Sapiens’ very first hieroglyphic rock-carvings (in the region of Sissian, for example)! ” 

 

A major feature of the contents (of the Professor’s book) is the love of humanity that suffuses and pervades the whole of the book in a most extraordinary fashion.  It is a profound book of great love greatly narrated and published uniquely – there just isn’t another book like it in this whole wide world …