Unexpected Good Luck

When I am bored in Yerevan, I usually go to museums. Yerevan has lots of little museums dedicated to illustrious Armenian writers, composers, and painters. They can be hit-or-miss, but I’m usually pleasantly surprised. Tickets are usually $1.25, and for an extra $5 you can get a guided tour in Armenian. Even if the museum is completely boring, I can at least practice my Armenian with the guide.

"Armenia" by Martiros Saryan.

Today I set out to visit the Martiros Saryan museum. Martiros Saryan was a twentieth-century Armenian painter influenced by Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse. I figured I would treat myself to an hour of colorful Armenian landscapes for an hour before going to Pilates class. To my dismay, the Saryan museum was closed for repairs, and I wasn’t in the mood for the 30-minute trek to another museum that was showing some of his paintings, so I decided to go to the Hovhannes Tumanyan museum down the street.

Hovhannes Tumanyan was a poet and a writer of fairy tales in the late Imperial and very early Soviet periods. As he is considered to be the Armenian national poet, his museum was quite nice, with lots of artifacts from his life, a recreation of his apartment in Tbilisi with the original furniture, and a small, cute theater showing a 3-D cartoon of one of his fairy tales.

Hovhannes Tumanyan
(Image from Wikipedia)

Most museums here don’t have much in the way of explanatory placards, so I decided to pay for a tour to help me connect the dots even though I was running a bit short on time. My guide was a very nice middle-aged lady who made a great effort to ensure that I understood every Armenian word that she said. Maybe it was just because we were in a museum dedicated to a great Armenian writer, but it seemed like the other patrons and staff were particularly thrilled that I could speak Armenian. 

All in all, it would have been just a pleasant way to kill an hour, but things took an unexpected turn toward the end of the tour. My guide showed me a book of Tumanyan’s saying translated into English, which I politely declined to buy as I already have way too many books to bring home with me in my suitcase. She asked me if I had bought any other Armenian books, and I mentioned a few that I had picked up, including one by the late Hrant Matevosyan, a Soviet Armenian writer of novellas about Armenian village life. I’ve been trying to read more of Hrant Matevosyan’s work lately because a friend recommended it to me, and it dovetails well with my long-term interest in rural life in the Soviet Union.

“You are interested in Hrant Matevosyan?” my guide asked, with a significant look. “Would you like to meet Hrant Matevosyan’s wife?”

Hrant Matevosyan
(Image from Wikipedia)

At first I didn’t know what to make of this, but at the end of the tour they took me into an important-looking office that presumably belong to the museum director and introduced me to an older woman sitting behind the desk. Strangely enough, my guide didn’t exactly say that this was Hrant Matevosyan’s wife so I wasn’t quite sure what to do or say at first. My interlocutor started grilling me about where I studied Armenian. Then when she found out that I also speak and read Russian, she wanted to hear all of my favorite authors, especially more contemporary ones (not my strong suit), but she was satisfied to hear that I have read some Solzhenitsyn and Brodsky in addition to Tolstoy and Bulgakov. When I told her that I was leaving tomorrow, she seemed very annoyed that she couldn’t offer me any help at this late date, but told me to look her up the next time I came to Yerevan. Only at the end when we exchanged cards and talked a little bit about the Hrant Matevosyan novellas that I’ve read was I sure that the museum director, Verzhine Movsisyan, was indeed the wife of the late Hrant Matevosyan. She informed me that Hrant Matevosyan’s novellas are difficult to read in Armenian, and that the Soviet-era English translation I had read was not very good as it was translated from Russian. However, she said his dialogue was great, which I can confirm having just started reading a Russian translation of his novella “We and Our Mountains.” In the end she graciously walked me to the door and again urged me to get in contact with her when I come back to Armenia, especially as they’ll be opening up a museum dedicated to Matevosyan soon.

By the time I left, I was sort of stunned at the strange luck of having stumbled into a meeting with a fantastic contact for future research on Hrant Matevosyan. The experience confirmed for me the wisdom of checking out any and all local museums when I'm traveling. Also, it once again proved that a decent knowledge of Russian literature will always pay off. All in all, not a bad reason to miss my last Pilates class in Yerevan!