"Letters on Patriotism" (continued) - Karen AGHEKYAN, Rachya ARZUMANYAN
The article by Karen Aghekyan and Rachya Arzumanyan continues the "Letters on Patriotism" cycle (the beginning was published in ANIV No. 3 (18), 2008) and is devoted to an analysis of the phenomenon of ethnoscape — the image of one's native land as a key element of national self-consciousness and patriotic feeling — examined on the material of the Armenian and world poetic, philosophical, and publicistic tradition.
Introduction and Methodology
The authors take as their starting point M. Peshiktashlyan's poem "The Lyre of the Maiden," in which the trinity of the concept of "Fatherland" — nature, history, ethnos — is embodied through a generalized image of the Maiden of the Armenian land, devoid of concrete topography. On this basis a comparative analysis is constructed, drawing on the works of D. Cosgrove and J. García-Álvarez, S. Boym's ideas on nostalgia, as well as the poetic testimonies of M. Metsarents, D. Varuzhan, Raffi, Kostan Zaryan, and Hayk Asatryan.
Key Thesis: Two Types of Ethnoscape
The central thesis of the article is a fundamental distinction in the function of the ethnoscape for nations with stable statehood versus peoples lacking or having lost it:
- for the former, the image of the native land plays a conservative, protective role, standing against the challenges of progress (an example being the "landscape of the home counties" in British painting);
- for the latter, the appeal to the ethnoscape and a glorious past becomes an instrument of mobilization before political action, rather than a means of preserving the status quo.
It is especially emphasized that when political subjugation is combined with social disenfranchisement, the patriarchal-idyllic image of the land loses its foothold in reality — hence the specificity of the Armenian ethnoscape of the Modern era, where ruins become not a romantic element, as among Europeans, but a synonym for a tragic worldview (Peshiktashlyan, Metsarents, Varuzhan).
"Reflective" and "Restorative" Nostalgia
Drawing on S. Boym's distinction, the authors show that while Raffi, in his "historical landscapes," sought to awaken an active "restorative nostalgia," fusing pagan and Christian motifs, in the post-Genocide literature of the Spyurk it is "reflective" nostalgia that dominates — longing without the possibility of physical return to lost landscapes.
Against Geographical Determinism
A comparison of the Galician and Castilian cases (García-Álvarez, Rosalía de Castro) with the description of the same Castilian lands by Kostan Zaryan demonstrates that one and the same landscape can receive opposite symbolic interpretations. From this the authors conclude that the idea of "an ideal body for a spirit of a special kind" (Novalis) is untenable: natural determinism leads only to the fragmentation of the Fatherland into local little worlds.
Conclusion
The key conclusion of the article is that genuine love for the Fatherland arises not from a natural correspondence of landscape to national character, but from a historical destiny that unites heterogeneous landscapes into a single, emotionally colored image of the nation. This image extends even to places a person has never seen with his own eyes, which brings the phenomenon of patriotism close to Benedict Anderson's concept of the nation as an "imagined community." Hayk Asatryan's formulation, emphasizing the prehistoric volcanic genesis of the Armenian Highland, is examined as an example of a unique national metaphysics of the people's relationship with its Fatherland.
The article examines how the image of the homeland in the poetry and thought of different peoples works differently — preserving the foundations of some nations while pushing others toward change — and why the Armenian case is especially telling.
Ethnoscape as Mobilizing Memory