Translating The Fool was a labor of love for Fresno native Donald Abcarian

ISBN 0-9535191-8-X

xii + 233 pages, paper, map.

Price: $20.00 plus shipping. To order call 1-800-865-6405 (U.S. and Canada) or click here.

Cover photo: An ancient Armenian fortress across from Ishak Pasha Sarayi, a Kurdish prince's palace in the foothills of Mount Ararat, near Dogubayazit, where Raffi's The Fool is based. The photograph, taken around 1984, is from the Gomidas Institute photo archives.

Donald Abcarian was born and raised in Fresno, California, where his family was settled since the turn of the century. His earliest influences, including the Armenian language, derived from this milieu. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in philosophy and has pursued a lifelong interest in languages and world literature. He recently completed a new translation of Raffi’s The Fool, probably one of the most influential literary works in the Armenian language (originally published in 1881).

Abcarian decided to translate The Fool because of the importance his father attached to Raffi’s works, and because of a personal "national awakening" he experienced in later life when his children showed interest in Armenian matters, and he realized the impending death of his mother and aunt—his "last, most immediate link with a rich past." These factors brought him back to his cherished father "and the world that was most important to him." When he started to translate The Fool he was not aware of a much earlier translation, but when he examined the earlier work, he saw the merits of a second translation and decided to press ahead.

It took around four years to complete the translation, while keeping a steady job and fulfilling family obligations. His wife and children were fully supportive of the project which entailed one mass of "endless, layered technical issues, all interlocked… an ever receding horizon of technical perfection which could never be absolutely attained. It sometimes took weeks or months to track down the meaning of a word or expression. Each hunt was an adventure in itself…" However, Abcarian finally completed the work, though questions remained! "There will always be some loose ends. Maybe the word "sash" should have been "belt" or "girdle." Should one say "police" or "gendarme" or "zaptieh?" Should one transliterate a certain word into English and define it in a note, or just translate its meaning into English. For instance, "Kef" or "fun?" Should it be "Fattah-Bek," "Fattah-Beg," or "Fattah-Bey"? Should one follow Raffi’s word order or change it in more keeping with English? Sometimes it was one, sometimes the other, depending on the intuition of the moment." Either way, throughout this translation, Abcarian upheld "the overarching sense of responsibility for rendering a work and a writer of such great importance in Armenian history as truly and fully as possible."

"That’s by far the most difficult question you could have asked!" he retorted. "I’ve actually thought about it a lot. First of all, I’m definitely no authority on world literature. I’ve loved languages and been interested in world literature for most of my adult life. Some of my acquaintance with world literature came from formal study, some from personal exploration. But with Raffi, I’m much too close to the trees to see the forest. I’m not prepared to give him a letter grade, so to speak. Far be it from me. I’ll leave that to others who have the training and formal background to make that kind of judgement. But I’ll offer this, anecdotally: I have an old copy of Virgin Soil by Ivan Turgenev, which I re-read not long ago. I was curious to see how The Fool compared with it, the point of your question. Virgin Soil is a novel published during Raffi’s lifetime and deals with a similar setting and theme as The Fool, young revolutionaries trying to raise the consciousness of the mute Russian peasant. The style of writing is not too different from Raffi’s. I believe that The Fool is as good and complex a novel as Virgin Soil. It is probably better. That’s all I can say directly to the point.

"Raffi’s style in The Fool has none of the urbane wit, the opulent detail, the intricate interplay of dialogue, the existential doubts that assail most of the characters, say, in Dostoevsky. But he was an Armenian. Armenians were under the gun. They were literally fighting for survival. They were not fallen aristocrats, they were not Hamlets. They didn’t have time for clever and circumlocutious dialogue They were doing the best they could to maintain their culture and way of life. I think no one could have expressed this more authentically than Raffi."

Abcarian would recommend this work to all lovers of literature, and those with a serious interest in Armenian culture and history. "No one’s knowledge of what it means to be Armenian can be complete without an encounter with Raffi." In The Fool, Raffi spoke for the masses and there’s nothing else like it from this period. "It’s an education in itself, and I hope, a moving experience."

Raffi will also appeal to all people who are involved in liberation struggles today. "They’ll find in it an echo of their struggles and the glimmer of their dreams for a better life. They’ll find comfort in Raffi’s passion for justice, and his compassion for the downtrodden and dispossessed." The book is suitable for all age groups who like a good story and an action-filled plot, something new and different in literature.

"I love the opening paragraphs of chapter 5, the description of the valley and the village of O--. I love the debate between Khacho and Tomas Effendi in chapter 13, where Khacho questions the Effendi’s conscience in his treatment of the peasant. I love chapter 22 about Hachi Misak. My father’s father was a caravaneer like him. I very much appreciated that vignette. I love the scene in chapter 40 where the old miserly Vartabed, Grandad, and Vartan have an exchange. Those are some of my favorite passages."

Raffi’s The Fool remains one of the greatest Armenian historical novels of all time—certainly in English. It provides a window into the social history of Armenians in the second half of the 19th century, prior to the Hamidian persecutions and the Genocide of 1915. Much of the social criticism against the Armenian establishment remains as valid today as it did over one hundred years ago. The avaricious, scheming, and conservative Tomas Effendi posing as a patriot, the ignorant and cowardly priest, the docile masses who place their faith in unworthy leaders, and the rebuke of those who dare criticize and dream of a better future.