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Alicia Ghiragossian
Bill Long 10/08/06
The Pride of the Armenian Diaspora
Alicia is a friend of a friend of mine and is, arguably, the leading Armenian poet alive today. She is a woman of enormous intellectual and linguistic capacity (she writes equally well in Armenian, Spanish and English) and possesses an ability to describe the language of the heart with unforgettable metaphors and vivid images. Born in Argentina, she published her first poem at 16. Instead of pursuing a literary career immediately, however, she decided to get a law degree at the University of Buenos Aires. But the work of law, which exposes one to the nuts and bolts of the human condition as well as the numbing reality of pleadings, contracts, and many other kinds of documents, is more likely to quash the spirit of poetic creativity than nurture it. Realizing this to be true, Alicia soon gave up any interest in law and turned full-time to her writing. Forty-four volumes of poetry later, she is still absorbed in her poetic vision. This essay will present two of her short poems, easily accessible on her web site, to whet your appetite for her work.
Untitled--On Love
"Love is the genius of existence
The opposite of love is not just dis-love
but death itself.
Lovers restore eternity."
I love the word "genius." It not only connotes the idea of "native intellectual power of an exalted type" or an "instinctive and extraordinary capacity for imaginative creation" but of a kind of tutelary divinity which accompanies creation, to guide its fortunes from the beginning to the consummation of life. Love is the spirit of existence, the motivating power, the source of strength, the very temper of the creation. That is why its opposite is not "dis-love" but death. And, when lovers join, they connect this strength with the other (see below) and set time in motion once again--time which leads to eternity.
Love
"I received love with open arms--my Lord
and they remained open.
Open arms
are the prologue of a hug
Open arms
are the sign of freedom
but they are also the design
of a hurting Christ.
Love is not only a chemical formulation
where the attraction occurs
in the rhythm of the blood
where two in discipline survive
in their own substance.
It is the alchemy of a miracle
where souls fuse in the encounter.
It is you and I
beyond a plural
touching a time without boundaries.
It is a universe
of a huge us.
This love
does not allow interruptions.
How can welded souls
be separated
when they have lost
their own shape
in the fusion?
Do not detach from me.
The loves that vanish
are not true love
but mirages.
The love that is
never stops being.
I am your first love
and the last
and the ones in between
I am all the women
whenever you loved
and every time you will
I am love itself.
Tonight I could love forever.
I could cross the universe
mounted on the frequency
of the wildest dreams.
Tonight I could unlock my chains
create a soulmate
with the endless energy
of those who pray
and I could travel through matter
bless the earth
and build a new crown
for magic.
Tonight
I have conquered death.
Of the many themes worth exploring in this poem are the way love opens you to the world, for good or ill; how mutual love adds more to the "mix" of life than the sum of the two can add; how love enables you to transcend the mere limitations of life on earth. When I wrote my book Trusting God Again (1995), I began with the image of trust as a movement of open arms. When arms are open they are the "prologue" of a hug, but they also can expose our vulnerability. Yet, we keep loving; we keep trusting. We open arms, we open our hearts.
Love is the "alchemy of a miracle," that mysterious elixir which yields the real article and not fool's gold. It is "beyond a plural," making the lovers, figuratively speaking, more than the sum of their parts--so that the universe becomes "a huge us." Dropping the last letter of "huge" would make it a "hug us," which is the thought of the first paragraphs. Finally, love, like the spirits of antiquity, "could travel through matter, bless the earth, and build a new crown for magic..." Love, which makes the more than plural occupy the entire universe, penetrates that most impenetrable substance on earth (matter). Love, in its essence, conquers death.
Conclusion
Alicia is deeply conscious of her homeland, Armenia, and not only feels a spiriual affinity with that new, but most ancient, Republic (independent in 1991), but has probably refined her understanding of love by virtue of being so removed from Armenia until she first visited it in the 1960s, when it was a Republic of the Soviet Union. My first awareness of the brilliance and lure of the Armenian culture arose when I met and was befriended by my colleague, Dr. Abraham Terian, at tiny Sterling College in KS in the early 1990s. Now, I have written insurance law essays on the Armenian genocide, and would look forward in the future to a rudimentary exposure to the language. Alicia makes the place live in her large and generous heart.
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Copyright © 2004-2007 William R. Long |