Why Vano Siradeghyan is Absent from the New Literary Concept: Naira Zohrabyan

Member of the Parliament from the Prosperous Armenia faction, Naira Zohrabyan, has addressed the state educational standards and programs for "Armenian Language for Grades 7-12" and "Literature for Grades 7-12." In a post titled "Why should Vano not be included?" Zohrabyan states:

"The long-named ministry has solved its top issue. Discussions of new literary standards have turned into literary battles. Every day they cut, dissect, and re-bury them several times, while the new ones have been laid to rest online, with the mandatory requirement being that young writers are forcefully made participants in their own online funerals. Those expressing any substantive thoughts were handed over to the adrenaline-deprived Facebook-hating public, and they were declared viewpoint-less, conformist figures with necrotic brains. That’s it. The problem is solved. There are no substantive discussions, and against this backdrop of complete chaos, the ministry is left to bring its sloppy work to conclusion.

However, amidst all this cognitive turmoil, one line caught my eye: why is Vano Siradeghyan absent from the new literary concept? But how could Vano be present in this supposedly super-liberal yet actually narrow-minded and mediocre environment? A friend of mine aptly remarked that the presence of all talented individuals in that concept is a coincidence, while the presence of all the untalented is a norm.

Moreover, regarding those writers who produce contemporary texts about modern individuals and liberties with ultra-modern expressions, dear liberals, even the most conservative and religious texts can be interpreted with such liberal thinking that it might provide the youth with much more liberty and open-mindedness than your so-called 'most hip' literary works. Everything depends on perspective—how we see, perceive, and, most importantly, present it.

After all, it was already at the beginning of the 1900s that Wallace Stevens wrote his famous "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."