Невероятный разговор о книгах / вДудь

Who is Armen? Who's this no-name? Some time ago at Anfield. We'll teach you how to eat fouaces. How long is this interview going to be? Do you have any questions about Pushkin left? You're stupid! I've explained everything to you! I'd lose a nerve cell. I feel like there is too much opinions. Lyon, France, Rabelais. Overcomplication. Nice. This episode was made possible by your donations. Thanks a lot! If you wish to support our future episodes, please find the links below this video. Armen, you're the most entertaining and original Russian-speaking literature Youtuber. I was trying to define

what makes you original but I would just recommend everyone to go to your YouTube channel and watch a couple of minutes from any video. Everything will be very clear. We can imitate the famous meme and say this: Fonvizin mocked small-town nobility. Pushkin mocked the manners of high society. Dostoevsky mocked the Germans. Gogol mocked everyone. These keys might not actually exist. But is this any bad? In his poem the Waste Land Thomas Eliot wrote: We think of key, Each in his prison, Thinking of the key, Each confirms a prison We would like to ask you dozens

of questions - surprising and unrelated - about literature. Okay? Let's try. Armen Zakharyan 35 years old The host of Armen & Fyodor Youtube channel Born and raised in Yerevan and Moscow Lyon France This might sound mysterious but we're in Lyon because of little Theodule, who passed away here in 1538 at the age of two. Of course, there is a whole bunch of literature-related reasons to why we are here. In 15th and 16th centuries Lyon was the center of early typography. Lyon hosted one of the biggest books fairs in Europe. Lyon is located close to Italy

and at the same time it is located far from the government and from the church authorities - Paris and Sorbonne. Lyon became one of the most liberal cities of the 16th century and the crossroad of the Renaissance. Humanists, poets, writers, sculptors, jewelers from all over Europe would all meet and work here. Coming from Florence, Rome, Milan, Venice, Swabia, Switzerland, Flanders, and so on. There is another river here on the opposite side of the peninsula. There are two rivers in Lyon. Yes. I'm not used to it. The Presquile is the central district of the city, the

peninsula. The great French humanist and philosopher Francois Rabelais worked in the Grand Hotel-Dieu hospital for a couple of years. There is also a personal reason why I chose this city. This was the epitaph to Theodule's death. Theodule died aged two in 1538 and he was a son of Francois Rabelais. Rabelais' friend Jean du Boisonnais wrote this epitaph when he found out about the little boy's passing: Here lies little Theodule. A little man with a great father. Lyon was his hometown and Rabelais was his father. The one who does not know Lyon and Rabelais Misses two

great things about this world. We're here not to miss anything. Let's go and explore this city. How can you get to France? We're going to be talking about France a lot in this episode. The ads will also be dedicated to France. Albatross helps businesses and individuals relocate to Europe. France is open to anyone who has startup concepts, an operating entity, or professional achievements eligible for a talent visa. Albatross would help you write a business plan, collect your portfolio, and all the necessary documents to apply. The application would be filed from Armenia which would boost the

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The laws are getting more strict nowadays but applying from Armenia still works. Albatross specialists would assist you throughout the whole process: from applying for the visa to getting used to a new country. If your application gets rejected you will receive a refund. Click at the link in the description to book a free consultation. Don't forget to use promo code ВДУДЬ to get a discount. Let's go and good luck! Back to Lyon This is Rue Merciere, which used to be the printers street five centuries ago. They cancelled printing taxes here in Lyon and printers from many

countries moved here. Francois Rabelais lived on the Rue du Boeuf behind this church. Back then being the printing center was as big as being an IT center nowadays. Printing was a new technology that allowed to exchange information. The Silicon Valley. Of the past. One of the Silicon Valleys of the past. How many foreign languages do you speak? It depends on what we consider sufficient for speaking. Apart from Russian, I'm comfortable at speaking English, Spanish, and Polish. If you decide to switch to one of these languages I wouldn't be too nervous about it. I would be

quite nervous if you switched to Serbian or Armenian. Is your Armenian worse than your Spanish and Polish? It is. I never lived in Armenia. I was born there and lived there as a kid. I grew up in Moscow so my native language is Russian. My dad spoke Armenian. My relatives would speak Armenian at home. They thought that I didn't understand them but they were wrong. However, there is a difference between written Armenian and spoken Armenian. Unfortunately, I'm quite bad at written Armenian. I can speak some Armenian, though. Gargantua and Pantagruel - why did you pick

this book for this interview? I feel like this is one of the most relevant books today. The philosophy of this book is what matters the most for me. I would call this philosophy aware optimism. Open-minded optimism. Conscious optimism. Conscious optimism. It is aware of all the horrors of this world and it feels very sorry about them. It looks at all the injustice, all the deaths and repressions that Rabelais witnessed.. And it doesn't turn his back on the world. It doesn't hate this world.. It keeps the faith in humanity and the unbeatable love of life. This

is what I find important about this book. For those who haven't read the novel.. Gargantua and Pantagruel is a satirical novel about two giants living in a crazy dystopian world. Is there any information on how Rabelais wrote the books? What inspired him? He was inspired by so-called The Great Chronicles of the Great and Enormous Giant Gargantua book that he bought at a book fair. Some of the episodes from the first novel were inspired by the anonymous book that he read. This was a satirical fairytale of the giants overcoming difficulties on their way. Based on this

myth Rabelais built a monument of the Renaissance literature. There are so many universal problems in this book behind the satirical plot. Behind the mask of the funny giants story. What is the book about? There is a dictator Picrochole who decides to invade the land of Gargantua's father, Grandgousier. This invasion happened for a silly reason. Grandgousier's people wanted to buy fouaces from Picrochole's people and they refused to sell them the bread. So they took away the fouaces.. And they gave them the money. Picrochole decided to start a war against Grandgousier. His army devastated and destroyed villages,

killed civilians.. When people asked them why they did it they would only reply: We'll teach you how to eat fouaces. The right way to eat fouaces, the right language, the right faith, the right history, the right anthem.. This is a pretty old concept. Rabelais mocked this concept. Picrochole gathered the Security Council and his Generals told him they would defeat Grandgousier in three days.. I am not sure about the three days.. This is a metaphor. Then they would conquer the whole France, then Italy, then Spain.. Then they would conquer Germany, Poland, the whole East..Then they would

head to Africa, then to Jerusalem and the Middle East.. And then Picrochole would rule the world. Picrochole was very happy about such plan. One old nobleman asked him what would they do after conquering the world. Picrochole told them they would have some rest then. The nobleman asked him 'What if we have some rest now?' Just like in the boardroom suggestion meme they didn't listen to him. Picrochole started the war planning to conquer the world. How did the war end? Picrochole got defeated and sent to Lyon, where he became a beggar selling some green sauce. Machiavelli

wrote that the Prince who reigns today and dies tomorrow is a very common occasion. Rabelais showed this in his novel. This is one of the hundreds of episodes happening behind the mask of a funny story. A brief trip to Bali From Europe to the South of Asia. Bali is one of the twenty most visited places on Earth. More people are coming to Bali every year and the tourist season lasts for the whole year. Real estates prices are going up, as well as the rent. If you are willing to invest in real estate I recommend you

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a gym, a spa center, yoga studios.. Based on current Breig objects Elysium is going to earn you 12-16% interest. There is a special offer available now: pay for only a part of the whole price now and pay the rest from your rent revenues. Use promo code Yuri to get a special offer from Breig. All the details are available via the link in the description below. Breig has got a YouTube channel where they talk about investing in Bali. The link to the channel is also in the description. Let's go. Back to Europe. Francois Rabelais had an

interesting life. He was born and raised at the turn of the centuries. He was born in 1490s when Italian humanist Marcillio Ficino said 'we live in the Golden Era' 'Golden minds are thriving around us' 'We have turned to ancient texts, Greek and Latin.' 'We are finally translating these texts and reading them.' 'We are finally hearing the Lyre of Orpheus.' This was the mood of the humanists entering the 16th century. They felt like science and arts would finally defeat bigotry. The power of dogmas and repressions would finally be defeated. Humans would become the center of the

universe. Science and arts would help them win. A lot of humanists shared this mood back then. Can we define humanists? Humanists are writers, poets, sculptors, artists, philosophers in Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries who started the humanist movement in Europe. These people would make a revolution in a way the humans were seen. In what sense? Pico della Mirandola wrote the Oration of the Dignity of Man. He claimed that the man was not the measure of all things but.. The man was the center of everything. The man was the center. The philosophers paid attention to

the man. Rabelais grew up in this environment. He studied different sciences. He was interested in everything that he studied. He became one of the best lawyers of his era. He was also a monk. He was raised in a monastery. In the monastery he studied languages. He became fluent in Latin and Ancient Greek. The monks didn't really like Greek because someone reading the old texts was dangerous for them. He was too smart. He could read some heretic Greek books. Most of these books were written before Christianity. Reading Plato or Aristotle was quite dangerous. Later Rabelais became

obsessed with medicine. He became a doctor. He was one of the best doctors of his generation. His youth was very promising. When he wrote the first Gargantua and Pantagruel books he was very hopeful about the Renaissance. The books were a manifest of humanism. In Gargantua's letter to his son he wrote that he was happy to see his child and he would live in his child forever. He would live in his body and more importantly, in his soul. This is a manifest of humanism. There are lines like: 'Printing is thriving now'. We're now at Rue Merciere

that used to be the printing center. Printing was invented by God's will while guns were invented by Devil's will. He wrote to his son 'Don't bury the talents that God gave you' 'Don't spend your time around people that you wouldn't want to be like' This is an advice that each of us would give to our kids. How many years have passed since? 530? 500 years. It's been 500 years. This is very relevant. This can now be published among wise memes. Exactly. How many hours a day do you spend reading? It depends on the day. I

know that you've become a father recently. Congratulations. Thank you. Before you had a kid..How much would you read? I spend much more time re-reading than actually reading. Nabokov used to say that there is no reading - there is only re-reading. You talked about me working with text on my YouTube channel.. One of the keys to my approach is re-reading. I would spend much more time on re-reading the books than on reading them for the first time. I've never measured how much time I spend reading. A few hours a day, I suppose. Do you plan your

reading? Do you have a plan to read for three hours after breakfast? I don't. I only plan my language learning..This was before I had a kid. I liked starting my day with learning a language for an hour. The choice of the language would depend on the country where I was at the moment. I studied Serbian when I lived in Serbia.. Four years ago I moved to Poland and I would start my day with learning Polish for an hour. I would work on the text for my videos and I would spend my free time reading. It's

not enough to just read the book to work with it. I spend much more time on re-reading most important parts. Let me explain you how this works. I read Gargantua and Pantagruel and it took me some time. How much time did it take you? A week? A few weeks. I'm a slow reader. Usually I'm reading a few books at a time. It took me a few weeks to read the book. I was making notes while reading. These notes would take a lot of time to make. Working with these notes takes most of the time. I

was reading Boccaccio and stumbled across a line.. I was reading the Decameron, which takes some time to read. I stumbled across the line: Now long live love and perish war and all that wage it. I liked this line a lot. I like how it sounds today. I want to cite this line, I fall in love with it. I take notes. When I'm done with reading I go back to my notes. I go back to this line: now long live love and perish war and all that wage it. This book was translated by Veselovsky. I decided

to go through Lyubimov's translation. I open the second version of the book. Why would you do it? This line sounds too good. I want to make sure.. That this is an original line from the book. Yes. I want to make sure that it is real. I like comparing different translations. I opened Lyubimov's translation. He translated Proust, who is one of my favorite writers. I was curious to read how Lyubimov translated it. He wrote something very different. It said: Now long live love and the money does not matter. These two translations do not match. Something happened

here. Then I turn to the original text. The original text makes me do more research. The research turns into a thirty-minute long video that I post.. You did a video where you compared all the translations and counted which was the most popular one. 4:4 was a familiar score for football fans. It happened some time ago at Anfield. Exactly. The original texts says e viva amore, e mouia soldo, e tutta la brigata. This is the original text. The war is not mentioned here. The war is not mentioned. There was a Florentine dictionary in the 16th century

that defined this use of soldo as the war. Soldiers and soldo are familiar words.. Soldiers are mercenaries.. So we found out that the English and the Armenian translations also mentioned the war. This is one of the examples of what your videos are about. Yes. This is how I read books. Why else would I read the book if I wasn't paying any attention to the best lines? This is an incredible level of meticulousness. When I watched your video that one of our editors called your biggest video.. Top-10 opening lines in the history of Russian literature. This

editor liked this video a lot. He watched the whole video. Leo Tolstoy was on the first place with his.. Opening line from Two Hussars. I haven't read the book. You showed how Tolstoy placed the word 'when' and decided that he did this on purpose.. He accelerated.. He accelerated and in the middle of the paragraph he wrote about the symmetry. He did. When I watched the video I thought.. When furniture was arranged symmetrically. How could you come to this conclusion? Lotman or other critics never wrote about this. You looked at the text and came to this

conclusion. I did. This approach has been around for quite a long time. Does it have a special name? It has a name. It is called formalism or structuralism. It is also called new criticism. This movement appeared in a few countries at the same time. This movement teaches us to analyze literature based on the text alone. We don't care who the author was, when he wrote the text, what mood he was in, who he loved, and who he hated. We can later talk about the biographical approach. I'm using the new criticism method. I look at the

text and try to interact with its structure. How are sentences arranged? How are the words arranged? How is the punctuation arranged? Is the text divided into paragraphs? And so on. Using this formalist method you can make a lot of interesting discoveries. According to your YouTube channel, you're mainly interested in foreign literature. And it looks like this is your choice. Why did you make this choice? I've never thought about it. These are my views, as Michel de Montaigne wrote. This is what I enjoy the most. Another reason is that I like sharing texts that are overlooked.

I am speaking Russian and there has been a lot said about Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. I feel like Proust and Joyce are being overlooked. This affects my choice, too. So you picked a less competitive field. Not really. It's not about the competition.. Do you want to sound original? Not this, neither. You can no longer be original while talking about Joyce. Joyce had been analyzed for the whole 20th century. I like sharing stuff that people find interesting but don't really realize that. My most popular video now is the lecture on Epic of Gilgamesh. This video has about

600 thousand views. I don't think that 600 thousand people woke up in the morning with a desire to watch such a video. However, I feel like this is one of the most crucial books ever. It is incredibly relevant. I feel like our viewers should be interested in this book. I want my viewers to say 'I didn't know I was interested in this..' 'It turns out that I'm interested in Sumerian Cuneiform. I'm interested in this character's search of eternal life' 'This is what I want to study.' Do you remember the day when you decided to start

a YouTube channel? I remember the day when I decided to talk about literature in this fashion. What kind of day was this? This happened in 2017 when me and my wife went to Saint Petersburg for some time. I don't remember what we were doing there. On this day we were walking around the Summer Garden. I had the idea of a podcast. For all my life I've wanted to work with literature. I had been looking for a new way to do it. I decided to start a podcast. Your first videos only gathered a hundred or two

hundred views. You weren't getting any views for quite a long time. How long? For a few years. For a few years! I have two questions. Why did you continue making your videos? And how were you making money? Why did I continue? When I started my channel I felt like I was doing something cool and original. I can name all my first videos. These are precious to me. My third video was dedicated to a Greek poet Konstantinos Kavafis. I feel like this is one of my best videos. Kavafis is a very interesting poet.. Of what era?

Of the 20th century. He witnessed the Greco-Turkish war. The Greeks had to leave Asia Minor. The Greeks had lived at the peninsula for thousands years. He witnessed these events. He lived in the outskirts of the former Greek world, in Alexandria. Kavafis was the poet of the suburbs and the poet of the defeat. He wrote a lot of the relations between the center and the province. He wrote about victory and defeat and how people shouldn't always honor the victorians. Sometimes the defeat is more honorable than the victory. He had this beautiful poem: The God abandons Antony.

It's a poem about Antony's last hours. Kavafis is a very important figure to me that I wanted to talk about. I made my first videos..If you allow me to tell you something.. In 2018 the channel was a few weeks old and my videos would get tens of views. I told my wife that I failed miserably. You started your show not long before me. You were already quite popular. You were probably very popular. I told my wife 'Yura hasn't called me yet' This was in 2018. My expectations met the reality and this was a disaster. I

felt like my vision was so unique and original that I would be noticed and praised very soon. Anton Chekhov wrote that there was nothing more painful than a failure. I faced a lot of failure and at some point I didn't want to continue. I feel like my expectations from the project, which look hilarious today.. My latest videos are not good enough to be noticed by anyone. Back then I had this weird attitude. I like citing William Golding.. There is a certain point where everything that was done in the past was not done by us. I

don't know what made me believe that Dud would contact me after watching a video about Kavafis. But this is how I felt. I didn't quit not because I wanted to be on your show.. I stopped waiting for your call because I got carried away by making videos. I got obsessed with this job and I couldn't quit. I didn't want to be unnoticed. I wanted people to watch my videos and to subscribe. After about four or six months of working on my channel..It took me a year to launch the channel, by the way. After 18 months

of working on the channel I went the whole way from 'I'm about to get famous' to 'If I get 300 subscribers after six months I'm doing it right' These people are worth working for. I am doing my channel for myself in the first place but also for my subscribers. This made me humble and stoic. I'm grateful for this experience. Excuse me for judging you..I feel like this experience made you a much better person. It did. It made you more realistic. The further we go to the past the less I like the person sitting in front

of you. In 2018 I wasn't that bad as I was in 2012 or 2014. I don't really like myself today..Back then I was really bad. Can you give any examples from 2012 or 2014? I can. What do you dislike about yourself? I can give you an example of the first time when I got humbled. Since school I was a star child. I was a member of the School Council, I was the youngest guy everywhere.. I was a very good student, I was a popular kid. Everything is going fine. Eventually my life got more usual.. In

2014 I went to Bosnia to make a documentary together with my friends. I made a film about the country which had a war twenty years ago that nobody talked about. When I finished the film I sent it out to ten film festivals. I forgot that some of these festivals were taking place at the same time. While waiting for their response I couldn't decide where I would go when they invite me. I feel like you've spoilt the end of the story.. What would I do when they invite me to Barcelona and to Rome festivals which were

happening at the same time? Did you really think so? I did. I felt like my film was quite good. I sent the film to ten festivals and then I received the first reply. This was the Torino festival. They rejected my film. I thought 'They're going to regret this when I get invited by the other nine festivals' And then I got another rejection. I was happy to be rejected because I would have time to visit the other eight festivals. You know what happened next. They kept rejecting my film and they didn't tell me why. Seven, six,

five, four, three, two, and then there is one festival left. I guess, this was the Barcelona or the Berlin documentary film festival.. At this point I was devastated. I got the last letter and they rejected my film, too. This happened in 2015 or 2016..I shot the film in 2014.. I sent it out in 2016 and I received ten slaps to my face. This experience made me a better person. How were you making money? I had different jobs..My wife has always had a job. We've shared our money for a long time. We've been together since 2008.

My wife is demanded specialist. She works with autistic kids and she teaches other specialists to work with such kids. She's making money and apart from this I worked on a several projects.. I worked for beer communities.. Armen was a beer taster. I was a beer taster and I would write posts dedicated to beer production. I was interested in this topic. You were an editor and a social media manager. I was. Sometimes I was writing articles..I was making money from copywriting. Gargantua and Pantagruel is a very dirty book..Wiping your arse with the neck of a goose..

Pantagruel was born from his mother's ear.. His first words were 'some drink, some drink' He wanted to drink. How was such language perceived back then and how is it perceived in France today? When I was reading this book in the university twenty years ago I had mixed feelings. Even though I was a liberal guy. If we're talking about dirty language..This was pretty common back in the day. Mikhail Bakhtin wrote a book about Rabelais and Medieval culture where he explained that dirty jokes were very common. When Veselovsky compared Rabelais to a guy running on mud and

making everyone around dirty he was very wrong. According to tradition and folklore, the boy would be running on shit and not mud. Rabelais would make everyone covered in poop. Feces symbolize the bottom where we come from. They symbolize the physical tomb. The inversion of the top and the bottom in this novel is well explained by Bakhtin. Such language was a norm for the readers back then. It was a norm. It wasn't a norm for prestigious literature. It was a norm for folk culture. Folk culture never was a part of literature until Rabelais mixed these two.

This is how Bakhtin sees it and I like his logic. And now let's state that Rabelais has always been criticized for being too physical. If we read what his contemporaries wrote about him..They didn't like him. A couple of centuries later Lamartine would call Rabelais a poisonous stinky mushroom that grew up in the monastery's backyard. Calvin, who lived in Geneva, not far away from here.. A two-hour drive away from here. In a modern transportation. Calvin called Rabelais a dangerous joker and a dog. Voltaire would call Rabelais the drunk philosopher, the greatest jester. He said 'I am

very sorry that a man of such intelligence used his intelligence in such a way' It makes me think of Griboedov's Woe from Wit. Molchalin tells Chadsky: 'It's sad that such a smart man..' And Chadsky interrupts him and says:'Can't you be sad about someone else?' I feel like this is how Rabelais would reply to Voltaire. Don't be sorry for me. Be sorry about yourself, monsieur Voltaire. Rabelais sticked to physical language because he would always use the grotesque approach. What is a grotesque? A grotesque is a mix of two incompatible forms. A man is a man. A

horse is a horse. A centaur is a grotesque. A grotesque violates the usual order. This is what Rabelais does all the time. He mixes the highest with the lowest. The description of the Theleme Abbey or the description of Gargantua's letter to his son.. He wrote about the higher purpose..The matter of soul. He told his son to study sciences and to become better.. And this was all mixed with Panurge's dirty deeds. With very physical and explicit images. Rabelais challenges the reader. He shows the higher purpose and he reminds us of the city fair, of disease, of

misery, of dirt. This dirt is around us and it is a part of us. He mixes Latin quotes with the dirtiest joke about wiping the arse with a goose. This is how he makes the reader explore the diversity of this world. Pushkin is the most praised writer in Russia. He is not very famous worldwide. Can you explain why? Why are Dostoevsky and Tolstoy more famous than Pushkin? Pushkin is very significant for Russian literature and written Russian language. He cannot be translated to other languages. Dostoevsky's novels are all about ideas. I met two Argentinians a couple

of years ago who were learning Russian. I asked them why they were learning it. They told me they wanted to read Dostoevsky in Russian. This is a common motivation for such weirdos who learn Russian. It is kind of funny because Dostoevsky can easily be translated to other languages. Dostoevsky is all about his ideas and his passion. There's not a lot of language in his novels. Andrey Platonov or Sasha Sokolov are very different from him. I believe that people should learn Russian to read Sasha Sokolov or Andrey Platonov. Or even Sholokhov. Dostoevsky can be read in

other languages, too. I assume this is the main reason why Pushkin is not as famous as Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. He's also a poet. Poets are less popular in translations than writers. At the same time..I don't know if you have other questions about Pushkin. It is considered that Pushkin created modern Russian language that we are now using. How exactly did he do this? This is not particularly true. I feel like modern Russian language was created in the beginning of the 19th century by a generation of Russian writers and poets. Pushkin was the person who summed it

all up and formalized it. He produced it. Yes, he produced modern Russian language. James Joyce didn't like Pushkin. He said that Pushkin was born a boy, lived like a boy, and died like a boy. I don't find this offensive. Sergey Khoruzhiy, who translated Ulysses to Russian and did a lot to popularize Joyce in Russia.. Said that Joyce understood Pushkin like a boy. I believe that Joyce, being the genius that he was, understood something important about Pushkin. I love Pushkin's childish lightness that would apply to different genres and succeed in all of them. He could write

fiction. He could write poems. He could write a poem in prose. He could write a drama. He could do it all and he made it look easy. His simplest texts are in fact very complex if you read them carefully. When was the last time you read the Tale of Tsar Saltan? Quite a while ago. People don't usually read it when they grow up. Only when they read it to their kids. They only read it to kids. In fact this is a very adult text. What happens in the fairy tale? The Tsar receives a fake note

that his wife gave birth to some kind of a beast. Tsar gives an order not to take any actions until he comes back. They replace his order and decide to drown his wife and the baby. Sounds creepy for a kids fairy tale. It does. They are sealed into a barrel but the baby Gvidon breaks it as they are cast on some island shore. Tsar Saltan grieves for a year until marrying another woman. Gvidon stays on the island with his mother away from his father. His father doesn't know that he has a son. This is a

classic Odyssey story. A story of a man separated from his son. The son is trying to reach his father. Odyssey was trying to come back to his home island of Ithaca.. The book starts with his son's journey. Telemachus goes to Pylos and to Sparta to find his dad. Here is what Pushkin did: Gvidon lives on an island away from his father. At some point the merchants are passing by the island. He asks them where they are heading and they tell him they are sailing to Saltan's land. Gvidon wants to meet his father. He turns into

three different insects and sails with these merchants. He sails with them to his fathers land. He looks at his dad and then he comes back to his island. Merrily the breeze is singing, O'er the waves a ship is winging Past the Island of Buyan To the realm of Tsar Saltan. Now his longed-for land so dear Stands out in the distance, clear. Gvidon turned into a mosquito on his first trip. And then for the second trip he turns into a fly. Merrily the breeze is singing, O'er the waves a ship is winging Past the Island of

Buyan To the realm of Tsar Saltan. Now his longed-for land so dear Stands out in the distance, clear. They arrive, he looks at his father, stings the sly deceiver..and flies back to his island. On his third trip he turns into a bumblebee. And Pushkin repeats this for the third time. Merrily the breeze is singing, O'er the waves a ship is winging Past the Island of Buyan To the realm of Tsar Saltan. Now his longed-for land so dear Stands out in the distance, clear. Gvidon sees his father for the third time and leaves again. What happens

next? Gvidon gets married to the princess and when the merchants come to the island for the fourth time Gvidon can no longer sail with them. He's now married, he has a wife. He sends a message to Tsar Saltan inviting him over. And Pushkin repeats this part for the forth time. Merrily the breeze is singing, O'er the waves a ship is winging Past the Island of Buyan To the realm of Tsar Saltan. Now his well-known land so dear Stands out in the distance, clear. Have you noticed any difference? I haven't. In the first three repetitions Pushkin

said now his longed-for land so dear stands out in the distance clear. And in the forth repetition it was no longer longer-for. Yes, he wrote now his well-known land so dear Stands out in the distance, clear. A hundred years later this would be called the Uncle Charles principle. This would be names after an episodes of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The character's attitude had an impact on the narrator's mood. The narrator's style is subject to the character's mood. Pushkin did this in the beginning of the 19th century. While Gvidon was

on the ship the land was longed-for. When he didn't sail the land became well-known. It is no longer longed-for. Pushkin repeated these eight lines four times and changed only one word which had a huge impact on literature. He showed how meticulous he was with his text. Even though it seemed childish and too light. Gargantua and Pantagruel was censored and banned. How exactly? The novel was regularly condemned by Sorbonne. Sorbonne was the religious authority capital. Yes. Before France accepted a Grand Inquisitor by Francis I, who was a very promising young king.. Everyone felt like he would

be the king of Renaissance. A young, handsome, and smart king. He invited Leonardo da Vinci and didn't ask him to do anything for him. He was a very promising king..Eventually he would pursue reactionary policies and prosecute dissent. Before introducing the Grand Inquisitor Sorbonne was the religious authority. Sorbonne would look after the morals in the country. After the famous Affair of the Placards Protestantism became too extreme and liberal ideas were seen as a threat and a heresy. Rabelais decided to adjust his novels. He replaced Sorbonne and monks with some abstract scholastics. The monks in the books

were usually drinking. The Armenian Tsar Tigran was mentioned in the novel because of Sorbonne. Rabelais would list the kings of the past and he would initially mention one of the Carolingians, the great kings of the past. Later he decided to replace all the French kings with other characters. He replaced one of the kings with Armenian Tigran. Rabelais was trying to make peace with censors. One of his characters said:'I'm willing to stand for my principles until the stake' Excluding burning at the stake. I saw your post about this line. Can you help me understand it? He

was willing to stand for his principles.. Unless he would have to die for them. He wouldn't choose to be burnt alive. Yes. This is an example of a trade-off. It is an example of being careful. I feel like Rabelais was trying not to compromise his approach but he was willing to sacrifice something to save his life. And this is why his frenetic friend Etienne Dolet in would be burnt alive in Paris in 1546. While Rabelais would release his third novel. And later he would release his forth novel. Rabelais' character says: don't get me heated, I'm

already warm. Rabelais didn't want to be burnt alive. He would still talk about humanist values, sciences and arts.. At the same time he would try to avoid danger. He would find a way to leave France and wait for some time.. When things got better he would come back. He had protectors among authorities. They would protect him for some time.. When he felt like they could no longer protect him he would go to Italy. He would work in exile and he preserved himself for us. I feel like he didn't have to compromise too much in his

books. He was a radical writer. He did what other writers could not do. At the same time, he would always avoid the stake. This is quite controversial. We tend to praise Giordano Bruno. Who got burnt for his principles. There is a virtue in getting burned at the stake. Following your principles to your death is a virtue but I believe that surviving for your principles is also a virtue. Rabelais chose to survive. He didn't give up on his principles. We talked about physical text..As we were passing by a new cluster we saw Rabelaisian images here. Absolutely.

This is an exhibition dedicated to gut microbiota. What is a microbiota? The way guts work? Yes, it is the bacteria that lives in our guts.. This is an image from the Renaissance. Looks very Rabelaisian. This is France. Rabelais' characters didn't get to the guts. In the second book Pantagruel accidentally swallowed the narrator and the narrator stayed in his mouth for some time. He stayed in his mouth and ate some of his food. He called it a fee. A fee on the most delicious pieces. Do you remember what happened next? What did you eat? I took

a fee on the most delicious pieces. And how did you defecate? - Pantagruel asked him. In your mouth, my lord, the narrator replied. Lyon, France, Rabelais. When he was writing the prologue to the third book, it had been over ten years since the first book. He wrote: after my disastrous voyage ending with a shipwreck I only have my Diogenes barrel. This barrel of wisdom is all that he has. What shipwreck was he talking about? All the humanist hopes for a brighter future and science defeating bigotry were destroyed. They failed. In 1530s Thomas More was executed

in England. They cut his head off. Rabelais' friend Clement Marot had to leave France after being prosecuted for heresy. Another friend of Rabelais, Etienne Dolet, a translator and a philosopher, got burned alive for heresy. All the hopes for an enlightened society failed miserably in a couple of decades. Rabelais went the whole way from hoping for the best to witnessing the obscurity cutting head off. He liked Thomas More, he liked his book. He faced public executions and he faced printing bans. In such circumstances he could had begin to hate humanity. He could had become a sceptic

like Michelle de Montaigne, the great French sceptic. But even when Rabelais saw the bright future collapsing he kept his love of humans and his faith in Pantagruelism. Pantagruelism is being optimistic in the face of the biggest challenges. This is what matters the most to me about Rabelais. You said that the novel Demons had the biggest impact on you. Why? I believe, I was so impressed for several reasons. First of all, because of my age. I read this book for the first time when I was young. They're now labeling many books as 18+.. I don't know

if Demons are labeled 18+..I feel like this book should have some kind of a label.. I wouldn't prohibit reading the book but I would recommend not doing it until a certain age. You've got to enjoy your life for some time before reading this book. I read Dostoevsky's Great Five: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, Demons, The Adolescent when I was seventeen. These books traumatized me for a few years. I tried to squeeze Dostoevsky out of me. His books are not easy to read. He raised the most challenging questions. Henry Miller said that Dostoevsky

balanced at the edge of the abyss. Miller claimed that Dostoevsky's main character was Stavrogin, the characters from Demons. Stavrogin stands on a pedestal throwing his guts at everyone. Henry Miller liked to talk this way but he actually described the book in this metaphor. This book is full of strain. It raises insanely challenging questions about purpose and death and the price of death. Is our death significant or can it be sold for a plate of rice? Is eternal life possible? Do we need to turn into superhuman? Where would this lead us to? You've got to think

about these questions when you're older than seventeen. This is still one of the most important books for me. It is still amazes me. I was too sensitive when I read it for the first time. How do you feel about Dostoevsky being taught in schools? I'm not sure about this. I don't have an opinion. I'm not an expert in teenager psychology. I don't know if Dostoevsky can traumatize other kids. I don't think that kids can understand his books. They can't enjoy his books at this age. Teenagers are not focused or experienced enough to enjoy Dostoevsky and

to learn from his books. Yes, but how can we decide for others? When I was sixteen and seventeen I read almost all of Kafka's books. I did not understand a single thing I read. I had to re-read them all later. I liked the books but I did not understand a single thing. When I was seventeen I read One Hundred Years of Solitude. I didn't understand the book, I didn't enjoy it. But when I read The Golovlyov Family by Saltykov-Shchedrin, a scary book, very similar to Demons.. I enjoyed the book a lot. I was very impressed.

I feel like this is too personal. I feel like we should teach our kids how to read. We shouldn't teach them what to read and when to do it. I'm not sure about it. Do you know how to read? It depends on the goal. What goals can there be? You can read to have a good time. To have a good time. Then you can just open a book and read it. If you just want to have a good time. This doesn't work for any book. If we're being serious..If you want to have a good time

with a book.. You shouldn't force yourself to read if you're not enjoying it. Until some point I would force myself to read the book to the end. I would always read the book to the end. This was sometimes a torture. I wasted a lot of time. I would read Kafka and I wouldn't understand anything. I could have spent my time reading Remark when I was a teenager. Remark is a much better writer for teenagers. And I would only read Kafka when I would enjoy his books, which happened after I turned 25. The Castle is now

one of my favorite books. You should never force yourself to read a book. There are other ways of reading books though. Sometimes you would read to exercise. As Merab Mamaradshvili said, reading in itself. We're reading a book because we want to learn something about ourselves. Such kind of reading requires a different approach. This is not actually reading. This is an exercise. We're in a hospital where Rabelais used to work. Yes. What kind of doctor was he? He was a general practitioner. He wasn't the head of the hospital. He was a practitioner. Every morning at five

o clock he would visit his patients. He lived close to the hospital on Rue De Boeuf. It would take him about ten minutes to walk here. He would visit the patients and prescribe some treatment for them. He would prescribe surgery if it was needed. Grand Hotel Dieu was one of the first European hospital that treated syphilis. When French soldiers returned from Naples they did not only bring the crown but also the disease. Syphilis is often called the Neapolitan disease because it got spread by soldiers coming home from Naples. Symphorien Champier, a humanist and a doctor,

would treat syphilis here. He wrote one of the first articles on syphilis. As far as we know, Rabelais never treated syphilis. You don't like the biographical criticism approach. Biographical approach analyzes the author's biography to show the relationship between the author's life and their works. Yes, this is how Charles Augustin de Sainte-Beuve defined it. 'To criticize Stendhal I need to know if Stendhal borrowed any money, who he loved, who he was friends with.' 'This helps me assess his texts.' Marcel Proust wrote an essay against such approach and asked the question: Why would this help anyone understand

Stendhal's books? Wouldn't it get in the way? Was there anything that you found out about the authors that made you agree with Proust? This has nothing to do with their biographies. I felt like you found out that some writers were antisemitic and supported fascism while being good writers. These are two different things. Studying biographies is interesting and fun. We have to, however, separate the author from the text. We study the author's biography if we are interested in his personality. Sometimes this is a very controversial picture. Charles Dickens was a great writer and a humanist. He

raised many generations with his novels about the good and the evil. At the same time, Fagin, the character from Oliver Twist, is an antisemitic character. Fagin is a stereotypical greedy jew. Dickens calls him a few several times. This is my biggest problem with Dickens. He had such a character in his book. Dickens was called a racist for his opinion on Sepoy Mutiny. This mutiny happened in India and English newspapers reported on mass murders and rapes of English women. Dickens said that he would wipe this nation off the map if he was a General. This is

his personality that I don't care about. It has nothing to do with his texts. David Copperfield or Great Expectations are still amazing books that have. His xenophobic statements have nothing to do with these books. However, creating an antisemitic character in Oliver Twist led to one Nazi newspaper publishing the novel later. I have problems with this. Dickens' life has nothing to do with his books. His life would be studied by historians and readers. However, we should separate his personality from his books. Does this also work for other arts? Last week another documentary about Riefenstahl was released.

She is a classic example of a great artist who supported Nazis. She took advantage of their support. For some people this is a reason to never watch her movies. This is where I draw the line. Do I like Riefenstahl for supporting Nazis? I don't. If her film supports Nazis, I would have problems with this film. If the film doesn't support Nazis and doesn't promote their ideas.. I feel like it is enough to separate the art from the artist. It is hard to do while the artist is still alive. The artist might act like a man-eater

but the art might be very good.. It is much harder for me to separate the living author from his art. When the artist passes away it gets much easier. Of all the great artist, Homer had the best biography. He would be the only perfect artist of all because we don't know anything about him. You even said that we're not sure that he existed. We're not sure that he existed. These books could be written collectively, which I don't actually believe in. I feel like the Iliad and the Odyssey had the same author. Even though this author

wrote the books based on a traditional background. Ezra Pound was an American poet who did absolutely terrible stuff. At the same time he played a major role in publishing of Ulysses. The Cantos was an amazing poem. Was he a Nazi? He moved to Mussolini's Italy. He supported Mussolini. He hosted antisemitic radio shows. Later he was kept in a war prisoners camp where he wrote these lines: Under white clouds, Cielo di Pisa. Out of all this beauty Something must come. His life is the best example of why we should separate the art from the artist. His

poem The Cantos is very smart and beautiful. It is humanist and sometimes violent. It is a very complex work. As a person, Pound was also very complex. Ezra Pound from 1920s and Ezra Pound from 1940s were two different people. After the prisoners camp and the asylum..Many American authors were asking to release him from the asylum. He was a different man again. His texts exist separately from his personality. When the author passes, his texts are left. Francois Rabelais would also do dissections. We have a poem that his friend Etienne Dolet wrote here in Lyon in 1538.

Dolet wrote this amazing poem describing one of the greatest doctors dissection a body from the perspective of the deceased. Cool. The deceased thanks his fate. He was a thug that was hanged.. Back then they would usually dissect the bodies of the executed criminals. After death this criminal gets lucky and he gets dissected by Francois Rabelais himself. This poem was written in Latin and it was translated into French. I took the responsibility to translate it into Russian. I translated it in a 16th century style. Back then they weren't too precise in translations. Translations would only become

precise in the 20th century. I kept the general idea of the poem and its mood but I didn't follow every line. I can now cite it. Go ahead. Latin text: Stygem paludem et quicquid ater Orcus habet, Fortuna iurarat furens, Damnum mihi omne se reperturam et probrum. Quod dum studet atque nititur. Et viribus totis suum in me dirum odium Explet saturatque ut collibitum est, Tibi ecce, puncto temporis claudor carcere, Educor et laqueo miser Mox strangulatus pendeo. At quid non potest Fati imperium contrarii? Ut temporis puncto perieram turpiter, Pari celeritate assequor, Quod vix liceat cuiquam a love

summon poscere. Spectaculo lato expositus Secor ; medicus doctissimus planum facit, Quam pulchre et affabre ordineque Fabricata corpus est hominis rerum Parens. Sectum frequens circunspicit Corona miraturque molem corporis Tanto artificio conditi. Quare quid agat potius, quam ad extensum laqueum Fortuna frendens convolet Et morte finem odio semel quaerat suo, Non invidia diutius Rumpenda? Totus ad extremum cumulor Honoribus circunfluoque Iam gloria, quem monstrum atrox voluit rapidis Corvis cibum esse et flantibus Ludibrium ventis. Furat Sors, iam furat; Honoribus circunfluo. This is very cool. I have a couple of questions. You translated this poem. When did you memorize it? I'm

currently working on a lecture about Rabelais. When I'm working on a text I re-write it a hundred times. And you memorize it. While I'm re-writing and re-reading my text I memorize quite long abstracts. I translated this poem and I memorized it back then. While we were walking here you were looking into your cellphone. You weren't looking at this text.. Didn't you revise it? I didn't revise it. When was the last time you saw the text? This morning? Yesterday? A couple of days ago. Rabelais was considered a great doctor. Not just a writer trying to work

in a hospital..He was one of the best doctors. He was one of the smartest people of his generation and one of the best doctors of the beginning of the century. The majority of our literature knowledge is Western literature. If we see Russian literature as a part of Western literature. Russian literature definitely belongs to Western tradition. What books would you recommend from other parts of the world? Asia, Africa, Arab countries. Can you recommend a couple of books from each culture? Let's try. I would try to pick the books that the majority of the viewers haven't read

yet. I'll start with South America because Spanish is my favorite language. I'll pick Mister President by Miguel Angel Asturias. Miguel Angel Asturias is an outstanding writer. He's lesser known and underrated. Mister President is a novel that is often compared to The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa, a book about dictator Trujillo. It is often compared to The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, another amazing book about the nature of power. Miguel Angel Asturias is not inferior to these authors. He's as good as they are. There is a very good Russian translation

of the book. Unfortunately, it hasn't been published for quite a while. The electronic book is probably available. This is a novel about the nature of power and dictatorship. About the complex relations between a man and the authorities. About a man serving the authorities and having a conscience. It is an amazing book which is very relevant. What's the Spanish word for conscience? Conciencia. Moving on from South America.. I'm sorry..I'd lose a nerve cell if I didn't recall the word. Asian literature. I'll pick The Tale of Genji. This is a Medieval Japanese novel. A few volumes. Needs

a lot of time to go through. You shouldn't rush while reading the novel. There are motifs that go through the whole book. Fading beauty is one of these motifs. Every beautiful person ages and their beauty fades. There is also a motif that everything has a limit. It seemed like nobody could be prettier than this person but there is a limit to everything. This is a very Japanese vibe. This book is a thousand years old. This is a very exciting book. There is an episode where one of the characters kidnaps a girl. He is a noble

man and he has a right to get her. Her nurses try to stop him from kidnapping her. He insists on taking her with him. And there is this line: The nurse put on an appropriate dress and joined them. The dress appropriate for kidnapping. A special dress for every occasion. They even had an etiquette for a kidnapping. Now let's move to Africa. I'll pick Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. This is a book about African tribes facing colonizers. And the complex structure of African tribes. The clash of traditions, the new against the old. It's an interesting

book that impressed me. I would also pick Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Soyinka, a Nobel prize winner. This is a book about the clash of Western and African civilizations. It develops Kipling's motifs..Kipling would have a Western perspective on the clash.. While Soyinka showed it from the opposite perspective. Do we have any continents left? I guess, Australian literature is quite Westernized. Nevertheless, I'll recommend Katherine Mansfield's novellas. Great. Who is the most underrated writer of the Golden Era of Russia literature? There are people who really enjoy lesser-known writers of the 19th century. People that I

admire like to bring up these writers. At the same time, I'm not a big fan of lesser known writers. I'll name a writer who is quite famous. I would like to ask you if you would call him famous. Would you name Saltykov-Shchedrin a top-tier writer? He's obviously a top-tier writer. He worked in a different genre but he's as famous as the great writers. He'd have as much views as them had they had YouTube. Okay. I would still pick him because I believe that compared to Pushkin, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy he is less popular. He is

not as worldwide famous as them. Saltykov-Shchedrin doesn't get translated a lot. Luckily, a few months ago The History of a Town was translated by Peaver and Volokhonsky. These are experts in translating Russian classics to English. They called the book Foolsburg. I can't wait to read it in English. Saltykov-Shchedrin is a very overlooked writer. Especially, this particular book. Karamzin wrote twelve volumes of Russian history..I feel like the History of a Town can replace these twelve volumes. This book tells everything you need to know about Russian history. Glupov town citizens standing on their knees and rioting. The

author writes: they knew they were rioting but they couldn't stand up from their knees. Oh. Another episode. Some servant put a cockroach in his mouth because his lady found it in her soup. She told him to eat the cockroach. He chewed it but didn't swallow. This describes the position that the servants were in. Saltykov-Shchedrin also predicted the military communism and totalitarianism. Ugrym-Burcheev wearing a grey coat trying to turn the tides. It was a scary prediction of what was coming.. Did he really try to turn the tides? I'm not sure about the tides. They were trying

to change the direction of the river flow. Benevolensky, the city mayor, was working on the Constitution. He knew what the responsibilities were. However, he couldn't understand what the rights were. This is genius. It is so good and unfortunately so relevant. The History of a Town is one of the most underrated books of the 19th century written in Russian. When I was preparing for this interview I found out that you went to school a couple of bus stops away from me. You grew up at Schelkovskaya. You went to school next to the sports palace. On your

Facebook you wrote an obituary to the shopping mall Albatros. I guess, ten thousand people who lived in this area and are watching this video are now smiling. There is a person who wrote the obituary to the shopping center. Were you really so attached to this center? This was a shopping center made of glass that had zero architectural significance. When our younger viewers find out that we used to call this a shopping mall they are going to be surprised. This was a shopping passage. Yura, it helped me survive the winter before the global warming. -30 and

-35 degrees was a regular winter temperature back then. On my way from home to the metro.. You would walk through the shopping center. You would walk through the warm center. I bought my first seal ring there. I've changed a lot since then, Yura. My dad bought me this ring in Albatros. I was washing my hands at the university, I took the ring off, left for three minutes, and when I came back it was gone. Some fish might have eaten it and I might find my ring some day. I was in love with Natasha Alexandrova..My first

love was Veronica Kazachenok but I never told her. I would give presents to Natasha Alexandrova. She was one of the first girls I fell in love with. I bought her a present in Albatros. There were selling everything for ten or fifty roubles.. I bought her something that was a little more expensive. I bought my first video games in Albatros. I grew up there. I missed classes in Albatros. When this shopping center was gone I decided to come back to my childhood and write this obituary. Proust-style obituary. Armen & Fyodor. You have been asked about the

name of the channel a few times. You always avoided answering this question. Would you avoid it again? Probably. I'm not going to ask you who Fyodor is. Does Fyodor exist? If Fyodor didn't exist it would be necessary to invent him, as Voltaire would say. Is it true that Fyodor is your alter ego? Not really. We agreed that I can only talk about him in an apophatic way. I can tell you what Fyudor is not. There are three most popular versions of who Fyodor is: Dostoevsky, my cat, or my camera man. All of them are wrong.

Recently there was a new version that Fyodor is my wife. I refute this theory but I believe that my wife is the only person who could replace Fyodor. So alter ego was a pretty close call. This is one of the possible versions. We don't refute it. I asked our mutual friend about Fyodor and I said that this was your alter ego. Fyodor is your editor and your muse..Everything that helps you make videos. I shared this with our mutual friend and they told me: Let me be honest and twisty: he is an artist who spends a

lot of time thinking about new ideas. Do you get it? I felt like I was right about my guess. Shall we stop here? Was this the description of me or Fyodor? Of you. This is a very good description. I don't know who gave it to you. We're talking about Fyodor but I feel like your viewers are now trying to understand who is Armen. Who is this no-name? Let's try to answer this question. Can you tell us about your wife? I met her in 2008. We've been a couple since. She's my best friend. I love her

a lot. Her name is Lyubov. How long is this interview going to be? I can talk about my wife for a very long time. I can also try to describe her in four words. Go ahead. Her name is Lyubov. Lyubov is the first word. And then love, love, and love again. This is a quote from Ulysses. Love loves to love love. You said that this was your first trip without your wife in the last ten years. My first business trip, my first flight without her in the last ten years. You're always taking her with you.

I'm taking her with me because she has been supporting me for all this time. We're a team that can't be divided. In the Cat's Cradle Kurt Vonnegut wrote about a special connection between people. He called it duprass. Does it have a translation? Duprass is a loving couple that cannot be separated. He wrote that a real duprass could not be broken. Even by kids, he added. We are now parents to our baby Vladislava, which is a challenge for us. And she is the reason why I am here alone. Without my wife. How do you feel being

alone for the first time in ten years? This is tough. We have talked about feeling relaxed when your kids are not around. At the same time you miss your kids so much and you want to see them sooner. I should be relaxing here but I miss my family a lot. When we made an episode about Anna Vilenskaya, a passionate musicologist, she picked top-10 songs that she would show to aliens. We decided to make a similar list of books with you. You prepared this list. Top ten books that you would show to aliens. Yes. These won't

be only Russian books. And not only books from the 20th and 21st centuries. The list can include books from any era. What is your list? I decided to introduce aliens to as many languages and cultures as possible. This would allow them to read more books in the future. I picked books in ten different languages. Every book would make our dearest aliens learn a new language. At first, I liked this idea a lot. But later I regretted doing it. I realized that there were so many ways to pick a top ten that I couldn't choose one.

I could pick ten different genres: a verse, a novel, a poem, a play, and so on. I could pick ten texts based on Aristotle's categories. I couldn't choose the approach and my daughter did it for me. She is three months old now and likes to move a lot. I don't know if your kids move as much as her.. Vlada really likes to move. I found out that adults are too static. We like to sit in our armchairs and read books. Vlada likes to move all the time. I decided to tell the story of a man

as a moving object. I decided to tell aliens how a man moves. I picked ten best books about motion. This is a very Westernized list. It is going to miss books from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. You have already asked me questions about such books so I feel like we've covered this topic already. I would tell the aliens about how a man moves. First of all, I would tell them about vertical motion. Moving up and down. Vertical motion is best described in Dante's Divine Comedy. This is a book about going down to hell and going

up to God, love, and stars. This book is all about the vertical motion. There is hierarchy, severity, order. This is what the Divine Comedy is about. Of course, there should also be a horizontal motion. Don Quixote is the embodiment of horizontal motion. Quizote and Sancho surf the endless Spanish landscape. It must be endless - only the author can end their journey. In fact, their journey is endless. They have never stopped. They have been walking for a few centuries already. Don Quixote embodies horizontal motion. Networking, flexibility, the violation of hierarchy, freedom. If I needed to pick

two books I would pick these two. I feel like the combination of these two books is the center of the literature world. The golden ratio. The golden ratio. Lilit Meliksetyan, my colleague from Yerevan, said the following: In Don Quixote the world obeys you. In the Divine Comedy you obey the world. Then we would make the aliens learn a couple of extinct languages. We would tell them about the forward and backward motion. Forward motion is, of course, embodied by Aeneid by Virgil. Aeneid is an epic poem about a journey towards a certain goal. Aeneas is heading

to Latium where he is going to found a new country that will later become the Roman Empire. Aeneas has to overcome all the obstacles on his way: he goes to hell, he rejects his love. The great man stared through the window But her entire world ended with the border of his broad Greek tunic This is what Brodsky wrote in his Dido and Aeneas poem. Aeneas left Dido, he headed to Latium to fulfill his purpose. This book would tell the aliens about human stubbornness, determination, and dedication. There would also be a motif of coming back. This

idea is embodied by Odyssey. Odysseus is driven by nostos - the will to come home. He's looking for his home. Aliens would learn about such an important human feature as nostalgia. They would have to understand why would we miss the year 3007 so much. They would learn from Odyssey suffering with Calypso despite staying with the goddess. He misses something. He wants to go home. Next we are going to move up. Moving up is embodied in an Armenian text written in 1002. This text is a thousand years old. This is the great Armenian text called the

Book of Lamentations, which was written by a monk Grigor Narekatsi. He created this piece of early Armenian Renaissance in 1002. I feel like no other text symbolizes moving upwards as gently and passionately as this book. This is a movement to love and God. I would like aliens to learn Classical Armenian language. Armenians believe that if you read this book out loud it can calm the pain. This is a very beautiful text. It was translated to Russian, English, and many other languages. On the contrary to the upward movement there is a downward movement. It is embodied

by Faust. Faust was seeking knowledge but he moved downwards. He committed one crime after another, one sin after another. He never stopped and reached the bottom where he met these weird mothers. The fall of Faust would teach aliens what not to do. Narekatsi talks to God in his book and Faust talks to Demon. Faust should have gone to hell hadn't Goethe messed up the finale. We have been talking about traveling in space and now we'll talk about traveling in time. We've got six books already. Yes, six books. We will tell the aliens about humanity moving

towards the future. Ulysses would symbolize moving towards the future. Even though this book is based on a single day it predicts the future of literature for the next century. This book ends with a jubilant Yes I will Yes. This book is headed into the future. Aliens would learn that the message can sometimes be in the form of the message. Of course, moving to the past would be embodied by Proust's In Search of Lost Time. In this cup of tea the protagonist soaks his madeleine and he sees the past. It turns out that the cup of

tea brings him back to his childhood. He can now travel in time because humans have memory. This is the real time machine. You can sit on the lawn again next to this hawthorn bush.. You can see the spire of a church in Cambrai. You can go back in time. And finally, after telling the aliens that we choose where to move, forward, backward, up, down, to the future, or to the past.. We've got to show them that we don't actually have a choice. A man is destined to move. We will show this trough the novel The

Bridge on the Drina by a Yugoslav writer Ivo Andric. This novel shows the four hundred years of history from the perspective of a single bridge. People are walking past the bridge, soldier are passing by.. Some people are trying to build the bridge and others are trying to destroy it. They want to keep everything as it was. In the end it turns out that it did not matter. History dragged everyone on this bridge. A man is destined to move in a direction where history drags him. The Bridge on the Drina proves it. And finally.. After proving

to aliens that we have so many directions to move in.. We would show them that moving does not exist. Why did Pascal call a man a chimera, judge of all things and a worm? A man does not move anywhere. Not forward, not backward, not up, not down.. We are all standing still. We will prove this with a compilation of Chekhov's plays. The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and the Cherry Orchard again. This is how one French critic described the Cherry Orchard: In the first act the orchard can be sold. In the second

act it is almost sold. It is sold in the third act. And it was sold in the fourth act. Chekhov's fiction is full of such rushing about. They are planning to leave but they are not leaving. Tanechka is never winning two hundred thousand and nobody's saving the cherry orchard. Nothing's going to change. Doctor Chebutykin will be sitting in the living room reading his newspaper. When we show this to aliens and they realize that we are hopeless I would give them another book. This would be The War with the Newts by Karel Capek. Just in case

they decide to go to war with us. After reading the book they will realize that they don't need to worry. They should just let us do everything ourselves. We will do it all for them. I feel like we've just shot an episode of Armen and Fyodor. Even though it lasted around ten minutes. Great. Cool. I asked you how you were making money before your YouTube channel became big.. As far as I understood, you mostly depended on your wife's earnings. Is it true? Not mostly. I would always have a remote job. The first couple of years

of emigration..I don't like this word..In the first years of our journey I was making more money than my wife. When I quit my job my wife was making more money than me. I didn't make a lot of money working for beer companies. We found this balance. Can you tell us about your wife's job? She teaches others to work with autistic kids. She teaches other specialists and parents to deal with autistic kids. Of mostly young age. She doesn't work with the kids.. She used to work with them, too. She worked in a special needs kindergarten. She's

worked with autistic kids for fifteen years. Nowadays she mostly teaches other specialists. How are you making money now? I'm making money from my channel. I don't know if you have noticed this but I don't have any ads on my channel. You have a Patreon account. And a Boosty account. There are no ads on the channel. I haven't had any ads yet. Is this a choice.. This is a choice. There are two reasons behind this choice. Most of our videos, like the episode about Armenian literature or the episode about the Autumn of the Patriarch.. I can't

imagine interrupting these episodes for ads. These are complete works of art that can't be interrupted. I'm uploading my videos not too frequently. Some of them are not going to have any ads because there is no place for that. There won't be a lot of videos left to sell ads. I'm working on a new project on Proust. I'm making about ten 90 minute lectures on Proust and his novel In Search of Lost Time. Every new video get less views than the previous one. I wouldn't make a lot of money from selling ads in such lectures compared

to more popular videos. I haven't received any offers that I found interesting. I had only one offer that I liked. Most of these offers are generic offers coming from people who haven't watched my channel. They're just buying a bunch of ads. I'm not interested in such offers. I received an offer from a person who definitely watches my videos. He knows what we are doing and knows why we are not selling ads. I feel like I'm going to accept his offer. Since I became a father I've faced a lot of expenses so I'll have to start

selling ads. My wife's salary and the revenue from my Patrons are big enough for us to stay in Poland. Let me put it this way. Why is the Seagull such a popular play? How can you explain this? The Seagull or Chekhov in general? Chekhov is popular but I feel like The Seagull is his most popular play. Wherever I go, Chekhov's plays are always on the posters. I have seen the Cherry Orchard and Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters..And the Seagull, too. I feel like Chekhov changed the whole nature of playwriting. Excuse me for citing James Joyce

again.. Nobody has said this better than him. Joyce said that before Chekhov people felt like a play should have a beginning, a story development, and the end.. Chekhov's plays don't have the beginning or the end. The curtains opened, you looked at the characters living their life, and then the curtains closed. Chekhov wrote his author's notes that were revolutionary for playwriting. In one of his plays he left a note: there is a map of Africa on the wall. It looks like nobody cares about the map. Why would he leave this note? Why does he add that

nobody cares about the map? Sometimes the characters would come up to the map and look at it. They don't interact with the map because it is not needed there. This map serves as a symbol of a different life that they could have. All Chekhov's characters are living pointless lives. They're always trying to change it. They like saying 'We will' 'We will be drinking tea' 'We will be talking', 'We will be doing something' They won't. They won't do anything. They are stuck in this play but in fact they are stuck in life. They don't know how

to live but they don't want to die. This is what Chekhov noticed about us. His plays were very experimental for his times. These plays were daring. He had a mix of characters instead of a usual family. All these people had different last names and it was all a big mess. Some of them were leaving, some weren't going anywhere.. This is what Chekhov's plays are made of. All these little things ring a bell for all of us. It seems like he wrote these plays about us. These characters remind us of us. Us - humans? Yes. And

this is why his plays are worldwide famous. I think so. Chekhov is very universal. He's the most influential - as well as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky - Russian writer of the 20th century. You live in Poland. We do. You have lived there since 2020. Yes. Before the war. Why? We arrived in Poland in 2020. We were moving from Balkans where we lived in 2018 and 2019. We lived in Belgrade and previously in Montenegro. In 2020 we were moving to Slovenia and we didn't get there because of the pandemic. We couldn't move to Slovenia because of the

new restrictions. We started looking for a new country to stay in. We didn't want to go back to Belgrade. We picked Poland for six months. And we have stayed there for four years already. We really liked what we saw there. There's not a lot of countries in Europe that I would like to move to. There are such countries, I've got to be honest. What are these? I think that I could live in a Baltic country. I really like the Baltic sea and the climate there. We live in Warsaw, and it is quite hot there. I

could also live in Finland or Scandinavia. If we ever get invited to Stockholm we are definitely moving there. Did you leave Russia in 2018? We left Russia in January of 2014. Why? We wanted to live somewhere else. We met in Moscow.. I was a student and my wife was born in Moscow. We've always wanted to move somewhere else. For a long time we couldn't afford doing so. In 2012 or 2013 we started looking for this opportunity and we found it by 2014. I got a remote job which allowed us to move to another country which

wouldn't be too expensive for us. At the same time this country had to be interesting for us. This is how we moved to Montenegro. You didn't move for political reasons. You just wanted to live somewhere else. What do we call political reasons? If we agree that Francois Rabelais left France for political reasons to avoid prison and execution.. Then I can't say that we ran from political prosecution. However, we were always worried about the politics in Russia. We wanted to go to Montenegro much more than we wanted to leave this place. This place - Russia? Yes.

Our story is different from those people who lost their homes in 2020 in Belarus. A lot of people were forced to leave their country. Nobody forced us to leave. We made this choice and in this sense we are privileged. Is Ulysses the most important book of your life? I feel like it is one of the most important books for me. James Joyce is the author of this very complicated book. A lot of people don't even try reading this book. You have made 22 or 23 videos about this book. 22, I guess. This book consists of

eighteen volumes. You made a video about every episode and explained them. Why did you decide to make these videos and why is this book so important for you? There are 18 episodes in the book. I made a video for each of these episodes. I made this Ulysses guide. Why did I do it? At some point I felt like I started my channel to do this project. I've had this idea for quite a while. This book is the best example of the role of a literary form. Here is what Joyce did. He swapped the form with

the content. When you describe this book based on its content..It's kind of disappointing. A day in the life of Leopold Bloom, a Jewish man living in Dublin. He walks around the city..Couldn't he make it shorter? This novel is not about the content. It's about the structure. It is hard to read because we are used to reading books based on their content. This book is very bulky and you get lost in the plot. The author doesn't care about the plot. Why did I want to talk about this? Using structure as a message has always seemed interesting

to me. This is what we do on our channel. Don't you think that this book was written for experts and not for regular readers? Let's think of an educated man who likes reading. Would he be able to enjoy the form? He's not educated enough to enjoy it. It's true. Do you see any problem about it? I don't. I'm just thinking about it.. Did Joyce realize who he was writing this book for? Did he care about it? Joyce did it for his legacy. This was his purpose. Joyce was very well educated by Jesuits. He lived in

Dublin and he went to Trinity College. Can we explain what Jesuits school is? He went to a Jesuit college. This is a catholic school. He was indoctrinated.. Can we explain what being indoctrinated is? He was a religious young man. He was well aware of the religious hierarchy. He knew the dogmas. Soon he got disappointed in religion. He suggested his own system to replace religion. In this system the artist replaces God. Joyce applied his religious knowledge to arts. Arts became his spiritual exercise. He would do it for the rest of his life. Did he know what

he was doing when he wrote Ulysses? Of course, he did. This book was too complicated even for the smartest people of that time. Even Ezra Pound admitted that his titanic mind wanted to take a break while reading the book. He wanted a break at least for one paragraph. Joyce suffered when he wrote the book. It took all the energy from him. He worked on this book in very challenging conditions. He wasn't working from his office in his luxurious flat. He wasn't overcomplicating everything to have fun. He wrote the most complicated episodes of the novel, the

fourteenth and the fifteenth episodes, in 1918 in Trieste. He arrived in Trieste after World War I and stayed in a flat next to a brothel. He shared the flat with other people. His kids had to sleep on folding beds. He had to wear his brother's suit and his son's shoes. He didn't have enough money to buy a new suit. At the same time he was working on the fifteenth episode of Ulysses. In the fourteenth episode he described the entire history of the English language. He wasn't doing it for fun. It wasn't a walk in the

park. It was a religious exercise for him. This was the choice that he made. Ulysses is a very popular book even though it is very complicated. There are statues of Joyce all over the world. There is a statue in Moscow in the foreign literature library.. Yes, probably. You said that you saw the most unusual statue of Joyce in Ljubljana. Can you tell us about this statue? Joyce was on a train to Trieste.. Trieste is a town in Italy. Yes, and by mistake Joyce left the train in Ljubljana. He left the train one or two hours

early. He headed towards the city and realized that he had made a mistake. He went back to the train station and laid on a bench. The train arrived and he left Ljubljana after accidentally spending a couple of hours there. Ljubljana was funny enough to make a statue of these events. They made a surrealistic statue of James Joyce and some fish heads.. This is how Ljubljana noted his visit to their city. I think that this is a great example of a post-modernistic statue. Exactly. Joyce would have loved it. Cool. After releasing Ulysses series you received a

lot of messages. Here is one of them: Hello, Armen. My name is Ruslana and I live in Severodonetsk. This city is now being destroyed. I'm almost sixteen years old. A year ago I finished reading Ulysses. You were there but you wouldn't remember it. I was writing in my Ulysses diary that burned down in my room. My Itaka burned down, too. What other messages did you receive? I receive a lot of different messages. This letter from Ruslana is one of the most significant ones. I really appreciate the Ulysses community. Sergey Khoruzhyi introduced a term Joycefield. People

who enjoy Joyce are in this field. It turned out that Joycefield is so magnetic that it can overcome any obstacles, including the war. Viewers who were reading Ulysses with me in 2021..Our Ukrainian viewers.. In 2022 they would reach out to me. We were in touch with them when the war began. Even though a lot of Ukrainians would leave such relations in the past for clear reasons. We had a lot of Joyce enjoyers from all over the world in our community. Not only from Russia and Ukraine but also from Belarus, Armenia, Europe, the US, and the

UK. This connection proved to be very strong. It overcame the insurmountable. After going through this book, which is a big challenge, you learn something about yourself and others who did the same. You are now connected forever. It turns out that this connection cannot be broken. This is what matters the most to me. Jose Vergara, a researcher from America, also joined our Joycefield. He translated Ruslana's letter to English. Later I received a review of a British reader of Ulysses.. Jose Vergara published the letter on an English-speaking website and this woman wrote a review of the letter.

Joycefield overcomes everything and it's magic. This book has a huge fanbase. I found out about the Bloomsday. Yes, the Bloomsday. It is celebrated on June 16 because the book takes place on June 16. This day is celebrated every year in many cities around the world. Dublin hosts the biggest celebration. They're following the Leopold Bloom route. They're following his route. It's crazy. This book turned into a popular event. It did. You said you watched tik-tok to get rid of perfectionism. What did you mean? As far as I know, tiktokers have to upload lots of videos and

wait for one of them to go viral. You can't be a perfectionist if you're a tiktoker. It doesn't make sense. The algorithms encourage you to upload more videos and to see what happens next. I'm a perfectionist and I'm trying to do everything perfectly. Tik-tok helps me learn about other approaches. I know that a lot of people would feel like Joyce overcomplicated the book. Overcomplicating for the sake of overcomplicating. You said that you felt this way, too. I feel like you made a good point. He was accused of overcomplicating while he was still alive. Herbert Wells

told him that he was a very talented writer who took the wrong path. You would be left alone because nobody would understand you, he said. James Joyce didn't listen to him. Bernard Shaw mocked Ulysses and wrote that he didn't have to read the book because he had lived in Ireland. He read a couple of episodes and he decided not to comment on those. Herbert Wells really cared about Joyce. He was right about Joyce. Joyce overcomplicated his texts because he couldn't write in any other way. This was his true style. The artist was the center of

his world. He couldn't do it any other way and his lives proved this. If overcomplicating was a trick he wouldn't use it all the time. Joyce failed to adjust his style to the mainstream. It ended in a tragedy. Do you know what he wrote after Ulysses? I don't. He worked on a single book for almost twenty years. This book is called Finnegan's Wake. It couldn't get more complicated than this book. The fourteenth episode of Ulysses is dedicated to the history of the English language. He completes English language in this episode. In Finnegan's Wake he completes

literature. Let me cite a line in Russian translation: The translation is very relative, you'll understand why. [Words make no sense] This is a line from Finnegan's Wake. If I'm not mistaken this is the translation by Andrey Rene. He wrote the whole book in this way. It cannot be translated. It can only be recreated. Every translator would have to re-write the whole book. Even the name of the book has two meanings.. The book's wake. Finnegan's wake or also the awakening. Finnegans are awakening. Or you can read this as Fin Again. The repeating finale. He mixed a

lot of languages in this book. There is a chapter that is mostly consists of the names of rivers. In Russian translation it sounds like this: [Word play making no sense] Dnipro, Dvina, Ganges, and Mississippi. The names of these rivers create some meaning. James Joyce was sitting in his flat in Paris with his wife.. He's moved seventeen times in Paris alone. He never had a home. He would start laughing in the middle of the night. His wife would ask him why he was laughing. And he said 'The kids in India are going to be happy when

they see the name of their river in my book' He was so delusional that he believed that people in India would read his book. To this day this book is only read by researchers. Only by the people willing to spend their lives studying it. This book is much more complicated than Ulysses. Ulysses is just a walk around Dublin compared to Finnegan's Wake. Joyce didn't realize this. And because of this his life ended tragically. In 1939..do you have any associations with 1939? The beginning of World War II. A few months before the war began James Joyce

released Finnegan's Wake. He was shocked by the lake of response that the book received. Nobody would read this book in a peaceful time. In 1939 the world was waiting for a war but Joyce didn't care about it. He only cared about his book. He said: They need to leave Poland alone and read Finnegan's Wake. He said: you are fools, I warned you! My book is a prophecy. It is called Finnegan's Wake! The Finnish fighting the USSR was the Finnegan's Wake! My prophecy was real! Read my book and find all the answers! Did he really say

this about Finland? He did say this in his letter. His world revolved around his books. He wrote the most complicated book of his life. He spent almost twenty years working on it. And nobody read the book. The war began and Joyce left Paris. He moved to a small town. He was wearing a long coat and carrying a white cane. He was going blind. He had rocks in his pockets that he would throw at stray dogs. He was abandoned by everyone. His last work was a flop. He became grumpy. He didn't want to wake up from

his bed. He moved to Switzerland where he died soon. Mikhail Shishkin wrote an amazing article More than Joyce. This is an article about Joyce's last months and last days. He took this path because he couldn't do it any other way. I'm so sorry that he published the book before the war began. Had the war started a little earlier, the book wouldn't had been published for some reason. The publishers wouldn't publish it.. And Joyce would move to Switzerland and he wouldn't be sick because of the disaster that the book turned out to be. When the book

was published there were only a couple of reviews written about it. Hadn't this all happened to him he wouldn't be drinking again. He would probably survive the war and publish the book later. This book was crucial for him. It's a bold assumption but I feel like this book would be a response to the horrors of the war. Adorno said that there could be no poetry after Auschwitz. The only poetry that would be possible after Auschwitz would be from Finnegan's Wake. We would have no other words left after going trough hell. I'm very sorry that his

life ended this way. The alternate reality where Finnegan's Wake was well received, unfortunately, didn't happen. Joyce told his wife that Indian kids would be happy to see Ganges mentioned in the book.. While you made a DIY documentary about Bosnia and were planning to go to all documentary festivals.. Sounds quite similar, doesn't it? It does. We're very different because he was one of the greatest minds of all time. I will never be one. I'm also too Armenian and too Latino. I'm going in another direction. I'm much more down-to-earth than Joyce. Unfortunately..Or luckily. I am lucky to

have a real Armenian father that William Saroyan never had. I inherited his exciting love of life. This is why Francois Rabelais is so important to me. His texts spread this love of life. About life growing through diversity. I'm not going to follow Joyce's path. Is it true that you never talked about politics before 2022? I tried to not make any statements before 2022. I hardly made any statements. When the war began you made a statement. You made this statement saying that this is a criminal war and should be immediately stopped. Why did you make this

statement? Let's break this into two questions. The first is why I didn't make any statements before 2022. I felt like I reduced entropy by not making statements. I believe that there is too much opinion in the world that we live in. Everyone's sharing their opinion on everything. Not everyone. A lot of people are. Okay. Nothing, nowhere and not always. Something, sometimes, somewhere. It is true. I feel like there is too much opinion in this world. It is too much for me. Some of the viewers would agree with me. Absolutely. I had an opinion on Covid

restrictions that I didn't want to share. I didn't make a single post about the restrictions. I only wrote a funny text on how the writers from the past would comment on covid restrictions. I decided to start with myself. For some time I managed to stay silent. What changed in 2022? At some point I saw a quote that I liked a lot. I think it was a quote of Pisemsky from the 19th century. A desire to speak out is always stronger than the desire to learn something new. I decided to learn something new every time when

felt the urge to speak out. Oh.. I liked this rule. I was speaking out with my videos. When I made an episode about Kafka's The Trial in 2020 I shot it after the protests in Belarus. This episode is full of horror of dictatorship trying to restrict you. People asked me if this is was my response to the events in Belarus. This wasn't a statement. But it was related to the events. This atmosphere was in the air and it affected my work. Here is what changed in 2022: I had a huge marathon on my channel in

2021 where we were reading Ulysses. A big part of our viewers was Ukrainian. From 20 to 30% of people who took part in this marathon lived in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Odessa, and other cities of Ukraine. When the big war started on February 24, 2022 I realized that these people would consider my silence as betrayal or cowardice. They needed to hear my statement. This is why I could no longer stay silent. My audience grew quite significantly during the Joyce project. I didn't have to speak out while I had five, ten, of fifteen thousand subscribers. As my

channel grew it became harder for me to not speak out. I'm still trying not to talk too much. I don't want to hurt my viewers. You're more responsible now. The more followers you have, the more responsible you are for your silence. I guess. I feel responsible for my viewers who expect me to speak out. The lack of a statement hurts them. As Aristotle wrote, nature abhors a vacuum. The disaster that happened in 2022, the Karabakh disaster in 2023..My viewers are hurt when I don't say anything about these events. It might be very clear even if

I don't speak out. I don't have to say this out loud. But I know that this is important and I don't want to let them down. By staying silent. In the beginning of the war you volunteered in a refugee center. Where was it and what did you do there? This was a grassroots initiative in Warsaw. People were gathering in groups - Polish, Ukrainian, Belorussian. There were Russians there, too. There's much less Russians in Poland than Belorussians or Ukrainians. This as a grassroots movement and the city joined it. They provided us with facilities that would host

the refugees. We would also meet the refugees and help them file the application. I volunteered in a couple of locations in Warsaw. At some point I started working at the Warszawa Zachodnia, the Eastern railway station. I would mostly come there and meet the refugees coming from Przemysl. I would met them at the railway station or at the bus station. How long did you work there? I worked there for about six months. I worked there until the fall of 2022. Did anyone know you were Russian? How did they react? It was quite easy to tell who

was Russian. If you ask the person when they are coming from and they not answer directly.. It becomes clear that they are Russian. You ask a volunteer where he is coming from. He says 'I'm from Minsk.' You ask another volunteer and he says.. 'I've lived in Czech Republic for the last five years..' 'I've come here to volunteer' And then you tell him: are you Russian? Don't be scared. How would you reply to this question? It depended on the situation. I would always tell the Poles that I was Russian. I knew that cared about it and

they were always positive about it. There was a really awkward situation when a Polish woman drove Ukrainian refugees in her car. They were coming home in spring of 2022. They were coming back to Kyiv. She drove them to the railway station and we had a small talk in Polish. She asked me when I was coming from. I told her I was Russian. When we walked up to the car she told this Ukrainian family: Look, this guy is Russian and he helps the refugees! I was so embarrassed. This family wasn't happy to see me. This was

very inappropriate. I felt bad for them. They were not happy, to say the least. Every time I would try to guess how these people were feeling. I am lucky to have a few identities. I'm Armenian and I will always be one. This is a big part of my identity. If I say that I'm Russian and it hurts someone..I'm there to help. I'm not there to show that I'm a good person. I would tell them: I am Armenian, how can I help you? I'm sorry, I don't speak Ukrainian. Some people could only speak Ukrainian. The Poles

would switch to Russian but I couldn't do it. I'd say that I was Armenian and I would talk to them in Russian. They would reply in Ukrainian. There was a family, a mother and her daughter. I would help them but the tickets and find the platform. When we met at the station later they asked me if I was coming from Moscow. They talked about me, I guess. I said yes. They said they could tell it from my accent. They were really nice. They were coming back to Kyiv. I followed them to their train, hugged them

and they left. People would react differently. And I would give different answers to this question. I was trying to be flexible and helpful. It wasn't about me. It was about the tragedy that we were witnessing. I can't imagine how it felt in Ukraine. In the first weeks of war it looked very sad in Poland. Like in Remark's novels, the city was filled with families of mothers and their kids. They were standing by the currency exchanges that didn't accept Hryvnia. This was a terrible situation and I never thought about looking good. After watching this interview a

lot of people, including me, would ask you if there are any exercise to improve your memory? You're improvising so much.. I would like to have the same memory as you. Even though you're pretending that you're memory is not perfect.. Well, you said that I was improvising. I never improvise. Franz Kafka wrote that everything he did in life was a result of his loneliness. Everything that I do is a result of my preparation. I'm following this quote from Marcel Proust: The evening failed just like everything you spend less than two hours to prepare for. I prepare

for everything for at least two months. I'm always preparing. There is no secret here. I'm working all the time. You didn't know what we would be talking about now. I didn't. I've been preparing for this conversation for many years. I was reading books, I was making notes. I didn't make these notes to use them in the interview. I find these quotes important and I use them in my work. When I'm working on the text I would look for particular topics that I have a quote about. I am looking for a metaphor and I need to

keep this in mind. I'm constantly refreshing it in my head. I keep coming back to my notes. I have a collection of notes where I pick my favorite ones. Sometimes I intentionally memorize these quotes. Preparation, preparation, and preparation again. So you weren't abducted by aliens, were you? I wasn't abducted. Nobody spilled an elixir of memory on you. I'm about to share my secret. I feel like improvisation is overrated. It's hard for me to talk to you because I've got to be quick. If I had at least six minutes to prepare my answers they would be

so much better.. Or if I had a day to prepare my answers.. I will always keep thinking about it. I don't like to improvise. As my favorite tennis player Rafael Nadal said, I try my best, I don't have more. It is what it is. How did you feel about his attempt to come back that failed? Were you hurt? It hurt me but I still love him. He's not just my favorite tennis player. He's my favorite philosopher. I'm following some of his principles. He said that you can't be playing at US Open and fishing in Mallorca.

It is so simple and so wise. Sometimes we want to do two things at the same time. We want to go fishing and we want to be playing at US Open but this is impossible. You've got to pick one. Your time is limited. 'When I no longer want to play tennis I will go fishing' What did he teach us? You've got to work while you're passionate. No matter how old you are. No matter what others say. You've got to work until you are sick of it. What are you dreaming of? It's not going to happen.

I dream of the victory of humanism. I want Ulrich Von Hutten to be right. This German humanist in 1518 wrote a letter that ended with these words: Barbarism and ignorance, get out Collect your reward and perish forever. This is my dream and it's never going to happen. Humanists dreamt of it in 15th and 16th centuries. We must to keep trying. We must keep fighting for our dream. We must fighting for making this quote a reality. Even though we know this is not going to happen. Because we know that this is not going to happen we

must fight for it. And the final question: what is power? I feel like laughing is power. Two thousand years ago a Roman poet Horace asked a rhetorical question: What forbids me from telling the truth with a laugh? We've always lived in the times of disasters and tragedies. In the times of barbarism and bigotry. We like to think that barbarism comes and goes. In fact, it stays here forever, inside each of us. During World War II Hermann Hesse wrote: The history of the world does not seek any good or reasonable. This is all an exception that

it sometimes tolerates. An exception that it sometimes tolerates. We should be thankful for such exceptions. We won't have any others. I feel like laugh is the best response to all the mockery the our life is. Herzen described a list of situations when we don't laugh. A man doesn't laugh in a church, in a palace, at the front, in front of the head of the department, in front of a bailiff, in front of a foreign manager. He mentions everyone whose job is to protect the truth. The old-fashioned truth which is nowadays called homeland, faith, nation. The

truth that you must die for. That others must die for. If you like your homeland and your people you would sacrifice even more lives. What does the laugh do? The laugh makes them all look like fools. Laughter never burns people at the stake. Laughter never creates dogmas. Laughter, according to Nabokov, is a random and lost monkey of truth. Not the monolith truth that is calling for more lives to be sacrificed. It is a little funny monkey. A monkey that we are chasing but it keeps running away. It laughs back at us. I feel like laughter

does not have any boundaries or limitations. Violence and oppression are never on the same side as laughter. Laughter liberates us from our willingness to be scared. What forbids me from telling the truth with a laugh?