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Friendship, Love, and the Urge to Write in Christian Batikian’s novel Metal Dreams
Metal Dreams (Erevan, 2018) is the second book and first novel of the Western Armenian writer Christian Batikian. It is significant on a number of levels, not least of which pertains to its contribution to the vitality of Western Armenian, an endangered language. This presentation however, will not focus on the often-discussed topic of the vitality of Western Armenian, the status of diasporan languages, etc. but rather will be a literary reading of the novel. Metal Dreams revolves around the lives, friendship, and love interests of its three main characters: the first-person narrator himself and his two close friends, all of whom are university students in contemporary Paris. My reading will show how the millenial generation’s experience of love and friendship — relationships marked by high intensity (emotional, time spent together), low committment, and thus often short duration — lends itself to a more urgent need to write, to inscribe the ethereal into a form of permanency and immortalize that which has already passed.
Jesse Siragan Arlen’s research pertains to medieval literature and intellectual history, with a particular focus on asceticism, mysticism, literature, and education in Eastern Christianity and Sufism. He is also a published writer of prose and poetry in Western Armenian
All welcome
Pizza and refreshments will be served
All proceedings will be in Armenian