INTERVIEW WITH ANTONIA ARSLAN

                                                      By

                                            Vahram Emiyan

                                                  16/04/08

Antonia Arslan was born in Padua, Italy in 1938. She has a degree in archaeology, has been a professor of modern and contemporary Italian literature at the University of Padua, and an author of pioneering studies on genre and serial fiction  “Ladies, drugs and birds: Italian genre fiction in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” (Unicopli 1986) and Italian women writers “Ladies, birds and queens. Italian women’s writing in the 19^th and 20^th centuries” (Guerini 1998).

Through the work of the great Armenian poet Daniel Varoujan – whose collections Canto del Pane (Guerini 1992) and Mari di grano (Edizioni Paoline 1995) she translated- Arslan rediscovered her deep and unspoken Armenian Identity. She edited an informative booklet on the Armenian Genocide “Metz Yeghèrn: the genocide of the Armenians by Claude Mutafian” and a collection of eyewitness accounts by survivors who took refuge in Italy “Hushèr. The Memory: The Italian voices of Armenian survivors” both published by Guerini.

In 2004 Antonia Arslan wrote her first novel, The Villa of Allodole (Rizzoli), which won the Stresa and Campiello Prizes. On 23 March 2007 came out the film “The Skylark Farm” which is based on the novel and directed by the Taviani brothers.

Antonia Arslan granted me the following interview which was published in “Aztag” newspaper the day of the avant-premiere of the movie in Lebanon.

Vahram Emiyan:-    You have a degree in archaeology, you have been a professor of modern and contemporary Italian literature, you are an essayist and now you have published your first novel. How do you explain these transitions?

Antonia Arslan:- Mine is an instance of slow maturation. The oral stories which I heard when I was a child from my grandfather Yerwant, and from my Armenian relatives – who came from Lebanon and Syria too – on visit to my family in Padova, sedimented in my soul, my mind, my heart. My education, however, was completely Italian. I was thus a split person, in a sense: a person who searched at once for my hidden Armenian ‘identity’ you might say – if this did not sound so melodramatic – and for the truth. At the same time, I was a scholar, a professor, in a family of scholars and professors. My own way of searching for the truth led me to archaeology because archaeology – like my personal search—involves digging through the past. It led me to literature because that is the form of expression which captures a deep reality not caught by stones and bricks: the reality of the human soul. It was only after many years that my searching blended in to one.  

V.Emiyan:-   When did you decide to write the novel “Skylark Farm” and why?

A.Arslan:- I decided to write the Skylark Farm after I wrote a short story – which is the prologue of my novel. This took place after my discovery of Varujan helped me to find that hidden part of myself that I had been searching for. The two people who pushed me actually to write the novel were two friends: Fr. Levon Zekiyan and Siobhan Nash-Marshall. It was they who knew, before I did, that I was a novelist.

V.Emiyan:-   What kind of reactions has it received?

A.Arslan:- Novels, as you can well imagine, are much more immediately influential than memoirs, history books, and other scholarly works. They give the public the chance to identify with their characters, their plights, their destinies. The Skylark Farm, much to my surprise, is a novel with whose characters the public has identified itself. I receive many letters from people who have read my books. Each of them tell me what character they loved the most. Some ask me why I ‘allowed’ certain characters to die! This is all very touching. I respond to them by saying that that is what happened. But what is more important than the letters and the facts, is that the letters show that my book has allowed people to identify with our people: the Armenians.

V.Emiyan:-  In 2007, the novel was transformed into a movie. Can you give us some information on how that idea was born?

 A.Arslan:- One Sunday in January 2005 I received a telephone call from the Tavianis. They asked me if they could make a movie based upon the Skylark Farm. I was delighted that directors as famous as the Tavianis wanted to become involved in the Armenian cause.

V.Emiyan:-   What are your plans for the future?

A.Arslan:-  I am finishing the sequel to the Skylark Farm. I am not quite sure what it will be called!

V.Emiyan:-     The movie “Skylark Farm” will soon be shown in Lebanese theaters. On this occasion what do you want to say to the Lebanese-Armenian community?

A.Arslan:- Parev! I hope to return to Lebanon soon, and to rediscover my relatives.