I reserve the right to tell the Armenian people on behalf of Tumanyan: arise and walk. Nikol Pashinyan

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, together with his wife Anna Hakobyan and daughter, visited the birthplace of the great Armenian poet Hovhannes Tumanyan in Dsegh today, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the poet's birth.

Prime Minister Pashinyan laid flowers at the statue of the renowned poet and toured the house-museum, familiarizing himself with nearly 300 valuable exhibits showcasing the writer's life and work.

Nikol Pashinyan delivered a speech in which he noted, among other things: "There is Metsarents, there is Teryan, and many other poets, but Tumanyan is the unreachable Ararat of our new creation. These lines were written by Yeghishe Charents. It is rare for a poet to speak words of praise about another poet, but this is not merely a compliment; it is a statement of humility and a testament that our Ararat is not singular. Many people think that Ararat is beyond the Araks, but as Charents emphasizes, we also have Ararat on this side of the Araks, and that Ararat is Hovhannes Tumanyan. That Ararat is in the Lori province, and that Ararat is in Dsegh.

Everything has already been said about the poet and genius Tumanyan, and I don't wish to speak of Tumanyan as an intellectual, as a genius, or as a statesman in the absence of statehood. I want to talk about Tumanyan the man, not Tumanyan as a friend, as a family member, or as a father, but as a person in his own right, because Tumanyan's character should guide everyone in today’s Armenia. We see this iconic image; children see Tumanyan in their textbooks, seeing him turned into a symbol, but who was that man and how did he become the Ararat of our new creation? How did he become Ararat? He was a young peasant, from a humble and, even, poor family, a man who never experienced any period of prosperity in his life.

Today we envision Tumanyan as Ararat, as an unreachable height, but he was a man who bore all the human sufferings from the day he was born - poverty, hunger, oppression, the impossibility of living, and life tried every moment to break him, to kill him, to reduce him to subsistence, to cope with every ruble, every coin, every piece of bread.

And what did Tumanyan do, how did he achieve that? Only by one thing, by believing in himself, only by pursuing education. He even lacked the opportunity to get an education, having left his studies unfinished to work; he lived a hard life, led by challenging work. He received no assistance; on the contrary, others sought help from him, and in many cases, people from Dsegh even resented him, thinking he, Tumanyan, had all the opportunities in the world at his disposal.

All of this weighed on this man's shoulders, and why did he not break? Because he believed in his strength. When it seemed he should lay down, like Jesus Christ told the paralyzed man - 'Arise and walk,' Tumanyan told himself - 'Arise and walk,' and he arose and walked. He walked where there was no road, he lived where there was no bread, he triumphed where there was no opportunity, for he had a message for his people, and that message was one: 'Arise and walk, do not kneel, do not be pitiful, do not be humiliated, do not doubt yourself, your strength, your homeland, your past and future; arise and walk.'

This is Tumanyan's message to the people, to Armenia, to the state, and today I reserve the right, as the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia, as the Prime Minister elected by the free will of the people, on behalf of Tumanyan, to tell the Armenian people: 'Arise and walk, you are not paralyzed, you are not a loser, you are not a beggar; arise and walk, arise and walk.'

Tumanyan used to say: 'And the dawn of common life shall come clad in bright clothes.' That dawn of common life has come; today’s Armenia is that dawn of common life, you have brought that dawn of common life, you are obligated to stand by the dawn you have brought, by the country you have brought, by your victory, by your homeland. So arise and walk. Arise and walk, arise and conquer, and never, ever diminish yourself, for you are the generation of Tumanyan, you are the people of Tumanyan, you are the homeland of Tumanyan, and you are the consciousness of Tumanyan and the future. Therefore, long live freedom, long live the Republic of Armenia, long live us and our children who live and will live freely and happily in Tumanyan's Armenia, in the Armenia the Tumanyan envisioned.

In conclusion, I want to recite Tumanyan’s favorite quatrain, and I mentioned during the recent excursion that it is very interesting whether there is a scientific definition of what he wrote about. I am sure there is a message here, and I believe this message is directed at all of us, addressed to the person, the citizen, the Armenian who can read these lines. As a symbol of today, I inscribed this quatrain in the museum's register.
'My soul has settled at home,
The universe surrounds me.
I am the master of the universe,
Who has noticed it?'

You are the masters of the universe, people, stand by your universe. Congratulations on Tumanyan's 150th anniversary!