I pick up my pen again, dip it into my sick, bleeding heart and write you, Shushik, a few lines, I write, Avetik Isahakyan.
Why do I write, what makes me write? To love - I don't love you, to hate - I don't hate you, but you are in my soul - as a heavy dream, as a misfortune, a nightmare. I want to devour you, I want to kill you a thousand times, to revive - to kill you again. To live forever, and to kill you forever, but I can't do that, I am powerless, my whole being is good and what is most pitiful - I am still in your clutches. What can I do, how can I get free? Sometimes I hate you like a seagull and sometimes I love you ready to kiss your feet, but when I remember the past, I become a whirlwind.
Don't look for some thought, some meaning in these lines. I am writing almost half-mad and until my death I will not write a single line to you and I will not look you in the eye, God is my witness. I will cry before you for the last time and curse you, curse, curse all your sanctities, because you have defiled my sanctities, because you have driven out my most devoted love like a dog, because you have tormented me, martyred me, infinitely.
But I am crying now, and blood is dripping from my heart. Go, Shushik, God be with you, live for your children. Do not curse me. Never, never remember my name, and nowhere, and nowhere, not with a human being. I beg you. Bury me for yourself forever, never look at me, give me an honest word to do so. Let me be a completely non-existent, unborn person for you. My soul shudders when I think that you will ever think of me. One should not remember in that temple the name of another God, whom that temple does not worship, does not "obey". One should not set up an altar or an image of another in that temple. Let me be outside the temple of your soul - I am a stranger, unrecognized there....
I BEGIVE YOU
I WILL ALSO TREAT YOU IN THE SAME WAY;
YOU WOULD DIE FOR ME, WOULD DIE...
GOING OUT, I KISS YOUR GRAVE AND SET OUT TO
FIND A NEW GOD.....
FIND A NEW GOD.....
Avetik, 1904