Armenians, People Able to Maintain Respect for the Book – Rasul Gamzatov

“Armenians are a people who know how to preserve and pass on from generation to generation the holy respect for the handwritten book for centuries, and sometimes with blood.

Usually, everyone protects their land. We protect every inch of our land, the house in which we grew up, and sacredly keep the memory of our ancestors. But not all nations have carried a handwritten book through history.

And this is a huge indicator of culture and strong evidence of high love for one’s origins… I visited the grave of Mashtots in Oshakan. 1500 years ago, the glorious Armenian warrior Mesrop Mashtots came up with the idea that writing is a powerful weapon, and he thus created the Armenian alphabet…

I thought bitterly about Dagestan, which has existed for thousands of years without books and writing… We have had everything for books – passionate love, brave heroes, tragedies, harsh nature – but their product, a book, hasn’t come into existence…

I have seen the tremendous respect of a whole nation for its books. I have seen many museums in my lifetime! But only three places in the world collected the most valuable of all the values of mankind – handwritten books. I am talking about the depositaries of Iran, the Vatican, and Armenia.”

Rasul Gamzatov