Abraham H. HARTUNIAN
( 1872 - 1939 )

Let me tell you that Neither To Laugh nor To Weep was so compelling that I read it in one sitting, through an afternoon and far into the night. I was immensely moved by it. It is a valuable document, not only because it records an almost incredible experience but because it conveys so vividly a sense of the regeneration and ironic optimism that portray man's will to survive. It does indeed have a biblical force; as someone else said, it reminds one of the Old Testament, of Job's cries of "why." To me, its weakness resembles that in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov; it lies in the effort to answer the "why" both in political and in theological terms. The experience, the question, is so incomprehensible that the question plagues the answers. This reaction, however, has nothing to do with the value of the document. I must congratulate you on your excellent translation; your own accomplishment is no small task.
Letter to Vartan Hartunian dated January 17, 1968, from Marjorie Housepian, the author of A Houseful of Love and teacher of English at Barnard College.