ARTISTIC LITERATURE AS EMBODIED HISTORY: READING ANTONIA ARSLAN’S “IL LIBRO DI MUSH/ SILENT ANGEL”

The literature on the Armenian Genocide (Metz Yeghèrn) comprises a great variety of genres and styles. Historical accounts, diplomatic reports, letters, eyewitness accounts, official political statements have been released worldwide providing a most relevant documentation. The aim of this essay is to show that artistic literature must be valuably added to these narratives. What novels provide to historical knowledge is a unique sense of history, whereby events are represented from the special perspective of the subjects involved. This phenomenological perspective will be illustrated through a reading of Il libro di Mush (2012) by the Italian writer of Armenian origin Antonia Arslan and its English translation as Silent Angel (2020) by Siobhan Nash-Marshall. The narration focusses on three women, a man and a young boy who escape from the massacres perpetrated in their valley, and who accomplish the heroic task of salvaging the Book of Moush, a precious illuminated manuscript, for posterity. History is “embodied” in their gaze and their sensations, as well as their perceptions of the contexts in which they move. Arslan’s novel is one of her most moving contributions to (her) Armenian identity, after the world acclaimed novel La masseria delle allodole (2004) from which a renowned film by the Taviani Brothers was produced in 2007.