Forty Days of Musa Dagh

GC*768 75c
The exciting modern classic about
courage, love and survival -- and a man who
helped save his people from extermination.
THE FORTY DAYS OF
Musa Dagh
* * *
Franz Werfel
Cardinal Edition
The Complete Book * Published by Pocket Books, Inc.

A
MODERN
MASTERPIECE!

"In number of words and pages this
is a long novel, but in swiftness
of movement it is all too short.
Reading it, one hopes it might
never end, and actually it does not
end. Its implications cling to the
heart and mind of the reader as
some long forgotten and suddenly
remembered experience in the story
of all who once lived on the earth
and somehow live yet. The novel
is written with the ease which
gives writing and life inevita-
bility. Here, at last, is a con-
temporary novel full of the breath,
the flesh and blood and bone and
spirit, of life."
---WILLIAM SAROYAN
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
was originally published
by The Viking Press, Inc.
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
Translated from the German
by Geoffrey Dunlop
Other books by Franz Werfel
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THE FORTY DAYS OF
Musa Dagh
Franz Werfel
Cardinal
Edition
POCKET BOOKS, INC. * NEW YORK
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
Viking Press edition published November, 1934
GIANT CARDINAL edition published January, 1962
1st printing .................. November, 1961
This GIANT CARDINAL edition includes every word contained in
the original, higher-priced edition. It is printed from brand-new
plates made from completely reset, clear, easy-to-read type.
GIANT CARDINAL editions are distributed in the
U.S. by Affiliated Publishers, a division of Pocket
Books, Inc., 630 Fifth Avenue, New York 20, N.Y.
Notice: GIANT Cardinal editions are published by Pocket Books,
Inc. Trademark registered in the United States and other countries.
===================================================================
Copyright, 1934, by The Viking Press, Inc. All
rights reserved. This GIANT CARDINAL is pub-
lished by arrangement with The Viking Press, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
Note
This book was conceived in March of 1929, in the course of
a stay in Damascus. The miserable sight of some maimed and
famished-looking refugee children, working in a carpet fac-
tory, gave me the final impulse to snatch from the Hades of
all that was, this incomprehensible destiny of the Armenian
nation. The writing of the book followed between July, 1932,
and March, 1933. Meanwhile, in November, on a lecture tour
through German cities, the author selected Chapter 5 of Book
One for public readings. It was read in its present form, based
on the historic records of a conversation between Enver
Pasha and Pastor Johannes Lepsius.
Breitenstein
Spring, 1933

 

 

 

 

CONTENTS

 

 

==========================================================

 

 

BOOK ONE: COMING EVENTS

 

 

1. TESKERČ 3

 

2. KONAK -- HAMAM -- SELAMLIK 18

 

3. THE NOTABLES OF YOGHONOLUK 34

 

4. THE FIRST INCIDENT 54

 

5. INTERLUDE OF THE GODS 101

 

6. THE GREAT ASSEMBLY 125

 

7. THE FUNERAL OF THE BELLS 194

 

 

 

BOOK TWO: THE STRUGGLE OF THE WEAK

 

 

1. LIFE ON THE MOUNTAIN 245

 

2. THE EXPLOITS OF THE BOYS 280

 

3. THE PROCESSION OF FIRE 327

 

4. SATO'S WAYS 400

 

 

 

BOOK THREE: DISASTER, RESCUE, THE END

 

 

1. INTERLUDE OF THE GODS 439

 

2. STEPHAN SETS OUT AND RETURNS 469

 

3. PAIN 507

 

4. DECLINE AND TEMPTATION 527

 

5. THE ALTAR FLAME 561

 

6. THE SCRIPT IN THE FOG 623

 

7. TO THE INEXPLICABLE IN US AND ABOVE US! 670

 

 

LIST OF CHARACTERS 676

 

GLOSSARY OF ARMENIAN AND TURKISH TERMS 678

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BOOK ONE

 

 

COMING EVENTS

 

 

"How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost

 

thou not judge and avenge our blood on

 

them that dwell on the earth?"

 

REVELATION vi, 10

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. TESKERĘ

 

 

"How did I get here?"

 

 

Gabriel Bagradian really spoke these solitary words without knowing it.
Nor did they frame a question, but something indefinite, a kind of
ceremonious amazement, which filled every inch of him. The clear glitter
of this Sunday in March may have inspired it, in this Syrian spring,
which shepherded flocks of giant anemones down along the flanks of Musa
Dagh and far out across the irregular plain of Antioch. Everywhere their
bright blood sprang from the meadow slopes, stifling the more reticent
white of big narcissi, whose time had also come. A golden, invisible
humming seemed to have encased the mountain. Were these the vagrant swarms
of the hives of Kebussiye, or was it the surge of the Mediterranean,
audible in the bright transparency of the hour, eroding the naked back
of Musa Dagh? The uneven road wound upwards, in and out among fallen
walls. Then, where it suddenly ended in heaps of stone, it narrowed out
into a sheep-track. He had come to the top of the outer slope.

 

 

Gabriel Bagradian turned. His shape, in rough European homespun,
straightened itself, listening. He thrust the fez a little back off his
damp forehead. His eyes were set wide apart. They were a shade lighter,
but not in the least smaller than Armenian eyes usually are.

 

 

Now Gabriel saw what he had come from. The house gleamed out, with its
dazzling walls, its flat roof, between the eucalyptus trees of the park.
The stables, too, and the outhouses glittered in this early morning sunshine.
Although between Bagradian and his property there was now more than
half an hour's walk, it still looked so close to him that it might have
been following at his heels. And further along the valley the church
of Yoghonoluk, with its big cupolas and pointed, gabled minarets at the
sides, greeted him clearly. This solemn, massive church and Bagradian's
villa formed an entity. Bagradian's grandfather, the fabled founder
and benefactor, had built them both fifty years ago. It was the custom
of Armenian peasants and craftsmen, after their journeys abroad -- to
America even -- in search of profit, to return home, into the nest. But
bourgeois grown rich had other notions. They built their luxury villas
along the Riviera from Cannes, among the gardens of Heliopolis, or at
least on the slopes of Lebanon, in the neighborhood of Beirut. Old Avetis
Bagradian had drawn a definite line of demarcation between himself and
such new-rich. He, the founder of that world-famous Istanbul business,
which had offices in Paris, New York, and London, resided, in so far as
his time and affairs allowed him to do so, year after year in his villa
above the hamlet of Yoghonoluk, under Musa Dagh. But not only Yoghonoluk;
the other six Armenian villages of the district of Suedia had basked in
the rich blessing of his kingly presence in their midst. Quite apart
from the schools and churches built by him -- from his summoning of
American mission teachers -- let it suffice to indicate the gift which
in spite of every other event remained, even today, fresh in the memory
of his people: that shipload of Singer sewing machines which after a
more than usually prosperous business year Avetis had distributed among
fifty needy families in the villages.

 

 

Gabriel -- he had still not turned his listening gaze away from the villa --
had known his grandfather. He had been born in the house down there and
spent many long months of his childhood in it. Till his twelfth year.
And yet this early life, which was, after all, his own life, seemed so
unreal that it almost hurt to think of it. It seemed like a kind of life
in the womb, the vague memories of which stir the soul to unwelcome
shudderings. Had he really ever known his grandfather, or only read of him
and seen his pictures in a story book? A little man with a white goatee,
in a long black-and-yellow-striped silk gown. His gold eyeglass dangling
from a chain upon his chest. In red shoes he had walked over the grass
of the garden. Everyone bowed deeply. Tapered old man's fingers stroked
the boy's cheeks. Had it all happened, or was it no more than empty dreaming?
To Gabriel Bagradian his grandfather and Musa Dagh connoted the same.
When a few weeks ago he had first beheld again that mount of his childhood,
that darkening ridge against the sunset, he had been invaded by indescribable
terrifying, and yet delightful sensations. Their depths had refused to reveal
themselves. He had at once given up the attempt. Had it been the first breath
of a presentiment? Or only these twenty-three years?