The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
Franz Werfel
 Franz Werfel had first served as a corporal and telephone operator in the artillery corps of the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War on the Russian front and later as a propaganda writer for the Military Press Bureau (with Rainer Maria Rilke and others) in Vienna. His experience of the horrors he witnessed during the war as well as the banality of the civil and military bureaucracies served him well during the course of writing the book. His reason for writing the novel came as a result of a trip through Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon in the winter and spring of 1930, and is given in a prefatory note in the novel: This book was conceived in March of the year 1929 [sic], during the course of a stay in Damascus. The miserable sight of maimed and famished-looking refugee children, working in a carpet factory, gave me the final impulse to snatch the incomprehensible destiny of the Armenian people from the Hell of all that had taken place. 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. Werfel does not mention here that the completely rewrote much of the novel in May 1933, responding to events in Nazi Germany, and kept revising it up until it was published. Later, speaking to reporters, Werfel elaborated: &#34;The struggle of 5,000 people on Musa Dagh had so fascinated me that I wished to aid the Armenian people by writing about it and bringing it to the world.&#34; Werfel’s narrative style is omniscient as well as having a polyfocus in which he moves from character to character as well as being an overarching spectator. For that reason, the connection between the author’s consciousness and that of his characters can almost read seamlessly. This is evident as the novel opens in the spring of 1915, during the second year of the World War I. Gabriel Bagradian, a wealthy Armenian from Paris, has returned to his native village of Yoghonoluk, one of seven villages in Hatay province. His view is dominated by a familiar and looming presence in this paradisiac landscape—Musa Dagh, which means Mt. Moses in Armenian. He thinks about his return to settle the affairs of his dead older brother and entertains pleasant reveries of his childhood as well as more serious matters. Bagradian feels both proud and estranged from his Armenian roots, and Werfel develops this theme of estrangement throughout the novel and which is denoted with the book’s first sentence, a question: “How did I get here?” Bagradian also considers his French wife Juliette and their son Stephan and how they will adjust to their new environment given the state of war that now exists and prevents their return. Other important characters are introduced in Book One: Juliette, Stephan, and the many Armenian characters, chief among them the Gregorian head priest, Ter Haigasun, the local physician, Dr. Altouni, and the apothecary–polymath Krikor, and the Greek American journalist, Gonzague Maris—all characters drawn from Armenian survivors of the events of 1915 as well as from Werfel’s family, friends, acquaintances—and himself. Indeed, he informs several characters ranging from the idealized outsider–hero Gabriel Bagradian to self-parody (the schoolteacher Oskanian). Bagradian considers himself a loyal citizen of the Ottoman Empire, even a patriot, eschewing the more radical Armenian parties, such as the socialist Hunchaks. He had served as an artillery officer in the 1912 Balkan War and had been involved in the progressive wing of Turkish politics and had been a vocal Armenian supporter of the CUP and the Young Turk Revolution) of 1908. Being a reserve officer, Bagradian becomes suspicious when he is not called up. Learning that Turkish authorities have seized the internal passports of Armenian citizens further fuels his suspicions. So he goes to the district capital of Antakya (i.e., Antioch) to inquire about his military status. In a Turkish bath, he overhears a group of Turks, among them the district governor, the Kaimikam, discussing the central government’s plan to do something about its Armenian problem. Bagradian is alarmed by what he hears and the dangers given the history of atrocities committed on Armenians, whose rise as the empire’s chief professional and mercantile class has alarmed Turkish nationalists. The dangers that this poses to his family are all corroborated by an old friend of the Bagradian family, Agha Rifaat Bereket, a pious dervish, a Sufi Muslim ascetic who sees the Young Turks as apostates. Back in Yoghonoluk, Bagradian begins socialize with the Armenian community. His grandfather had a paternal relationship with the Armenian villages that dot the land around Musa Dagh, a role that Gabriel Bagradian assumes not to be a real leader but more to help his French wife acclimate to what could be a long exile in the Turkish Levant. Despite the rumors of arrests and deportations trickling in from Istanbul and other Ottoman cities, many of Musa Dagh’s Armenians remain unconcerned about the outside world. It is not until four refugees arrive in Yoghonoluk in late April that the full nature of what the Ottoman government is doing becomes clear, for the refugees bring news of the brutal suppression of an Armenian uprising in the city of Zeitun and the mass deportation that followed. In a long passage, Werfel tells the story of Zeitun and introduces three more important characters of the book, the Protestant pastor Aram Tomasian, his pregnant wife Hovsannah, his sister Iskuhi, as well as the quasi-feral orphan girl Sato and Kevork, a houseboy who had suffered brain damage as a child at the hands of the Turks. Iskuhi, too, is a victim of a more recent atrocity. Her left arm is paralyzed from fending off a rape attempt. Despite her deformity, the Armenian girl’s beauty and eyes attract Bagradian. The story the refugees tell causes Bagradian and the Armenians who live around Musa Dagh to seriously consider resisting the Ottomans. Bagradian steps forward to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the villages and looks to the natural defenses of Musa Dagh and its environs. Ter Haigasun becomes his ally in convincing the Armenian villagers of the peril that is coming. Book One also introduces the readers to the German Protestant missionary Johannes Lepsius, a real person, and his audience with Enver Pasha, the Ottoman War Minister, one of the Three Pashas, which also included Talaat Pasha and Djemal Pasha, the triumvirate that ruled the Ottoman Empire. The chapter, titled “Interlude of the Gods,” reveals the Turkish point of view vis-à-vis the Armenians and the West. Werfel intended his depiction, almost entirely drawn verbatim from Lepsius’s published account, to be both sympathetic and damning, especially when Enver consults with Talaat on the progress of the deportations. The remainder of Book One describes which Armenians decide on resistance and which on cooperating with the deportation order. Bagradian camps out with his family and friends on Musa Dagh to ensure that it is the right place to make a stand. Those who decide to resist dig up a secret cache of rifles left over from the revolution of 1908, when they were allies of the Young Turks—and the subsequent burial of their church bells so that these do not fall into Turkish hands. Eventually the Ottoman military police arrive, the dreaded saptiehs, led by the red-haired müdir. They instruct the Armenians to prepare for deportations—and then leave after beating Ter Haigasun and Bagradian. Instead, the 6,000 Armenians march with everything they can carry, their animals, and their weapons to a plateau on Musa Dagh. Bagradian hangs behind and observes the wailing women and the other graveyard folk—who represent the old ways and sympathetic magic of pagan Armenia—sacrifice a goat. Its meaning is propitious as well as cautionary. The chapter ends with Bagradian helping Krikor carry the last volumes of his magnificent if eclectic library to the Damlayik, the plateau where the Armenians have chosen as their refuge. Book Two opens during the high summer of 1915 and with the establishment of the Armenian encampment and defenses—the Town Enclosure, Three Tent Square, South Bastion, Dish Terrace, and other sites on Musa Dagh that become familiar placenames during the course of Werfel’s novel. A division of labor, too, is established as to who will fight, who will care for livestock, who will make guns and munitions, and so on. Indeed, a communal society is established despite the objections of the propertied class. The objective is to hold out long enough to attract the ships of the British and French navies that patrol the eastern Mediterranean in support of the Allied invasion of Gallipoli. Characters who will figure in the defense of the mountain also come into more relief, such as the loner and Ottoman Army deserter Sarkis Kilikian (who suffered the loss of his entire family during the pogrom-like Hamidian massacres) and the former drillmaster, Chaush Nurhan. Indeed, Musa Dagh is presented as a microcosm of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Armenian life as well as being a test not only of Bagradian’s leadership, but a test of his marriage and fatherhood. The Ottoman soldiers and saptiehs seriously underestimate the Armenians and their first engagement results in a Turkish rout. The victory forces the Turks to assemble a larger force—and it enhances Bagradian’s reputation as well as reconnects him to his people—and isolates him from Juliette and Stephan. Stephan, too, reconnects with his Armenian roots, but the difficulty he experiences because of his Westernized childhood makes the novel a coming-of-age story as well as a classic tale of love and war on the scale of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. He wants to be an authentic Armenian, like his rival Haik and other boys. To prove himself to them, Stephan organizes a raid on a fruit orchard to replenish the Armenians’ stores. And to prove himself to Iskuhi, for he is as much bewitched by her as his father, he leaves Musa Dagh to fetch back Iskuhi’s bible, left behind in his father’s deserted house. (A long passage left out of the first English translation.) Juliette apprehends the growing estrangement of her husband and son and seeks purpose and solace in nursing the Armenian wounded and her friendship with Gonzague Maris, which develops into a passionate affair. As the Turks resume their attacks, he tries to convince Juliette to abandon her family and the mountain. The battles include a heroic stand led by Kilikian as well as Stephan’s sniping attack on a Turkish gun emplacement. He and the other boys seize two cannons, a feat that forces the Turks to withdraw. Book Two features a traditional funeral for the Armenian dead, including the ceremonies of the wailing women, who assist in the birth Aram Tomasian’s son, a difficult delivery that is seen as ominous while conditions in the camp start to deteriorate—for the Armenian victories can only buy time. Jemal Pasha is introduced in Book Two and is portrayed as a resentful member of the triumvirate pathologically jealous of Enver. The relationship between Bagradian and Iskuhi also comes into focus as it is conducted openly but only consummated on a spiritual plane. Their love, however, is interrupted by a reinforced Ottoman attack, which is repelled. Bagradian, too, orders a massive forest fire to surround the Armenian encampment with a no-man’s land of fire, smoke, and open terrain. Book Two ends with Sato’s exposing Juliette and Gonzague making love, Juliette’s coming down with typhus, and Gonzague’s escape. Stephan, too, leaves the camp to accompany Haik on a mission to contact the American envoy in Antioch. The scene now changes to Istanbul and Johannes Lepsius’s meeting with members of a dervish order called the “Thieves of the Art.” It was important to Werfel to show that the Young Turks and the Three Pashas did not represent Turkish society as a whole. It was also important to show that even Enver was right on certain points in regard to the Western powers, which had exploited Turkey and treated it throughout the nineteenth century as a virtual colony. For this reason, most of the first chapter of Book Three is written as a dramatic dialogue during which Lepsius witnesses the Sufi whirling devotions and learns firsthand about the deep resentment against the West—especially Western “progress” as instituted by the Young Turks—and the atrocities in the concentration camps set up in the Mesopotamian desert for deported Armenians. He also encounters Bagradian’s friend, Agha Rifaat Bereket. The latter agrees to bring supplies to Musa Dagh purchased with funds collected by Lepsius in Germany. The episode ends with Lepsius witnessing Enver and Talaat being driven past in a limousine. When the car suffers two loud tire punctures, Lepsius at first thinks they have been assassinated (which foreshadows the real deaths of Talaat and Djemal Pasha by Armenian assassins). The chapter that follows resumes with Stephan and Haik. They encounter the inshaat taburi, the notorious forced labor details composed of Armenian draftees into the Ottoman Army, and travel through a swamp, where Stephan and Haik form a real friendship. It is cut short, however, when Stephan falls ill and is cared for by a Turkmen farmer, another of the righteous Muslims that Werfel represents in The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Too sick to continue on the mission to Antioch, Stephan is returned to Yoghonoluk, which has been resettled by Muslim refugees from war zones of the Ottoman Empire. There, Stephan is discovered to be Bagradian’s son and a spy, and is brutally murdered. Stephan’s death causes Bagradian to withdraw for a time, during which Turkish soldiers capture the last of the Armenian livestock. This disaster opens up rifts in Musa Dagh’s society and resolve. Other setbacks follow. With the arrival of a seasoned Ottoman general from the Gallipoli front as well as reinforcements from the regular army, the Ottomans begin to tighten the noose around Musa Dagh. Meanwhile, Bagradian recovers from his grief to form guerrilla bands to disrupt the Ottoman advance and buy more time. But no ships have been sighted, and the various attempts to contact the Allies or to seek the diplomatic intercession of the United States, still a neutral power, or Turkey’s ally, Imperial Germany, come to naught. Bagradian derives strength—and comfort—from Iskuhi, who has volunteered to care for Juliette. Nevertheless, Iskuhi sees the end coming and the likelihood that their love entails dying together, not a life. When the Agha’s mission arrives, he finds the Armenians starving. He can do little, though since the red-haired müdir has confiscated most of the supplies intended for the Armenians as a humanitarian gesture despite the approval of Turkey’s highest religious authority. The camp, filled with smoke from the forest fires, inspires a vision in him that disturbingly anticipates the Holocaust and the death camps of World War II. The Armenian camp and resistance also faces its greatest challenge from within when criminal elements among the Ottoman Army deserters—who Bagradian allowed to help in Musa Dagh’s offense—go on a rampage. As Ter Haigasun prepares to celebrate a mass to ask for God’s help, the deserters set the altar on fire and the resulting conflagration destroys much of the Town Enclosure before the uprising is suppressed by Bagradian’s men. The Ottomans, seeing the fire, now prepare for the final assault. Oskanian leads a suicide cult for those who do not want to die given the Turks’ reputation for violent reprisals. The little teacher, however, refuses to jump off a cliff himself after fending off the last of his followers. Soon after, he discovers the large Red Cross distress flag the Armenians flew to attract Allied ships and sights the French cruiser Guichen in the fog. It had diverted course after its watch spotted the burning of the Armenian camp on Musa Dagh from out at sea. As Oskanian waves the flag, the warship begins shelling the coast. Soon more ships come. The Turks withdraw and the Armenians are rescued. Bagradian remains behind after ensuring that the people he led, Juliette, and Iskuhi are safely aboard the French and British ships. His reasons are complex and can be traced throughout the novel to the realization that he cannot leave and go into exile again in an internment camp in Port Said, Egypt. He thinks Iskuhi follows him back up Musa Dagh from the sea. On the way, he experiences a divine presence and confronts the cross on his son’s grave. He is followed, however, by a skirmishing party of Turkish troops. They approach in a crescent—which alludes to the battle formations of the Ottoman armies of the past—and kill Bagradian with a sniper’s headshot.