Преносът на травмата. Три сюжета по "Страницы изъ книги страданiй болгарскаго племени. Повесты и разсказы Любена Каравелова" (Москва, 1868)
The Transmission Of Trauma. Pages From The Book Of Sufferings Of The Bulgarian Tribe. Stories Of Lyuben Karavelov (Moscow, 1868)

Summary/Abstract: The interpretation of trauma in the context of Karavelovʼs Russian collection of narratives about the sufferings of the enslaved Bulgarians has different grounds. The opening plot, entitled Among the Shadows, reveals how Karavelov's “Russian bookˮ of 1868 reached Bulgarian readers. If to the Russian public the collection presents the sufferings through the experience of their collectiveness, subjects them to a distanced perception and implies empathy, in our country the peculiar anthology of the sufferings is fragmented, disintegrates again into pages that remain (in the words of Nikolay Chernokozhev) in the “shadow of the bookˮ. In our country, suffering is not only a residual trauma that represents us, it must be both an incentive and a reason for our existence beyond suffering. The subsequent part – The “Handwritingˮ of Trauma – tries to interpret the mutually adjusting possibilities for perceiving the suffering that Karavelov offers through his texts in the collection. Our research intentions in this direction are provoked by the attitude that Karavelov's narration of the sufferings of the Bulgarians, their recognition as traumas, stems from the voice (regardless of whether it is recorded or spoken) – as an authentic address to anyone who could “hearˮ, that is, understand and empathize with what is shared. For the voice of suffering, the “notesˮ (“Turski Pasha. Notes of a Nunˮ) turn out to be a natural narrative environment. The style of the notes resembles the singularity of the voice, following the ramifications of the fable type of narration. The impact of the traumas of the suffering of the enslaved asserts its legitimacy in Karavelov's collection and in the literal highlighting of the voice as silent, telling, shouting, and singing (Bozhko, Neda). In the final plot – Around the Dead Body – naturalism in the image of the dismembered enslaved body is metaphorically linked to the decomposition of Karavelovʼs book of suffering into pages. The “bodyˮ of the book cannot remain unaffected in the Bulgarian world fractured by the traumas of the enslaved.

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