Образът на антигероя
The Image of the Anti-Hero

Summary/Abstract: Hybrid in its nature, socialist realism belongs to the political discourse rather than to the aesthetic. Despite its apologists’ attempts to define socialist realism as a method, it is constantly slipping of simple definition. Thus it gets to the point where it is determined mostly in the opposition to formalism. The more theoretically developed the “method” is, the clearer it is which artistic production is not socialist realism. By the same token as the figure of the hero is almost entirely constant, the antihero has much more dynamic development revealing the internal transformations in the evolution of socialist realism. There are several “cases” regarded as milestones in the study of socialist realism in Bulgaria. Associated with the names of artists, writers and political activists (Zhendov and Staykov as the best known among the artists), they are particularly indicative of the way the machine of heroization and de-heroization functions, especially during the 1950s. Back then socialist realism addressed future or reality in a constant flux. It was oriented towards what has not yet come into being. Similarly, in terms of what has already happened, the present day offers extremely valuable insights into the overlapping between the two images of the hero and anti-hero.

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