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The relations of present-day Bulgarian films with certain traditions and elements of our folklore form a problem as yet unstudied, but which is becoming increasingly topical. The stylistics of a whole series of Bulgarian films, created during the last decade, places this problem on the agenda. These films clearly show that its study should be the fruit of collective efforts – on the part of folklorists and film specialists, all the more so as such a study also leads us to giving significance to certain typological features of Bulgarian artistic culture. In this sense the author delimits two possible levels in posing and analysing the problem. The first of these is connected with the possibility of more fully characterizing certain processes and trends in contemporary Bulgarian film art by means of the links between folklore and screen. The second and more difficult research level presupposes tracing and discovering certain features of Bulgarian culture by means of such an analysis, a culture seen and understood as an original feature of definite national artistic thinking. The present article treats this problem, above all, at the first level thus delimited. Its purpose is to emphasize the presence of links and continuity between folklore and our contemporary film. The author gives a number of examples of films and more complete trends in the Bulgarian cinema – for instance all its attempts at reasoning about the national character and fate, in order to show the community of certain symbols and motifs. The analysis is made chiefly from the positions of a film theoretician and historian. That is why a number of conclusions and findings remain „open”. They await their further elucidation from the positions of folkloristics as well. Only after this has been done would the link between these two types of creative work – folklore and film, distant from one another in time, but the author of which is always a collective one – permit us to make certain generalizations, connected with national artistic thinking and Bulgarian culture.
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An attempt is made in this article to show certain trends of development in Bulgarian ethnology. The author notes that the outstanding representatives of folkloristics in Bulgaria at the time of its initial advance worked in several scientific spheres. This individual context of research was connected with the development and establishment of several circles of problems which, until most recently, determined the essentials of the Bulgarian national ethnological school – folk psychology, ethnography and research in art history, in which folklore was one of the main questions as a component in oral, musical and plastic art. It was along this road that musical folklore, studies on the so-called plastic folklore and researches on oral art of the folklore type were established. The all-round interaction between folkloristics and literary science lies in the study of the two fundamental kinds of verbal art – folklore and literature – their unity and their structural differences. An attempt is made in this light to look at the scientific heritage of Academician Peter Dinekov.
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The purpose of this article is to show the wonderful trees as they exist in Bulgarian fairy tales. The first part is a classification. The following groups are differentiated, the numbers of types from the index of Aarne-Thompson also being indicated, in which they are traditionally found: I. A. A tree which bears golden apples; B. A tree with an eagle’s nest at the top; II. A. A tree from the fruit of which a girl emerges; B. A tree, grown up from a fish bone, which turns into a maiden; III. A. A tree which has grown out of a snake’s bone, which has treasures in its crown; B. A tree which has gold buried at its roots and is therefore barren; IV. A. A singing tree; B. A tree which has grown out of a man’s corpse; V. A tree, the hero’s brother, which has grown out of a fish; VI. A tree, the acquisition of which leads to a change of sex; VII. A tree which causes metamorphoses in a human’s body; VIII. The Silver Apple-tree in the Bad Fairly’s garden; IX. Various trees. In the second part the meanings of the wonderful trees are examined in connection with the stories themselves. It is found that the varieties I. A., II. A., B., IV. B., V. and VI. are connected with ideas about life, death and wedding, seen as biological phenomena. Varieties III. A., B. and VII. are connected with man’s social life. I. A. appears in connection with ideas on the construction of the world, while IV. A. and VIII. represent the unusual trees, growing in the world of supernatural beings. The brief characterization of the symbolism of trees in mythical and religious ideas shows parallels with „ the Tree of Life”, „ the Cosmic Tree” and „ the Tree of Knowledge”. The conclusion is that they are only the „subtext” of the wonderful trees. In themselves they do not suggest an impression of symbolical images. The mythical semantics is preserved and expressed not so images, as in the plot as a whole.
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This article poses the question of the function and essence of allegorical speech during the rituals which precede wedding ceremony. The variety of formulae is reduced to several groups the common feature of which is that asking for the hand of a girl in marriage is symbolical in form. Predominantly the young man and the girl are represented by Nature symbols: most often zoomorphic ones. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the symbolism of the ritual speech is an inseparable part of the symbolism of the ritual which is connected with the universal conception of the world’s structure on the model of the Tree of World. Arranging a march as a ritual preceding the wedding is the first stage of the complete marriage process – its opening up and reduction to a structureless state. The function of the ritual actions and speech formulae in the girl’s home is treated as a magical one.
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Keywords: Nikole Šopa
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