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The review of Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement focuses on hubristic aspects of authorship, or whether – and at what cost – literature is capable of repairing the reality deficits and the “tragic flaws” of humanity.
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The paper provides an interesting recourse to different places and times during Assen Christophorov’s life. There is a bitter irony in the voluntarily chosen solitary life in the village of Govedartsy full of the suspicions of the local peasants and the philosophic perception of the life in Belene concentration camp. The complexity of the description of the village is a real reflection of the contradictory and difficult years of 1950s, far away from the religious and political alienation, even full of dislike for the pseudo religious monk’s behavior. The author enters the layers of Christophorov’s family and personal memories from the heights of his age linking the roots of family history and his own destiny with his childhood perceptions of Old Plovdiv. These are not simply childhood memories but a return of an adult to the social reality of totalitarian times. The paper discovers unexpected relations with the cultural perceptions of Rila mountain and Plovdiv with Vazov, Alvadjiev and Daltchev. In the deep structure of the text we can discover the rich culture and analytical capabilities of Assen Christophorov.
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Starting from a previous article by the author published in 1994, the present study develops two theses, one of which encompasses the other. The first thesis states that the Vazov’s novel „Under the Yoke” (1888/1889) is a total paradigmatic Bulgarian novel. Not simply chronologically the first novel, setting a classical standard in Bulgarian literature, but the novel which organically combines all genetic components of the novelness/romanceness, even mutually incompatible or opposing each other components. Two of them are considered in this study. The first is the ‘popular-carnival’ which is subliterary. Here we recall a 20 years old paper, in which the author considers „Under the Yoke” to be a popular-carnival book (according to Bakhtin), not to be a novel in the modern, „Hegelian” meaning of the term. Moving away from this original thesis, the present study is archeologising the opposite novelistic direction in Under the Yoke” – the modern-novelistic, Romantic, which is downright literary and even meta-literary in essence. In its pure form this meta-literary component, explicitly presented for a thorough discussion, is discovered in the micro-subject of ‘Kandov’. The chapters are analyzed in detail proving the key position they occupy in whole architectonics of the novel. At the end it is emphasized the complicated and multi-stratified way the modern-novelistic, bourgeois-romantic concepts associated with the novel are discussed, including in the meta-consciousness of the novel. The most important point is considered to be the justification of the second basic thesis, which is the following: By developing the ‘Kandov’ line in the mentioned six chapters, Vazov transformed in 1888 the literary substance of the Romantic into something which, a quarter of a century later, will become topical for the mainstream of the Bulgarian literary process. The „Kandov” story anticipates the essential elements of decadence and symbolist-secessionist poetics which will enter Bulgarian literature only through Yavorov and his language-Sleeplessness (1905-06). Direct linguistic (poetological) analogies are drawn between the ‘Kandov’ case and some central, constituent topoi in the poetics of the literary decadence and symbolic-secession imagery. (However – NB! – the study considers not the subjective intents of the author Vazov, but the happenings in the field of language and in the self-consciousness of the novel, archeologising the genre consciousness, including its literary-unconsciousness.) The paper, constructed as a dialectical triad, in its last, third part, considers „Under the Yoke” as a dialectical synthesis of two mutually opposing trends. At the same time it exteriorizes the problem in philosophical-historical aspect. The subject ‘Kandov’ is seen as an ideology-language hetero-interfusion – an expression, an articulation of a principal discussion, central for the Late Bulgarian Revival: ‘Bulgarian’/‘our own’ against ‘European’/‘alien’.
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The article analyses Ivailo Pertov’s novel – “Sentence death” (1991) – and searches an answer of the question why the Bulgarian political novel remained unwritten. Some genre features of the political novel are outlined in historical and contemporary plan. It’s highlighted, that the real political novel is a novel-thinker, not an activist party agitator. It’s author is the civil society, not the political parties.
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The play “The trial against the Bogomils” by Stefan Tsanev went out in a typewritten form in 1969 and has not been on Bulgarian stage at the time. The reason is that the party circles at that time perceive the text as an allegory of the political reality of the 60’s in Bulgaria and in the prototypes of the characters they see the authority – `The first` (Todor Zhivkov) and the `Princess` (Lyudmila Zhivkova). In reality, the play turns out not as a ‘hystorical tragedy’, as its author represents it, but rather as a parody of the theater of power. The playwright achieves this effect by means of pictures, revealing the theatricality of the different forms of social life (‘the theatre’ of the court, of history, of the royal institution). The ideology of the Bogomil religious (and the alongside passed parallel with the communism) is strongly and sarcastically diminished by the elements of commedia dell ’arte, burlesque and commedia fool, used in the play.
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The present paper studies the way in which in the late 50 's and 60 's of the 20th century in Bulgarian poetry constructs a model of "verse-spring bird-poet". The operation of this model in Bulgarian poetry is analysed by different interpretations. As a result, we arrive at the conclusion that the one part of the creators appears to be directly involved in the formation and establishment of the official canon in fiction, and another remains in the marginal field of the formal literary space.
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The paper examines the reception of The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan in Bulgaria presenting the cultural context in which the literary work appeared for the first time in Bulgarian in 1866. It has been reedited many times and the article provides a list of all available editions including an edition that is not registered in any library catalogue. It is known that the latter was published in Plovdiv and the publisher’s name is Belovezhdov. The paper elaborates on the edition in question shedding more light on who most probably published it and when that possibly happened. New translation variants have appeared in the numerous editions of The Pilgrim’s Progress and it is the allegorical anthroponyms and toponyms that vary considerably. Despite the changes, however, the later editions are not entirely new translations but revised versions of the first editions which are the one of 1866 (Part I) and the one of 1886 (Part II) respectively. The transformations, which the initial translation, done by the American missionary Dr Albert Long, has undergone, are illustrated with examples in the paper and the major tendencies in the rendition of the allegorical names are briefly outlined as well.
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Review: Филипова, С. Речник по стихознание. София: Петър Берон, 2010.
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Iser’s conception of the implied reader allows us to understand more about reading opportunities, provided by technology since – by defining the reader as a disposition resulting from networks of text meanings – this notion allows their integration in the textures of the Net afterwards. As a conjunction of culture and technology, digitized text actually poses problem of bringing these together, of the cultural consequences of the encounter between digital and print culture. It is difficult to say whether this encounter refutes big postmodern myths, or proves them right, but this answer will undoubtedly affect the destiny of the text.
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The article takes as a starting point the account about the “Slavic books” (книгы словенскыѥ –Vita Constantini 17:5) brought to Rome by the Slavic apostles Cyrill and Methodius, and their blessing by Pope Adrian II. By “Slavic books,” scholars usually mean loosely defined “liturgical books” that could reasonably be identified with the Slavonic Gospel (словѣньское евангелиѥ) mentioned in Vita Methodii 6:1. The liturgical books referred to in VC, however, still remain undefined, as it remains unclear who completed their translations, when and where. In an attempt to answer these questions, the author considers some passages from the Lives of the Slavic apostles with explicit references to “books,” and “letters.”Careful reexamination of the vitas’ entire manuscript tradition cannot support the assumption that, after his arrival in Moravia, Constantine continued to engage in translation activities. Taking up a proposal advanced in the past by other scholars, the article assumes that, instead of translating some undefined “liturgical texts” (VC 15:2 вьсь црк҃овныи чинь прѣложь/прїимь), Constantine “transferred”, “transcribed”, and “fixed” in Slavic letters texts that had already been translated (by the way, different passages of VC mention Constantine’s dispute with the Latin and Franco-Germanic clergy that related not so much to the translation of books as to the Slavic letters – see VC 15 and 16). For a more precise identification of these translations, the article briefly reexamines the literature produced by Irish and Frankish missionaries in the dioceses of Salzburg, Regensburg, Freising, Passau during the 7th and 8th centuries, as well as translations made by the Frankish clergy in the 9th century. The interpretation proposed in this article fits well with the Pope’s willingness to bless books written in Slavonic, since the practice of translating [essential Christian] texts into local languages served a well-established and long-standing missionary program, one that aimed far beyond the Slavs of Moravia. Through this politics, the papacy could regain control of territories that had previously been under the jurisdiction of Rome, yet had meanwhile fallen under the control of the Franks.In conclusion, the author challenges us to reread the Cyrillo-Methodian sources afresh, without any theoretical nor ideological bias, keeping in mind that these texts are primarily literary and ideologically inflected works, not historical sources.
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Talks with Svetozar Igov mirror the innermost spiritual autobiography of a scientist, his experience in/with literature. But “Svetozar Igov case” is not only a personal biografema. In it – differently – looking and spiritual biography of a generation in Bulgarian literature. This is a sign, symptomatic episode, it must be meaningful as such. Fraying will shed light on many other “improbable” cases. Although every fate is unique in its own way ... But in his case be removed fate of many of this generation whose personal destinies will remain “listed” and will sink into the darkness as “implausible” ... In the second, interpretive part of Antonia Velkova Igovs personality is a mirror in “high waters” of humanitarian thought, social psychology, cultural anthropology.
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The article interprets the communicative statute of “Smesna kitka” from P. R. Slaveikov take into consideration the communication strategies which actualize the choice of genre.
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