Защо? (прев. Иглика Василева)
Why? (transl. by Iglika Vasileva)

Summary/Abstract: The Bulgarian reader knows Virginia Woolf as one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century, but not exactly in her role as an essayist. At the same time she has been acknowledged as the most brilliant interpretative critic of her time. She has been reviewing books throughout her publishing career, though not so much as a writer or theoretician, as an ordinary reader, which makes her essays especially appealing even to readers who find her novels difficult to understand. The truths she reveals about the human condition are still valid and free to be interpreted in new and modern connotations. Though Woolf’s essays resist categories, they do fall into distinct areas. Many represent theoretical pieces on fiction, manifestoes on contemporary reading and writing, essays on the state of the literary market, on modern forms and aesthetic debates, as well as such on individual writers and titles. On the whole they shed more light on the relationship between reader and writer, on how best to understand books and to enjoy the pleasure of reading. Her essay “Why?”, though dealing with the problem of literature and the way it is taught in colleges does not offer solutions, just registers and illustrates the fact about its state.

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