Автобиографичният разказ – осмисляне на собствената предопределеност (разказът на отец Митрофан от Бачковския манастир за себе си)
The autobiographical narrative as a means of rationalizing one’s own predestination

Summary/Abstract: The paper concentrates on the specific situation, originating from the encounter between the field researcher and the informant. Every time the informant is willing to tell his/her life story, partly trying in this way to shorten the distance to the alien scholar. But there seems to be a much deeper motif for this: being interviewed, the interlocutor feels significant and is incited to strike a certain balance: to rationalize the principles moving the individual or the community behavior, and to rearrange his/her own life, apprehending it as a logically consistent and wholesome unity. The life of father Mitrofan, a monk in the Bachkovo monastery, is analyzed as an instructing and quite appealing example. His story is marked with his faith in God, a faith which was his main support in the many misadventures and serious illnesses he suffered. When he was young a clairvoyant foretold him that he was to become a monk. And although he spent his life in hard work and many other responsibilities, when already retired, he after all really became a monk in the Bachkovo monastery and devoted himself to the service of God.

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