Search results for: Aretov in PDF Content

The Languages of the Bulgarian Emigrants’ Poetry after 1944

Езиците на българската поезия в емиграция след 1944 г.

Author(s): Maya Gorcheva / Language(s): / Issue: 2/2015

Keywords: the emigrants’ poetry; native literary tradition; correspondences; divergences

The paper is an attempt to outline the emigrants’ poetry, with emphasis on the correspondences and the divergences with the native literary tradition and the trends in current poetry.As for the first generation émigrés, they attested a strongromantic bent and worship for the national symbols. The second generation from the end of 1950s and 1960s demonstrated broader interest for the actual context and their poetry adopted the language of the new country, alongside with new topics and poetic models. Inherent for both generations was the symbol of the Doppelgänger. Moreover, this is an overarching symbol present in the poetry abroad and in the country.

How Europeans think the nations? Some answers from the perspective of Cultural history and Imagology

Как европейците мислят нациите? Отговаря културната история и имагинистиката

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): / Issue: 2/2015

Keywords: review; Joep Leerssen; Europe; national thought; cultural history

(Joep Leerssen, National Thought in Europe. A Cultural History. 2 ed. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008) National Thought in Europe by Joep Leerssen critically analyzes the growth of nationalism from its beginnings in medieval ethnic prejudice to the romantic era’s belief in a national soul. A fertile pan-European exchange of ideas, often rooted in literature, led to a notion of a nation’s cultural individuality that transformed the map of Europe. This revue presents the monograph focusing on the possibilities to apply some of the ideas of the author on Balkan and Bulgarian phenomena.

Stephen Greenblatt. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W. W. Norton. 2011.

Stephen Greenblatt. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W. W. Norton. 2011.

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 3/2015

Keywords: review; Greenblatt; Lucretius; modern age

Stephen Greenblatt tells the story of how Poggio Bracciolini, a 15th-century papal emissary, and obsessive book hunter, saved the last copy of the Roman poet Lucretius‘s On the Nature of Things from near-terminal neglect in a German monastery, thus reintroducing important ideas that sparked the modern age. The author analyzes this development in a very broad cultural and philosophical scale. This review presents the monograph of the so-called New Historicism and its possible applications in Bulgarian scholarship.

The temptations of national identities and literary studies of the argument

Изкушенията на националните идентификации и литературознание на аргумента

Author(s): Raya Kuncheva / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 2/2016

Keywords: Lieux de mémoire; cultural heritage; Bogomilism

Memory, heritage and identity are concepts that enjoy overuse and popularity very few other concepts do recently. At world, European and national level, they determine the framework of cultural policies and research projects.The name Cultural and Historical Heritage and National Identity was given to the field the institutes of the humanities work in during the reform of the Bulgarian Academy of Science in 2011. Thus, the Bulgarian Academy of Science is in unison with the contemporary situation, which many historians define as the age of heritage. How does science respond to the worldwide advance of cultural heritage? The concept “memory of places”, introduced by Pierre Nora, as well as the problems connected with the collective memory, have given an impetus to a series of concrete studies. Memory is selective, it mutates, it feeds myths and consolidates identities, and it builds differences. It is the historisation of memory that gives us the chance to show ideologically charged historical knowledge as deliberate construction of memory. Historians, sociologists and philosophers such as Pierre Nora, Anthony Smith, Benedict Anderson, Dominique Schnapper and Jürgen Habermas base this article on conceptions of the nation. The second part of the article studies the methodological contribution of Grażyna Szwat-Gyłybow to Bulgarian humanities with her view of Bogomilism as a place of memory. The definition of the West as the “significant other” in forming the national cultural consciousness of the Bulgarians is a serious refutation of the stereotypes in the way Bulgarian identity is thought of. Grażyna Szwat’s study shows that Bogomilism, the spirit of denunciation, the eternal heretic who never tolerates the power of institutions, is not an inherent Bulgarian trait, but a construct, which receives different meaning depending on what ideological suggestions are sought.

Bulgarian histories about the janissaries during the Revival period

Български истории за еничарите през Възраждането

Author(s): Nadezhda Aleksandrova / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 2/2016

Keywords: Bulgarian history; Ottoman empire; purity-decline paradigm; janissaries

The article encompasses a number of historical narratives that are written in Bulgarian between the 1760s and 1870s, and which deal with the notion of the janissaries. The study is based on sources of different kinds - Bulgarian history manuscripts, textbooks in Bulgarian history, textbooks in Ottoman history, articles and academic studies on the subject, and a number of introductions and endnotes to fictional texts, which also contain a claim of being veritable historiographical sources. The analysis displays two main versions of the stories about the janissaries. The first follows „the paradigm purity-decline“ (Kafadar 1991). The second projects synonymy over the notions of the janissaries, kircali, dağali and other criminals who formed gangs and attacked the population. Thus, the period between the 18th and the beginning of the 19th c. was given the name „the time of turmoil“ (Rakovski 1860). The two versions of the histories of the janissaries are an outcome of the synergic effect of three factors that interplay on the scene of the Bulgarian historiography in the above-mentioned period. These are: the European historiographical sources, regarded as very prestigious; the official Ottoman policy of reforms, built on the idea of the change from an old retrograde order to a new progressive one; and last but not least, the process of formation national consciousness of the Bulgarians who undertook this image of ‘the evil janissaries’ in their own efforts to build a sense of a common historical past.

Entangled Histories of the Balkans

Преплетените истории на Балканите

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 2/2016

Keywords: Balkans; Entangled Histories; nationalism; languages; Ottomanism

This paper presents the collective volume “Entangled Histories of the Balkans” edited by Roumen Daskalov and Tchavdar Marinov and published first in English by Koninklijke Brill (Leiden) and then by New Bulgarian University (Sofia). Modern Balkan history has traditionally been studied by national historians in terms of separate national histories taking place within bounded state territories. The authors in this volume take a different approach. They all seek to treat the modern history of the region from a transnational and relational perspective in terms of shared and connected, as well as entangled, histories, transfers and crossings. This goes along with an interest in the way ideas, institutions, and techniques were selected, transferred and adapted to Balkan conditions and how they interacted with those conditions. The volume also invites reflection on the interacting entities in the very process of their creation and consecutive transformations rather than taking them as givens.

On the place of the Biblical text in the modern Bulgarian literature. Reception – Interpretations – Challenges

За мястото на библейския текст в новата българска литература. Рецепции – интерпретации – предизвикателства

Author(s): Ewelina Drzewiecka / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2017

Keywords: Bible; Bulgarian literature; Modernity; postsecular thought

The paper raises the question of the place of the Biblical text in Bulgarian literature and the autostereotype of the religious indifferentism of the Bulgarians. Both the key texts of the famous Bulgarian literary critics (B. Penev, D. Konstantinov, A. Dalchev) and their reception in the latest Bulgarian literary studies are analysed. The cultural context of the perception of the Bible (and religion) is given in terms of formation of modernity, as the emphasis is put on the role of the Orthodox and Protestant thought. It is indicated that a new perspective on the phenomena can be provided by the postsecular thought.

Reception of Antiquity and romantic historiography of the XIX century of Todor Shishkov and Gavril Krastevich

Рецепция на античността и романтичната историография на XIX век при Тодор Шишков и Гаврил Кръстевич

Author(s): Andriana Spasova / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2017

Keywords: reception of antiquity; romantic historiography; Bulgarian history textbooks of the XIX century; national identity; ancient historiographers; European Slavic studies; ethnogenesis

The focus of the study is the place of the ancient writers in textbooks from the 70s of XIX century - "History of the Bulgarian People" (1873) by T. Shishkov and "History Bulgarian: T.1" (1871) by Gabriel Krastevich. Some of the most recognizable historians and geographers of antiquity (Herodotus, Tacitus, Polybius, Ptolemy, Eratosthenes, Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, etc.) are important authorities who contribute to the formation of a foreign historical narrative of national history. In Shishkov very rarely ancient names come with bibliographical references and are often indexed by the phrase "and antique X said ...". The case of Krastevichis the opposite, he has given the detailed notes and quotes. The paper analyses the problem of ethnogenesis and the ancient roots of the national identity in Bulgarian history textbooks of the XIX century. Establishment of national stereotypes passes through a historiographical mythical poetic narrative combining the scientific pretensions and national romanticism. The role of ancient cultural heritage can be read in its role of a common European cultural code beyond projects of national ideology.

Evolution and competition of the myths of origin: Bulgarian and Balkan aspects

Evolution and competition of the myths of origin: Bulgarian and Balkan aspects

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

Keywords: myths of origin;Bulgaria;Balkans;narrations

The paper argues that historic myths and myths of origin, being an essential part of national mythology, are neither the first to emerge nor the only one. Furthermore, as a general rule, there are often several variations of the narration about the past of a nation that are evolving and compete for the dominant position.In an attempt to evade the polemics the author analyses some Bulgarian aspects of the crucial problem about the evolution and competition among these variations of national mythology comparing them with analogical Balkan phenomena. In all these countries there are mythical narrations about the ancient times, about Christian Middle Ages and Byzantium, about the struggle for an independent state, etc. They were arguing for primacy in the beginning; later some ideologists of the nation managed to build one relatively stable synthesis.

1935 – Three Narratives, dedicated to Hristo Botev

1935 г. – повествования за Ботев

Author(s): Anna Alexieva / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2018

Keywords: Hristo Botev; Interwar period; Prose genre forms; Ideology

The paper is focused on ideological modeling of the image of Hristo Botev, regarded as a national hero, during the Interwar period. Three particular works are analyzed: “The poet rebel: Hristo Botev” by Theodosy Anastasov, “Veneta” by Fany Popova-Mutafova, “Hristo Botev (Historical novel)” by Georgy Savchev. All these texts were published in the same year – 1935, and this fact could be considered as one of the arguments for grouping them together. They could be seen as representative for various prose genre forms. Authors of them demonstrated different attitude towards the established (canonical) historical and literary-historical narrative, both popular and academic, dedicated to Botev. While interpreting them, the paper is aiming at outlining both points of ideological match and tensions between literature and history as disciplinary fields.

Entangled Histories of the Balkans

Преплетените истории на Балканите

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2018

Keywords: Balkans; Western Models; Liberalisms; Early Socialism; Agrarian Ideologies; Fascism; Communism; Nationalism; Ancient Thrace; Byzantium; Ottoman Legacy; National Revival

This paper presents volumes 2 and 3 of the collective research project “Entangled Histories of the Balkans” dedicated to the “Transfers of Political Ideologies and Institutions” (edited by Roumen Daskalov and Diana Mishkova) and to the “Shared Pasts, Disputed Legacies” (edited by Roumen Daskalov and Alexander Vezenkov). Modern Balkan history has traditionally been studied by national historians in terms of separate national histories taking place within bounded state territories. The authors in this volume take a different approach. They all seek to treat the modern history of the region from a transnational and relational perspective in terms of shared and connected, as well as entangled, histories, transfers, and crossings. This goes along with an interest in the way ideas, institutions, and techniques were selected, transferred and adapted to Balkan conditions and how they interacted with those conditions. The volumes also invite reflection on the interacting entities in the very process of their creation and consecutive transformations rather than taking them as givens.

Matilde Serao - ‘an extraordinary woman’ translated in Bulgarian

Матилде Серао – една "превъзходна жена" на български език

Author(s): Nadezhda Alexandrova,Boyka Ilieva / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 2/2018

Keywords: Matilde Serao; Bulgarian periodicals; reception; translators’ identities; Bulgarian women’s writers; Bulgarian criticism; literary influence

The essay is the first attempt to encompass the reception of the renowned Italian woman writer Matilde Serao in Bulgaria. The most frequent place of publication of her works were the pages of the Bulgarian journals and the most active period of the reception was from the 1890s to 1920s. This is exactly the period when Bulgarian literature started experimenting with generic and self-reflexive techniques on the one hand, and with a more socially grounded approach to writing fiction, on the other hand. As a result, the poetic of Mathilde Serao, which contains both these trends, fitted very well the taste of the Bulgarian reading audience. For the period at question we found twenty-four translations in fifteen different journals, as well as several critical reviews of her work. After providing quantitative data of appearance of Matilde Serao in Bulgaria we describe the translators’ choices of works and provide hypotheses on the identity of her translators, and on the influence which her writing had on the Bulgarian literary scene.

Luben Karavelov and the foreign woman: The case of Ekaterina Tsenovich

Любен Каравелов и „чуждите“ жени: Казусът Жаба Крекетуша/ Екатерина Ценович

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 2/2018

Keywords: Bulgarian literature; matrimonial rules; Luben Karavelov

Every community has its matrimonial rules describing some marriages as permitted, desirable, intolerable or forbidden. These rules have to do with the definition of the ‘own’ an ‘alien’ and with the inner differentiation of the ‘own’ and their basis is the question what is beneficial for the community. The paper deals with one particular case in Bulgarian literature from the 19th century – the complicated attitude of the distinguished writer and ideologist towards the Tsenovich family. Dimitar Tsenovich married to a Serbian widow just like Karavelov. In the beginning, Karavelov was in perfect relations with the family of his compatriot and friend. Then he started to present both Ekaterina and Dimitar in a negative light. The paper offers some observations on the image of love and marriage in Karavelov’s fiction and autobiographical text.

Foreigners and the establishment of Bulgarian theater

Чужденците и българският театър

Author(s): Nikoleta Patova / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 2/2018

Keywords: Theatre; foreign art – national cultural institution; National Theatre in Sofia; Adam Mandrović; Josef Šmaha

The attempts to strengthen theatrical art in Bulgaria pass from amateur theatre initiatives in Bulgarian National Revival through subsidized companies after the Liberation to the creation of the first state theater group in Sofia. Bulgarians take the first theatrical acts as ‘foreign’, forced and unnatural elements in their regular life. The ‘foreign’-ness remains its specific feature until its recognition for a cultural institution in the last decade of 19th century. Bulgarians ‘open’ to the European world and gradually the mistrust in the ‘foreign’ reduces. As for the theatre, it is being even forgotten, especially after the Bulgarian dramaturgy started its intentional development. The presence of the Foreigner in the various stages of Bulgarian theatre’s establishment is a topic of interest. Regardless of the initial resistance against foreign art, the foreigners connected to it are eagerly accepted as cultural ambassadors rather than aggressive imposers of cultural practices. A demonstration of this is the amateur or professional effort of numerous foreigners who connected their lives with Bulgaria for a while. A special role for the creation of the Bulgarian theatre holds Josef Meizner – recognized as a director of the first Bulgarian act in the town of Shumen. Such role holds also Adam Mandrović who shortly was a director of the Sofia theatre ‘Salza i smayh’ (Tear and Laughter), and Josef Šmaha – the first director of the National Theatre.

Georgi Gachev: From ‘Accelerated Development’ to ‘National Images of the World’

Георги Гачев: От „закъсняло-ускорено развитие“ към националните образи на света

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2019

Keywords: Georgi Gachev; Accelerated Development; National Images of the World

This paper focuses on two key notions in the oeuvre of Georgi Gachev, presented in a broader context – ‘accelerated development’ and ‘national image of the world’, on the evolution in Gachev’s thinking, that reveal high self-confidence and could even be labeled as “colonialist’s”. These two ideas are interconnected, but there is also some tension between them. The accelerated development presuppose evolution towards a universal construction (modern European literature); national images, on the contrary, problematize the universal in behalf of the local, national, that is seen as primordial and has its constant (if not eternal) invariant.

The Paradoxes of Unattained Reception

За парадоксите на една несбъднала се рецепция

Author(s): Diyana Nikolova / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 2/2019

Keywords: reception; pastoral; bucolic code; modernism; Silver Age; Thèophile Gautier; Henri de Régnier; Andrè Gides; P. Y. Todorov; K. Merdzhanski

The text discusses one aspect of the receptive horizon of Bulgarian literature – the lack of active reception of such writers as Thèophile Gautier, Henri de Régnier, and Andrè Gides. The focus falls on their works which reveal a modern way of working with the pastoral code and their absence in receptive circles in our country; on the feeble interest our literature (and reading public) displays towards the pastoral in its “classical” and modern shape. The observations here are limited mostly to the cultural processes from the first half of the 20th century but I also touch upon the contemporary reception in a Bulgarian translation of pastoral works as well as the critical reception of writers such as Kiril Merdzhanski.

Bilingualism and Bulgarian women writers from the 19th century

Билингвизмът и българските авторки от 19 век: Рахил Душанова, Екатерина Василева, Богдана Хитева

Author(s): Nadezhda Alexandrova / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 3/2019

Keywords: types of bilingualism; women writers; women education; translation; memoirs

The article regards the advantages and setbacks of being bilingual when it comes to foreign women teachers and writers who contributed to the Bulgarian national project from the 1860s to the 1920s. They are the Serbian teacher Rahil Barak Dushanova (1845-1888), the Czech teacher and journalist Bogdana Iraskova Hiteva (1844-1929), and the second-generation Bulgarian émigré in Romania Evgenia Mihailova Vassileva (1852-1926) who was a poet, journalist, and writer. First, the article distinguishes the types of bilingualism for each case, attributing a coordinate type to the women teachers Bogdana Hiteva and Rahil Dushavova, and a subordinate one to Ekaterina Vassileva, who did not feel convenient in Bulgarian and wrote her texts in Romanian or French. Then the paper follows the biographical path of each of these women in order to distinguish whether her positioning in the receiving country displays a strategy of adaptation and inclusion into Bulgarian social and cultural life, and at what cost it was achieved. However, as it concerns the Bulgarian literary history, the identity of a bilingual woman writer has fewer chances for posthumous inclusion into the literary canon due to her unstable and transitive identity. The conclusion of the paper is that those women who managed to claim sufficiently their newly achieved and sustained Bulgarian identity have better chances for future remembrance. Yet, large parts of their writings need the application of a new and non-nationalistic perspective, which could acknowledge better their specific contribution to both Bulgarian literature and that of their birthplace.

The Paradise on Earth and the Pest Pandemic in Decameron by G. Boccaccio

Земният рай и чумната пандемия в „Декамерон“ на Джовани Бокачо

Author(s): Angel Angelov / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2020

The article is written on the occasion of the state of emergency and the need for social isolation imposed in Bulgaria in relation to the pandemic caused by the covid-19 virus. The author asks the question: which were the places for meetings in the Italian towns during the 14th century? The actual situation and our newly acquired contemporary experience are a stimulus to approach the everyday life of certain communities before the age of Modernity. The author interprets Decameron as an evidence for social values, existing or in a process of formation in the middle of the 14th century in an Italian town-republic. He tries to establish relations between the text of Decameron and other evidences from that time in order to learn more about the worldview of the Florence inhabitants in their social diversity. He studies the contrast between the depictions of the plague pandemic and the earthly paradise, offering a detailed analysis of the background and the behaviour of the ten narrators in the earthly paradise. He investigates the propinquity between book IV of Filocolo and the framework of Decameron. Boccaccio depicts the plague in Florence as a social anarchy and a moral decline. The earthly paradise in Decameron is a carefree state of youth, a harmony with nature – with the environment rationally organised by people. The earthly paradise supposes establishing good reason in the relations between people; equality between the community members who through discussion can reach a decision satisfying all of them; the shared communication also characterizes the earthly paradise. But the earthly paradise likewise reproduces the hierarchy of real sociality.

Neofit Bozveli and Childhood

Неофит Бозвели и детската възраст

Author(s): Nadia Danova / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2020

Keywords: Neofit Bozweli; History of Childhood; Child, Bulgarian 19th Century; Greek Enlightenment; John Locke; Aristotle.

The study focuses on Neofit Bozveli’s views on childhood revealed in his writings and biography. One of his strongest messages is his belief that a kid’s mind is a tabula rasa. He pleads for a new understanding of childhood as a stage in human development, requiring adults specific treatment. His views on the power model in the family and society remain traditional, as he regards the infant as "imperfect" and the child deprived of the knowledge and experience that would entitle him to autonomous decisions.

Towards History of Anti-Semitism in Plovdiv in the Late 19th Century

Към историята на антисемитизма в Пловидв в късния 19 век

Author(s): Keta Mircheva / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2020

Keywords: Anti-Semitism; blood libel; Bulgarian press; Plovdiv

The article presents how the accusation that Jews use the blood of Christian children in their rituals, a legend most popular as “blood libel”, was discussed in the Plovdiv Bulgarian press in the late 19th century. There are cases of the legend being challenged by local journalists, as well as others in which they are its distributors. In this sense, the Bulgarians are no more tolerant than their Greek neighbors, as the director of the local AIU school claims in one of his reports. Some groups in Bulgarian society also succumb to anti-Semitism, and this depends as much on the entry of modern political anti-Semitic ideas through the channels of mass education and popular literature, as well as on economic problems and crises.