Issue 2, 2018

Румяна Л. Станчева Йон Лука Караджале, „свой“ или „чужд“
Roumiana L. Stantcheva Ion Luca Caragiale – “Own” or “Foreign”

  • Summary

    Discussed by his contemporaries through the opposition "own or foreign", identified by the next generations as a writer from the so-called "Balkanist" literary line, in his short satirical stories, the Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale (1852-1912) demonstrates his sense for the oriental backwardness of the mores, from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Even though Caragiale’s critics associate him for his supposed foreign origin and claimed that made him overly critical of Romanian society, he was not afraid to expose the falsity and to ridicule the Bucharest self-proclaimed elite with their pretentions standing in stark contrast to their trickster approach to life and their nationalist disposition. The "foreign" Caragiale, with his sense of the peculiarities of the Romanian world, has created remarkable humorous and satirical images of "his own” compatriots and of life in the small Paris.

    Keywords: Ion Luca Caragiale, Own, Foreign


Маламир Спасов „Великият Левантинец“ или за границите на безграничното
Malamir Spasov “Great Eastern”: On the Boundaries of Boundlessness

  • Summary

    On September 2, 1901, in Brăila, Romania, was born Andreas Embirikos (1901-1975), one of the most significant Greek poets who, along with Seferis, belonged to the so-called Generation of the ‘30s – an important representative of Greek modernism who introduced surrealism in Greek context, confirmed revolutionary of the word, great visionary, and heretic from his first poetry collection. In addition, professional psychoanalyst, enthusiastic photographer, and literary critic.

    The Great Eastern (Ό Μέγας Ἀνατολικός) is his magnum opus – the mega-novel of Embirikos, he has been working on for more than two decades, and was published only after his death. The Great Eastern contains more than 100 chapters, unfolding upon more than 2000 pages. The novel was released in 8 volumes only in the 1990s. There has been no comprehensive translation of the novel so far. The Great Eastern was on the verge to become the great unpublished of Embirikos and, unfortunately, remains the great untranslated of Embirikos.

    The Great Eastern is actually the name of a giant transatlantic steamship, a veritable Titanic's predecessor, which made several courses from Liverpool to New York and back in the second half of the nineteenth century. In a nutshell, in The Great Eastern Embirikos reveals a ten-day voyage of the giant steamship in May 1867 as a journey through hedonism and beyond, during which her passengers devote their selves to love without boundaries and generally to all kinds of crossing the boundaries.

    The Great Eastern is a transgressive novel. It represents literature that many would call dangerous. This is a good reason for speculating over the concept of transgressive. Boundaries and boundlessness are a matter of perspective. The real question is what goes beyond the boundaries of boundlessness.

    Keywords: Andreas Embirikos, The Great Eastern, transgressive novel


Теодора Цанкова Географските местоположения в сонатите на Рамон Мария дел Валие-Инклан
Teodora Tzankova The Geographic Locations in The Pleasant Memoirs of the Marquis de Bradomín by Ramón María del Valle-Inclán

  • Summary

    The paper examines The Pleasant Memoirs of the Marquis de Bradomín: Four Sonatas (1902-5), a series of short novels, each named after a season (Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter Sonatas) by the Spanish modernist writer Ramón María del Valle-Inclán, focusing on the geographic locations of the stories: Italy, Mexico, Galicia and Navarra. First of all, the structure of the series associates each location with a season and an age of the protagonist: Italy with spring and youth, Mexico with summer and plenitude, Galicia with autumn and maturity, and Navarra with winter and old age. Furthermore, the locations acquire a specific meaning within the plot: Italy is the homeland of Casanova and Aretino, teachers of the protagonist in love and writing; Mexico puts forward the question of the Conquista and presents it as inadequate and anachronistic to contemporary relationships; Spain has a glorious past which is, however, irretrievably lost; Spain’s present does not offer a sensible political solution to the crisis the country is suffering and in this situation aesthetics is the only consolation for the protagonist.

    Keywords:


Надежда Александрова, Бойка Илиева Матилде Серао – една "превъзходна жена" на български език
Nadezhda Alexandrova, Boyka Ilieva Matilde Serao a ‘perfect woman’ in the Bulgarian language

  • Summary

    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 of 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-three translations in fourteen 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.

    Keywords:


Кристиян Янев Вина и отговорност (полско-еврейските отношения в есетата на Хенрик Гринберг, Ян Блонски и Йежи Йедлицки)
Kristiyan Yanev Guilt and Responsibility (The Polish-Jewish Relationship in the Essays of Henryk Grynberg, Jan Błoński and Jerzy Jedlicki)

  • Summary

    The article examines three highly debated and polemic Polish essays, written in the 1980s by Henryk Grynberg, Jan Błoński and Jerzy Jedlicki. The aim of the paper is to present the different view of their authors about the traumatic recent Polish-Jewish past and to analyze how these essays deal with the notions of historical guilt and responsibility.

    Keywords: guilt, responsibility, Second World War, Polish-Jewish relationships


Николай Жечев Неизвестно стихотворение на Васил Друмев за Христо Ботйов?
Nikolay Zhechev Unknown poem by Vasil Drumev about Hristo Botev

  • Summary

    The paper presents an unpublished poem by the prominent Bulgarian writer and public figure from the second half of the 18th century Vasil Drumev (Metropolitan Kliment of Turnovo) dedicated to the great poet and revolutionary man Hristo Botev. The manuscript was found in the archive of Nikola Mihov and raised many questions about the author, the time when it was written and so on. To some of these questions, the paper searches the answers.

    Keywords: Vasil Drumev, Hristo Botev, unpublished, authorship, poetry


Николай Аретов Любен Каравелов и „чуждите“ жени: Казусът Жаба Крекетуша/ Екатерина Ценович
Nikolay Aretov Luben Karavelov and the foreign woman: The case of Ekaterina Tsenovich

  • Summary

    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.

    Keywords: Bulgarian literature, matrimonial rules, Luben Karavelov


Николета Пътова Чужденците и българският театър
Nikoleta Patova Foreigners and the establishment of Bulgarian theater

  • Summary

    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.

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


Пламен Антов Идеология и пародия в жанра: поглед върху белетристиката на Цветан Стоянов. „Случаят с професора”
Plamen Antov Ideology and Parody in the Genre: A Look on the Tsvetan-Stoyanov’s Fiction Prose. The Case with the Professor

  • Summary

    The paper considers the special attention of the “high” intellectual, literary critic and social philosopher Tsvetan Stoyanov to the “low” forms of the fiction/novel genre – humour and crime. The answer is: the both precisely guarantees a top freedom of identifications. To the highest degree “softening-up” of the discourse in the belles letters sphere, in the first stage, but in the second – to the modern irony through which the Stoyanov’s fiction prose stays in the political sphere and operates with it. The political situation is object to not a clear, unambiguous obstructions, but a ambiguous and sly discourse games.

    The both spheres – political-ideological and its parody – are mixed in the crime story The Case with the Professor (1966) by a very complicated manner and therefore almost imperceptibly. This work is examined in detail to explicate the mechanism through which Tsvetan-Stoyanov’s fiction presents in the genre. And how, in the frame of genre, it operates with ideological values – pro and contra simultaneously. The novel is a parody of crime genre in its strong ideological soc-version and full valued, complete, “earnest” crime-spy reading simultaneously.

    The Stoyanov’s fiction prose operates with the big imperative of the Ideology in the same dual, double-faced way: not directly and unambiguously (“dissidently”) opposing from outside, but by means of an ambiguous, polysemantic, full of suggestion, slippery, slipping out, serious-ironic narrative which plays on the edge. Not radical self-excluding, but co-sharing, complicity, partnershiping in a cunning duplicity of the game –inside and outside simultaneously, but not leaving the area outlined by the its own rules. A try to outwitting of the clumsy mono-discourse of the Ideology through shaking, breaking up of the meanings in the frame of the game itself. Stoyanov remains to the end within the word/speech relying on its slyness within the framework of the dialogue.

    This operative strategy works simultaneously within genre’s and ideology’s field unbreakable connected within autonomous “inner space” of the work. – But this strategy is seen as regularly followed from the social-biographical figure of the modern “playing intellectual” whose perfect personification is Tzvetan Stoyanov.

    Keywords: “low” novel’s forms; humour, crime; Ideology – intellectual; political-ideological sphere – parody; modern irony; discursive games


Преглед / Review

Надежда Александрова За самоубийството като убийство (Йордан Нанчев. П. К. Яворов. Преди и след куршума)
Nadezhda Alexandrova The suicide as assassination (Yordan Nenchev. P. K. Yavorov. Before and after the bullet)

  • Summary

    The review presents the latest documentary study of the case of Laura - Yavorov by Dr Yordan Nanchev, a literary historian and a lawyer. The work is highly appreciated as a good tracking of the facts and an adequate reading of their documentary impact in the archives, especially those of the publisher Alexander Paskalev and Prof. Asen Zlatarov, with whom the author has been working for years.

    Keywords: Yavorov, Laura Karavelova, poetry