Ангел Валентинов Ангелов
Класицистични критики срещу модерната литература и изкуство в Цюрих, Мюнхен и Москва в 1966 година
Angel Valentinov Angelov
Classicistic Critique against Modern Literature and Art in Zürich, München, and Moscow in 1966
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Summary
I discuss three publications, which reject modern art and Modernity in general and which address an audience, broader than literature and art specialists. Two of the publications are in high-circulation newspapers, and the other is the text of a delivered speech. The time is October–December 1966. The authors are Emil Staiger, Robert Scholz, Michail Lifshitz.
The three of them have Classicistic-oriented conceptions; their aesthetic models are in the past. They equally criticize modern art and literature as decadent. For all their three positions, what is determinant is the works’ subject matter; the art experiment is not a notion for them to discuss. Modernism in art is a demolition of the classical criteria for good, beauty, and truth; modernism does not elevate but degrades what is human. For Scholz and Lifshitz, Picasso, and cubism in general, creates formlessness, monstrosity, and deceit. I discuss the use of medical metaphors regarding art and society.
A contra-factual speculation is suggested what the impact of Heinrich Lützeler’s and Kenneth Clark’s TV series in Bulgaria would be if the series of both the authors were broadcasted, and not only „The Civilisation” of K. Clark.
An interpretation is given of Votier’s performances „Regardez moi cela suffit”, which Lifshitz entirely rejects. The reception of Lifshitz in Bulgaria is considered in Alexander Atanassov’s work „About a Modern Realism against Modernism”.
I draw the conclusion, based also on some other investigations of mine, that both rightist conservative positions to the west of the Iron Curtain and Marxist positions in the East defend similar or the same aesthetic and social values.Keywords: Classicism; classic; antimodernism; realism; decadent; Emil Staiger; Heinrich Lützeler; Michail Lifshitz; Benjamin Votier
Аленка Корон
„Некропол“ на Борис Пахор и световната литература
Alenka Koron
Boris Pahor’s Necropolis and World Literature
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Summary
The present contribution addresses the question of how the novel Necropolis (1967) by Boris Pahor, a Slovenian minority author (with Italian citizenship) born in 1913 and living in Trieste, is placed in world literature. It sheds light on the novel’s path from the semi-peripheral Slovenian literary system to the canonical works of Slovenian (national) literature via various actors in the informal social networks of the globalised literary market and through its consecration in one of the prestigious intellectual and artistic centres of the world literary system (Paris), as well as through the mediation of translations into the dominant world languages. Attention is also given to the uniquely poetic character of this novel of memory about life in a concentration camp, which is a glocalised version of one of the world’s major literary testimonies of the Shoah.
Keywords: world literature; Boris Pahor; testimonial literature / literary testimony; memoiristic novel; consecration
Мартин Колев
Преживяването на природата във „Ферма в Сертон“ на Матвей Вълев
Martin Kolev
Experiencing nature in “A farm in sertão” by Matvey Valev
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Summary
The following article examines the image of nature, reflected in parts of Matvey Valev's Brazilian prose, and focuses on the walking man's gaze. Two main manifestations of nature are observed: „wild nature“, characterized by abundance and dominance; and „tamed nature“, in which dominance had been taken away by man. The alienation of Valev's emigrant characters is tied to the broken connection between the character of the modern man and nature.
Keywords: Matvey Valev; sertão; nature; nature-culture; alienation
Валентина Миткова
Българският женски периодичен печат от края на XIX – началото на XX век (поглед към „домакинските“ издания)
Valentina Mitkova
Bulgarian women's press from the end of the XIX – the beginning of the XX century (a look at the ‘household’ periodicals)
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Summary
The aim of this article is to trace how popular publications aimed at female audiences, the women’s press, contributed to the emancipation and cultural modernisation of Bulgarian women from the end of nineteenth century until 1914. The subject of research is the so-called ‘household periodicals’ - the newspapers and magazines addressing women, that deliberately avoided politicisation and tried to modernise and emancipate their readers within the private space of the ‘women's world’ (understood as home and family). Incorporating relational feminist arguments in their rhetoric, such periodicals did not confine themselves to the attempt of building an exemplary reconstruction of the private sphere in the variety of the aesthetic and moral dimensions of that field. They became a key element of the country’s popular culture and had a longlasting political and social effect. An example of the household periodicals’ modernising efforts and sensitivity to modern emancipatory ideas was one of the pioneering women’s projects in this category, the magazine Moda i domakinstvo (‘Fashion and Household’), 1897-1906, edited and published by Elena Usheva.
Keywords: women’s press; household periodicals; women’s emancipation; cultural modernisation
Виолета Русева
Опит в жанровата генеалогия на прозата. Повествованията на Любен Каравелов
Violeta Ruseva
An attempted study of prose works through the genealogy of the genre. The case of Lyuben Karavelov’s narratives
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Summary
This critical undertaking seeks to establish the fictional status of prose by means of tracking down the genre’s genealogy. Drawing on the historical poetics of New Bulgarian literature, the study focuses on the differentiation of prose narratives from the variety of literary modes that shaped the discursive polyphony of Revival literature: journalism, folk studies, linguistic endeavours, philological reflections, folklore archives, parts of which went down in prose as specific expressions or synthetic formulations serving to impart a degree of fiction to the narrative. The specifics of Karavelov’s narration render it eligible for analysis that employs the strategies and methods of counternormative genealogy, the study of genre development that registers the impulse for its dissolution.
Keywords: Lyuben Karavelov; narratives; genre; discursive perspective
Николай Аретов
Завладяването на Търново като митичен сюжет
Nikolay Aretov
The conquest of Tarnovo as a mythical plot
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Summary
This paper deals with the different images of one key event in Bulgarian history – the conquest of the capital city of Tarnovo by the Ottomans (1393). Some of the main texts about it could be traced in hagiography, in folklore, in historiography and textbooks, and in literature are discussed. The focus is on the interpretations from the 19th century and on examining them as a network and in the context of some other similar events (e.g. the conquest of Constantinople, 1453, the Battle of Kosovo, some local military clashes, etc.), in the quest of a common mythical base beneath them presenting the conquest of an important city by foreign infidel barbarians. Some characteristics, typical for Bulgarian culture are discussed. Among them, the absence of reports for a great battle, the important role of the Patriarch and relatively small role of the last King, etc. The counter-discourse about the decline of the kingdom is also noticed in the context of the creation of the canonic image of the event that appeared relatively lately. The most prominent author in this counter-discourse was the poet Hristo Botev.
Keywords: conquest of Tarnovo; national mythology; history; Ottomans
Гражина Шват-Гълъбова
Евелина Джевиецка, Юбилейно и модерно. Кирило-Mетодиевският разказ през социализма в България (Кирило-Методиевски студии, кн. 29, 2020)
Grażyna Szwat-Gyłybowa
Ewelina Drzewiecka. Jubilee and Modern. (The Cyrillo-Methodian Narrative during Socialism in Bulgaria, No 29, 2020)
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Summary
The review concerns the book by Ewelina Drzewiecka entitled Юбилейно и модерно. Кирило-Mетодиевският разказ през социализма в България (2020), which is an attempt to create the typology of the narratives about the Solun Brothers and their followers in Bulgarian scientific, Orthodox church, pseudo-scientific and journalistic writing of the socialist era, that is in texts that were created under conditions of a disturbed communicative situation, strong ideological pressure and (self-)censorship. The review not only discusses the book, but also contains comments on the Author’s research approach (based on the achievements of postsecular thought) and cognitive benefits that result from it.
Keywords: Cyril and Methodius; paleo-Slavistics; socialism; postsecularism; modernity
Кета Мирчева
Историята на един балкански град или как се раждат българският и гръцкият национализми
Keta Mircheva
The History of a Balkan town or How Bulgarian and Greek Nationalisms were born
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Summary
The review looks at the Bulgarian translation of an important book on the history of the town of Plovdiv in the 19th century – “The Revival Plovdiv: Transformation, Ideology, Nationalism” by Andreas Lyberatos (Greek edition appeared in 2009: “Economy, Politics and National Ideology: The Formation of the National Parties in Plovdiv in the 19th century”, University of Crete Press). Analyzing the deep economic, demographic and social transformations the city and the surrounding province underwent during the Tanzimat period, the author managed to successfully go beyond the limitations of the Bulgarian and Greek historical narratives and to show how the association with one or other national party within the unstable political, and social climate was not predetermined by belonging to one or another culture, but rather the opposite: a choice that went hesitantly and slowly and was associated with social and economic ties, with declines in political influence and positions won by each party, with danger and predictions of who would prevail in the conflict.
Keywords: Plovdiv; Tanzimat; Bulgarian Nationalism; Greek Nationalism