ISSUE 2, 2023

Summary

The article examines generically diverse post-1989 Bulgarian texts based on crime stories. It compares representations of criminality in the literature of the People's Republic of Bulgaria and in the fiction of local authors from the post-communist era. The focus is on how new narratives about criminals and detectives shape assessments about the present, the legacies of the totalitarian era, and the presence (or absence) of justice within Bulgaria’s contemporary socio-political reality.

Keywords: contemporary Bulgarian prose; crime literature; criminal genre and ideology; criminal genre and social consciousness

Славея Димитрова Преходът след 1989 година: събития, политики, оценки
Slaveia Dimitrova The Post-1989 Transition: events, politics, assessments

Summary

The paper focuses on a series of interviews conducted with Bulgarian intellectuals on the occasion of the 10th and the 25th anniversary of November 10th, 1989, for Deutsche Welle and the Kultura newspaper respectively. An analysis is carried out on the opinions shared by the interviewees on the significance of that date for Bulgarian political, social, and cultural life, on freedom, the new political trends, and the emblematic figures in them. Special attention is paid to the role which the new democratic situation assigned to the intellectuals. They are altogether set in opposition to the political elites of the Transition.

Keywords: November 10th 1989; transition; democracy; responsibility; intellectual; social price

Албена Вачева Преходът като сюжет в литературата и в литературното поле
(Наблюдения върху разкази, публикувани във всекидневниците през 90-те години на ХХ в.)
Albena Vacheva The Time of Transition as a Subject in Literature and in the Literary Field

Summary

The article analyses the results of a survey conducted with students, related to the short stories published in the daily newspapers in the 1990s of the XX century. Based on the received answers, a study of the literary field in the reviewed period and the ontological characteristics of the media in which the stories are published is made. The focus is put on the problem of rapid "aging" of the aesthetic patterns, as well as on the issue of the specific "informational archive" in which the works are conserved in the libraries. The article analyses the question of the factors—including political-ideological ones—that form certain receptive readers’ attitudes and expectations towards published literary short stories.

Keywords: daily newspapers; time of transition; literary field; literary history; short stories

Юлия Златкова Лора Каравелова – Иван Дренков или историята на един нещастен брак
Julia Zlatkova Laura Karavelova – Ivan Drenkov or a Story of an Unhappy Marriage

Summary

The paper discusses the first marriage and divorce of Laura Karavelova and her complicated relationship with Peter Neykov, Ivan Drenkov, and her mother Ekaterina. Laura was one of the most cultured, enigmatic, and emancipated Bulgarian women at the beginning of the 20th century but she was also a tragic figure. Her tragic destiny was influenced by literature and the whole artistic world of the time – theatre, music, and visual arts. The study presents Laura Karavelova as a personalistic feminist, whose struggle for personal freedom confronted her with traditionalist Ekaterina Karavelova.

Keywords: Laura Karavelova; love and marriage; Gender history; Ibsenism; literary influences

Цветан Ракьовски Ламар в литературните контексти между двете световни войни
Tsvetan Rakiovsky Lamar in Literary Contexts between the Two World Wars

Summary

The research subject of the study is the poet Lalio Marinov, who is known by his creative pseudonym Lamar. Attention is focused on his presence in the Bulgarian literary process between the two world wars. Lamar's path in the already-formed aesthetic trends of post-war Symbolism and Expressionism is examined. Attention is paid to the traces that imaginism and anarcho-communism leave in his poetry. The more prominent intertextual relationships that took shape in the 1920s are traced. More important are those relations between Lamar, on the one hand, and Geo Milev, Dimitar Hadjiliev, Yassen Valkovski, Ivan Perfanov, on the other. It comments on the changes in imagery and poetic expression that accompanied Lamar and his books, as well as his publications in literary periodicals in the years between the two wars.

Keywords: symbolism; expressionism] intertextuality; literary periodicals

Сирма Данова Паисий и десният митонационализъм между двете световни войни. Списание „Отец Паисий“
Sirma Danova Paissius of Hilendar and Right-Wing Nationalism between the Two World Wars. Otets Paisiy Magazine

Summary

In this article, I delve into Otets Paisiy magazine (1928-1943), an organization of the right-wing patriotic All-Bulgarian union Otets Paisiy. I aim to reveal how the image of the Hilendar monk was formed as a symbol at a time of crisis of nationalism. The main question is why it was Paisius of Hilendar who was chosen as the symbol of Bulgarian revisionism after the Treaty of Neuilly. The subject of the analysis are texts by Spiridon Kazandzhiev and Boris Yotsov as they express different visions of historical perspective, rethinking the history-life relationship, and ultimately getting over major principles of the ‘philosophy of life’, still modern between the two world wars. Finally, I trace the institutionalization of the celebration of Paisius in Bulgarian culture in the context of the symbol crisis in the 1930s.

Keywords: crisis; philosophy of life; philosophy of history; Spiridon Kazandzhiev; Boris Yotsov

Ivana Zajc Becoming a Woman Writer: The Self-representations in the Letters of Women Writers of the Slovenian Moderna
Ivana Zajc Becoming a Woman Writer: The Self-representations in the Letters of Women Writers of the Slovenian Moderna

Summary

In the period of the Slovene moderna in the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, Slovenian women writers were establishing themselves in the literary field for the first time. With the analysis of their correspondences from the point of view of the history of emotions we focus on how they experienced the new roles they assumed in this period: the writer/poet, the editor, the intellectual, the critic, and the emancipated woman. The analysis shows the struggles they experienced when trying to be a part of the Slovenian literary system. Their letters were a place of critical reflection and intimate relationships forming a community of women writers that at the time were a marginalised group.

Keywords: literature; women writers; intimacy; Slovene moderna; letters

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