Issue 3, 2025

Summary

The article examines the unfinished final chapter of Tzvetan Stoyanov’s “The Genius and His Mentor” in light of a recent claim according to which Smerdyakov is not the actual perpetrator of the murder in “The Brothers Karamazov.” How will our understanding of Dostoevsky’s incomplete novel change – if at all – in the case that it turns out that its plot incorporates not only a judicial error but also a cunning trap for its readers, that is, an intended readerly error? Stoyanov’s analysis, which is also a dramatic “novel about the novel,” brings the problem of doubles in Dostoevsky’s work and the splitting in the psychoanalytic sense of the word (Spaltung) to the forefront. At the same time, it constantly renews the question, “Who killed our father?”

Keywords: Patricide, splitting, doubles, paternalism, revolt, Julia Kristeva

Стоян Ставру Игра пред закона: Кафка и пространствата на справедливостта
Stoyan Stavru Play Before the Law: Kafka and the Spaces of Justice

Summary

The article analyzes allegories and metaphors in Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law.” The literary text is interpreted through the philosophical lenses of Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, Slavoj Žižek, and Gershom Scholem. The central motif of the “door” is explored as a symbol of access to law and as a dual phenomenon of transcendence and immanence. The ambivalence of law is examined as well. On the one hand, it is read as a sacred, inaccessible authority (in the eyes of the man from the country). On the other, the law is interpreted as an intrusive force in everyday life (as exemplified by the judge’s repeated incursions into the painter’s studio). The present analysis links Kafka’s vision of law to the structural ambiguities of the legal system and the tension between legality and justice.

Keywords: Kafka, “Before the Law”, justice, trial, law, philosophy

Божана Филипова Aufhebung-ът на най-висшето благо. Наблюдения върху Хегеловата „Феноменология на духа“
Bozhana Filipova The Aufhebung of the Highest Good. Observations on Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit”

Summary

The following text attempts to reconstruct the notion of the highest good in the first two parts of chapter “C. Morality” of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit” –
“The Moral View of the World” and “Dissemblance.” The main argument of the present article is that Hegel does not reject or negate Kant’s propositions on the highest good or the notion itself, as many scholars claim, but instead – he realizes its Aufhebung by integrating it into the logic of the dialectic. The analysis presented here shows that, by means of the strong rhetorical language used in these most dramatic pages of his fundamental text, Hegel focuses on the contradictions, reached by his predecessor from Königsberg and finds a path beyond them. Closely following their logic, he presents a new level of their complexity. His aim is to track the developments of thought and to open new aspects and possibilities for further approximation to the maximum of the highest good, which is itself a moral experience of the philosophical thought.

Keywords: highest good, dialectics, moral consciousness, happiness, duty, moral imperative

Йоанна Нейкова Отвъд: кратко въведение към понятието за трансгресия на Мишел Фуко
Joanna Neykova Beyond: A Brief Introduction to Michel Foucault‘s Concept of Transgression

Summary

This article presents a brief theoretical introduction to Michel Foucault’s concept of “transgression.” The primary focus of the research is to examine how Foucault reconceptualizes the notion of transgression, ranging from the fields of the sacred to the ones of philosophy of language and of the ontology of literature. This analysis proposes a hypothesis concerning the existence of a specific form of literary transgression that opens new perspectives on the questions of literature. The study is centred on two key-texts by Foucault, written in the 1960s: “A Preface to Transgression” and “The Thought from Outside.”

Keywords: transgression, language, nondiscursivity, Michel Foucault, Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot

Георги Илиев Парадоксалният характер на закона: „Михаел Колхас“ на Клайст и изкуственият интелект като съдия
Georgi Iliev The Paradoxical Essence of Law: “Michael Kohlhaas” by Kleist and Artificial Intelligence as Judge

Summary

The article aims to historically reconstruct the political context in which Heinrich von Kleist wrote his novella “Michael Kohlhaas.” The juridical layer of the text is interpreted as a reaction to the introduction of the Napoleonic Code in the Prussian Lands during the Napoleonic Wars. The study reads the analyzed novella as a form of resistance to the unification of all legal systems required by the Code, following the intricacies of the injustices to which Michael Kohlhaas falls victim. In the article, other examples of similar cases of “unification from above” are provided. One of them is “In the Penal Colony” by Franz Kafka. The other regards the suggestions to use AI in legal action. For the analysis, the concept of “interpretant” of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce is applied. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notion of “use” is also employed to explain the constantly changing and actualizing text of the law.

Keywords: Michael Kohlhaas, Napoleonic Code, Kafka, Peirce’s interpretant, Wittgenstein’s use, artificial intelligence

Стефан Гончаров Психоаналитичен опит върху правната форма в „Градът и градът“
Stefan Goncharov A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Legal Form in “The City & The City”

Summary

The text offers a psychoanalytic reading of “The City & The City” by China Miéville, whose Marxist theory of international law is reflected, refracted, and further complicated within the framework of the novel. The literary work is examined as a narrative that questions the conflict between the real and the ideological dimensions of a law. The latter, on the one hand, reifies and fetishizes space. On the other, it compels the interpellated subjects to deny and “un-sense” the world around them. The analysis foregrounds the contradictions between the repressive and emancipatory dimensions of the legal system.

Keywords: China Miéville, psychoanalysis, legal form, ideology

Ангел Игов Преводът на заглавия с Шекспиров интертекст
Angel Igov Translating Titles with Shakespearean Intertext

Summary

The article examines the translation of novel titles containing quotations from the Shakespearean corpus. The quotation title is considered as both paratext and intertext. Translators’ approaches to the rendering of titles with Shakespearean intertext in different target languages are compared, with a particular focus on Bulgarian examples. The aim of the study is to search for characteristic solutions in translations that deserve to be discussed. The article proposes and problematizes three translation strategies: the search for dynamic equivalence, neutralization, and compensation. The collected data, which do not claim to be exhaustive, are presented in tables, followed by analytical comments. Rather than presupposing conclusions, the comparative analysis interprets the data as they are.

Keywords: translation, title, intertext, paratext, Shakespeare

Свидна Михайлова Превод и интерпретация – новелите на Сервантес в България
Svidna Mihaylova Translation and Interpretation – Cervantes’ Novels in Bulgaria

Summary

The reception of Cervantes’ work in Bulgaria is a complex process that has continued for over a century and a half. An interesting case and integral part of the latter is represented by the “Novels,” which have remained in the shadow of “Don Quixote” in terms of the quantity and quality of their translations, the critical approach to them, and their artistic assimilation. The study traces their gradual entry into the Bulgarian literary context, focusing on their early translations from the 19th century, made through the mediation of the French language, the 1976 edition of two of the novels, and the only complete edition from 2004. A significant part of the analysis is devoted to the translation strategies used in the recreation of semantically charged names, metaphors, realia, archaic elements, stylistic choices, proverbs, and idioms.

Keywords: reception, translation criticism, Cervantes, novels

Емил Димитров Драматургията на едно погребение
Emil Dimitrov The Dramaturgy of the Funeral of Pencho Slaveykov

Summary

The article, part of a larger study, provides the first accurate reconstruction of the funeral of Pencho Slaveykov, which was held on June 1/14, 1912, in Brunate (Italy). The text, based on rich archival and documentary material (memoirs, press articles, archival sources), aims to theoretically substantiate the heuristic of the scientific approach to such “marginal” micro-plots. It demonstrates that the funeral of Pencho Slaveykov in Italy was conceived as a fulfillment of the poet’s unspoken will and a merging with the “solemn psalm of the entire universe” (“Psalm of the poet”). At the same time, the article shows how the burial of the renowned author could be interpreted as a supreme expression of mercy and a manifestation of Bulgarian-Italian reciprocal understanding and friendship.

Keywords: fact, meaning, event, Brunate, memory, act

Marta Moldovan-Cywińska “Six Short Stories” by the Founder of the Orange Alternative Protest Movement Waldemar “Major” Fydrych as an Ideological Interpretation of Homo Esteticus
Marta Moldovan-Cywińska “Six Short Stories” by the Founder of the Orange Alternative Protest Movement Waldemar “Major” Fydrych as an Ideological Interpretation of Homo Esteticus

Summary

This analysis is a contribution to the study of the phenomenon of the Orange Alternative protest-art movement. It interprets the literary work “Six Short Stories” as a supplement to the programmatic texts of the latter. In the research, the significance of the movement against the background of European avant-garde currents and the ideas of the “Manifesto of Socialist Surrealism” are briefly presented. Moreover, the study outlines the profile of its creator, Waldemar “Major” Fydrych. The article also shows the most important themes that appear in the texts: “Manifesto of Flowers,” “Mars Amandi,” “Dawn,” and “Opera for 44 Pieces of Silver.” In particular, their several surrealist aspects are highlighted.

Keywords: Orange Alternative, surrealism, Waldemar “Major” Fydrych, “Manifesto of Flowers”

Григор Хар. Григоров Дария Василева. „Предоговаряне на родството. Калоферци от средата на XIX до първите десетилетия на ХХ век“
Grigor Har. Grigorov Dariya Vasileva. “Renegotiating Kinship. The People of Kalofer from the Middle of the 19th to the First Decades of the 20th Century”

Summary

The text reviews Daria Vasileva’s “Renegotiating Kinship. The People of Kalofer from the Middle of the 19th to the First Decades of the 20th Century.” This book analyzes the epistolary correspondence kept in the archive of Nikola Nachov – a writer, historian, and bibliographer from Kalofer (1859 – 1940). In the letters, the examined cases of systematically incorrect kinship terminology encourage the researcher to hypothesize that, in the period under discussion, certain individuals became symbolically related on the level of communication. In the monograph, it is argued that the emergence of the “vocative kinship” and of extended kinship groups testifies the process of erosion of kinship as a structure and its transformation into a social network. The reviewed text is a fascinating reading and deserves the attention not only of the researchers of the literature from the National Revival period but also of a wider range of scholars.

Keywords: kinship, symbolic kinship, letters, correspondence, epistolary texts, Kalofer

Андриана Спасова Пламен Антов. „Любов и отечество. Изследвания върху българската възрожденска литература и култура“
Andriana Spasova Plamen Antov. “Love and Fatherland. Studies on Bulgarian Revival Literature and Culture”

Summary

Plamen Antov’s “Love and Fatherland. Studies on Bulgarian Revival Literature and Culture” innovatively interprets Bulgarian Revival literature as a national-ideological metanarrative that shapes collective memory. The monograph is an ambitious endeavor to reconceptualize the Bulgarian Revival through contemporary comparative literary, cultural-anthropological, and philosophical-historical methodologies. The book advances new readings of both canonical and marginal texts, investigating the tensions between popular and elite discourses, national and universal paradigms. The text also explores the interweaving of intimate motifs – love and eroticism – with the national ideal of duty to the fatherland within Revival culture. By situating more and lesser-known Bulgarian texts in dialogue with European and American literary contexts, the author makes a significant contribution to the field of Revival studies.

Keywords: identity, national ideology, Bulgarian metanarrative, Revival culture and literature, collective memory, figure functions

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