Вера Бонева
Възрожденски първосказания
Vera Boneva
Primary texts in the time of the Bulgarian national Renaissance
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Summary
The text traces the cult of being first, a seminal phenomenon at the time of the Bulgarian National Renaissance. The semantic fields are reconstructed which encompass the ideological units about the priority of Bulgarian’s medieval civilisation vis-а-vis all Eastern Orthodox Slavs. The dogged insistence is evoked of ingenious bookmen and tireless non-fiction authors concerning the priority of a number of 19th century Bulgarian developments in a chronological or regional aspect. We touch upon some of the shadows of the primacy of various texts from the Bulgarian National Renaissance left upon the humanities in our time.
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Надя Данова
Една 'въобразена' история на България
Nadia Danova
An “Imagined” Account of Bulgaria’s History
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Summary
An account of Bulgaria’s history is here introduced classed as an “imagined text” which was in all probability the brainchild of Konstantin Fotinov (1785-1858). Evidence for the project for such a text has been garnered from material in the Fotinov archive, e.g. his correspondence, and the title of a manuscript which has by now disappeared: A Look At the Origins of the Bulgarians and the Beginning of Bulgarian History as well as excerpts from works by various writers who are still the staple of studies on the Middle Ages in Bulgaria, such as Ioan Zonara, Procopius of Kesaria, Nikita Choniat, Georgi Acropolit, Georgi Kedrin and others. These, and Fotinov’s published works, provide groundwork for reconstructing the content, the fundamental concepts and methodology of this “History”. The hypothesis for the presumed existence of the draft calls forth some thoughts on the role of historical studies in the emergence of the Bulgarian national identity.
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Николай Чернокожев
Цялост и разпадане - сянката на книгата
Nikolay Chernokozhev
Completeness and disintegration – the ghost of the book
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Summary
This text examines the specific life of Karavelov’s “Russian” belletristic works in Bulgarian and within a Bulgarian readership. It traces the implications of the premise that even outside the book Stranitsy iz Knigi Stradanii Bolgarskogo Plemeni (Pages from the Book of the Sufferings of the Bulgarian People”), substantially edited as they are in their Bulgarian translation, the individual works which are published on the pages of the Svoboda newspaper exhibit the author’s desire for completeness, accomplished in potentia in the shadow of the book. It is the present writer’s endeavours to describe the fresh justification for a search for over-textual completeness not only in a metamorphosis in the optics which serve to regard Bulgarian life but also through the structuring of the texts within the framework of the newspaper. The text discusses a special case of Karavelov’s book-desire.
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Кета Мирчева
Кореспондентската мрежа на вестник "Свобода/Независимост" - въобразена и реална география
Keti Mircheva
The Correspondence Set of Svoboda/Nezavisimost Newspaper – Imagined and Real Geography
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Summary
The findings presented here are results of a more general research of the “geography” of Svoboda/Nezavisimost Newspaper (1869–1874). The texts under analysis were not only written, but they were also published on the pages of a periodical. Nevertheless these texts are in close relation to the sphere of imagining and the imagined. The topic of imagined texts is more or less inspired by the thesis about the nation as an imagined community. So the problem of the imagined geography calls for a discussion on the way in which certain texts perform an important function in the process of imagining the community, in our case – imagining the Bulgarian nation.
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Надежда Андреева
Въобразените драми на Шилер и Лесинг през Възраждането. Неосъществени проекти, загубени ръкописи, недовършени текстове
Nadezhda Andreeva
The Imagined Dramas of Schiller and Lessing in the Renaissance. Unrealized Projects, Lost Manuscripts, Unfinished Texts
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Summary
The article treats of translations of Schiller’s and Lessing’s dramas in which the “imagined” is present not only as written words, but as theatre acting, too. The following Schiller’s plays are included: Robbers, The Plot of Fiesko from Genoa, Wilhelm Tell and The Orleans Virgin. The first translation of Robbers, made by D. E. Shishmanov, is “imagined” in different directions. It was not published; its beginning – the first three acts – was thought to be lost, but there is information that the text has been found; the translation was made for the stage of the Community Centre of Svishtov, but there are no documents for a concrete performance. The second translation, made by Ivan Kasabov, is not known as manuscript and it was not published. The third one, made by Nesho Bonchev, was published and realized as a theatre event (1876, Ruse). Bogdan Goranov translated Fiesko. But only the first act without the last (13-th) scene was published. Announcements about two translations of Wilhelm Tell appeared in the press, but none of these translations is known. Nesho Bonchev planned to make a translation of The Orleans Virgin, but he did not accomplish it. Nencho Yu. Nenov translated the play and it was published a year after the Liberation. Lessing’s Emilia Galotti was translated twice: by Panayot Semerdzhiev (1873) and by Bogdan Goranov (1870). Semerdzhiev’s translation was published, Goranov’s one was documented but unknown. According to it the play was staged in Tarnovo (1871), and Goranov was a translator, an actor and a producer at the same time.
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Ивайло Христов
Три модела в развоя на българската поезия за деца
Ivailo Hristov
Three Models in the Development of Bulgarian Poetry for Children
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Summary
The article Three Models of the Development of Bulgarian Poetry for Children discusses the principal paradigms which are milestones in the development of the lyrical genre for children from the Bulgarian National Renaissance to the second half of the 20th century. The text outlines three principal models. The first, which obtained primarily up to the First World War, is represented through an appellative-didactic paradigm. The second, a mainspring for the image of poems for children between the 1920ies and the 1940ies, inspires thematic and stylistic layers, validating the nexus between poetry for children and that for adults. Paramount in this process is the automigration of individual images and motifs from one type of literature to the other and vice versa, the dipping into the treasure-store of traditional lore and the pronounced interest in the social and political issues of the nation. The third model traces the changes in the political context of the poetry for children after 1944.
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Гергана Георгиева
В огледалото на Западна Европа
Gergana Georgieva
In the Mirror of Western Europe
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Summary
Stefan Launer’s study The Character of Slavdom (1847) is an original attempt at an interpretation of European history. The erudite author builds the hypothesis of Slav fragmentation and of Slavdom as a mirror image of Western Europe. It runs counter to the widely popular idea, current at the time of the Slav Renaissance, of Slavic mutuality. The consciously selected and established in European history Slavic communities 1. Croats, 2. Poles, 3. Russians and 4. Czechs, united with Moravians, Slovaks and Silesians are regarded as the heirs and successors of the Western “quartet”: 1. Italians, 2. French, 3. English and 4. Germans. Launer draws parallels between political principle and religious confession of the selected foursomes from Western and Slavic Europe which were current in the middle of the 19th century. The study was part of the debate from the middle 19th century about the linguistic standard of the Slovak community which negates L. Stur’s attempt at codification and elaborates on the author’s pro-Hungarian proclivities. Launer’s vision negates the opposition Western - Eastern (Slavic) Europe, offering mutual stimulation of European peoples and the “emancipation” of the Slavic nations in various spheres of state and cultural functioning by following in the Western European footsteps. Launer’s European model is based on an in-depth reflection (though flavoured with sophistic arguments) upon the cultural diversity of the Slavs, connected to their divergent historical destinies. It is a text doubtless pregnant with politological, culturological, scholarly and anthropological potential but remaining retrograde, delaying the path towards Slovak national self-awareness.
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Николай Аретов
Образи в авторитетно огледало. Стереотипите за Балканите в английската литература
Nikolay Aretov
Images in a Prestigious Mirror. Received Ideas About the Balkans in English Literature
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Summary
The article deals with the dialogue between cultures as seen through the picture of the Balkans drawn in British literature. Using as his starting point two valuable studies of these problems – Imagining the Balkans (1997) by Maria Todorova and Inventing Ruritania. The Imperialism of the Imagination (1998) by Vesna Goldsworthy, the author endeavours to set out the facts examined in them as well as the current methodology used to portray others in literature. The literary colonization starts with the notes taken by travellers, explorers and adventurers who ventured into this outlying region. In their steps came novelists, playwrights and poets in search of novel plots and novel locale to use as settings for their works. So, the territory in question is “put on the map” and invaded by popular novelists who exploit it and put the finishing touches to the imagined topography of the region. Many diverse images of the Balkans abound in British literature. The strongest effect upon readers’ minds was produced by the romantic poets Byron and Shelley. Less well known are the depictions of the Balkans in popular fiction of the turn of the century such as Anthony Hope, S.C. Grier, J.L. Lambe and others. Other stock images from the Balkans are vampires, spies and killers on the Orient Express. They are to be met with in novels by Bram Stoker, John Buchan, Graham Greene, Eric Ambler, Agatha Christie, in some films of Alfred Hitchcock and others. The Balkans are viewed from another angle by authors such as G.B. Shaw, Saki, E.M. Forster, Lawrence Durrell and Evelyn Waugh. British critics devote particular attention to the representations of the “real” Balkans in the works of women writers like Edith Durham, Rebecca West and Olivia Manning. What at first glance strikes the researcher into the British images of the Balkan Other is dialogue with oneself, the search for solutions of the one’s own problems. One possible answer to the question why the Balkans spawn so many texts in Britain, given the fact that the region is largely peripheral to British geopolitical interests is largely due to some of these disputes (principally that between Gladstone and Disraeli). To some extent the absence of geopolitical interest bears on the absence of scientific interest in the Balkans; poor factual knowledge, in turn, provides a breeding ground for popular romances, crime novels and thrillers about spies and vampires which are massively exploited by the powerful English speaking film industry. The facts under discussion can be handled in several ways. It is no problem to condemn or ridicule the negative (and inaccurate) images of the Balkans in British literature. A more meaningful approach is to seek out the underlying causes and mechanisms which engender them. A promising methodology of interpreting these causes and mechanisms are offered by non-colonial critique which however is not in itself immune from hurried and light-minded conclusions.
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Клаус Р. Шерпе
Да разбираме другото? Мимезисът - възможност при общуване с чуждото
Claus R. Scherpe
Understanding the Other. Mimesis: a Possibility for Communing with what is Alien
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Summary
The author sets out his own typology of communing with the Other, derived from some current theories in the humantities and the disputes they give rise to. It is based on the concept of mimesis, emancipated from the requirement for verisimilitude. Four variants are delineated of the mimetic stance in communing with the Other, viz., sensualistic, dialogic, technological and catastrophic. They are illustrated with examples from literature and anthropological research; their time sequence is also inquired into.
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Борис Минков
Новелата. Проблеми на рамката и жанровите съседства
Boris Minkov
The Novella. Problems of the Frame and Neighbouring Genres
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Summary
The article The Novella. Problems of the Frame and Genre Coexistence views on those fundamental interpretations of the genre nature of novella that are representative of the classic hermeneutic controversy between theoretical model and actual writings. On the other hand, it treats the uncertainties of specifying the historical frames of the genre as a sign of such premodification of the genre conventions, which can give important information for the actual literary-historical situation. When focusing on the frame problems, instead of seeking for the features of the fore-form, the article puts forward questions for linguistic functional characteristics of narration; for the fictional bounding of the narrator; the mode of action of frame-defined argumentation systems. The partition into “narrating” and “commenting” world (Harald Weinrich) that is made by the frame is directed to the publicistic practices of the novella, distinguished as active in the twentieth-century fiction. The article takes on seeking neighbouring genres (the novella compared to casus, exemplum, anecdote, etc.) not only to classify it but to try to experimentally determine the historical changes of different types of linguistic functions, which invoke different narrating orientations. (Andres Jolles, Karlheinz Stierle)
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Михаил Гаспаров
Поезия и проза - поетика и реторика
Mikhail Gasparov
Poetry and Prose: Poetics and Rhetoric
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Summary
The article discusses the differentiation between poetry and prose in the context of ancient literature. In the beginning they are contrasted, poetry being literary, fictional discourse while prose being utilitarian. The purveyor of the literary essence is the poet, divinely inspired. The author dwells on three junctures in the history of literature where relations between poetry and prose change. As the author sees it, the ancients never pondered on genre from a theoretical point of view. An examination of the changing relation between poetics and rhetoric on the one hand and literary discourse on the other also features prominently in the article.
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Лиляна Минкова
Сто и петдесет години славистика във Виенския университет
Lilyana Minkova
150 Years of Slavonic Studies at Vienna University
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Summary
The symposium on “Vienna and Slavonic Languages and Literatures” which was held in the Austrian capital from October 1 to 3, 1999 commemorated the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the Department of Slavonic Studies at Vienna University. It was only natural that the Viennese tradition of scholarship should be most prominently featured at this commemorative forum. It was natural, likewise, that many of the themes should bear on the linguistic and literary development in the Slav nations which until 1918 were within the boundaries of Austria-Hungary. What were new were not the themes but the present-day methodology of analysing the problems. Participants from Eastern Europe made contributions on subjects which were banned to them. The symposium convincingly demonstrated that humanities in the Republic of Austria are still building bridges of the spirit between the East and the West with exemplary zeal and vigour.
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