Елка Трайкова
Въвеждащи думи
Elka Traykova
Words of Introduction
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Summary
Opening words to the conference Bilingualism. The language as lieu de mémoirе (Sofia University, 2 November 2019) by the Director of the Institute for Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The conference was sponsored by the French Institute in Sofia.
Keywords:
Мари Врина-Николов
Многоезичието като "non-lieu de mémoire" в българското литературно пространство (XIX-XX в.)
Marie Vrinat-Nikolov
Multilingualism as a “non-place of memory” in the Bulgarian literary space (19th-20th centuries)
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Summary
This paper aims to provide a brief mapping of what I call “the ignored languages of the Bulgarian literary space”. It attests to the lack of desire to memory texts written in languages other than that of the nation-state (Old Slavonic, Slavonic, Bulgarian) - Hebrew and Ladino, Armenian, Arabic, Persian, Osmanli and Turkish - because, since its constitution at the end of the 19th century, the Bulgarian literary historiography has been anchored on adequacy: one nation, one literature, one language, and thus provides a national and monolingual canon.
Keywords: Bulgarian literary space; monolingualism; Bulgarian literary historiography; literary canon; nation-state
Ана Лулева
Традиции, традиционализация и културна полиглосия в съвременното българско общество
Ana Luleva
Traditions, traditionalisation and cultural polyglossia in contemporary Bulgarian society
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Summary
The reference to “Traditions” is increasingly a part of the public discourse in Bulgaria. The paper aims to problematize the uses of the “Tradition” as a concept and cultural practice and to analyze its relationship with the process of re/traditionalisation. The conclusion is, that the emic essentialisation and reification of Tradition and the rise of the re/traditionalisation are signs of the rediscovery of the “traditional” and the ethnic culture as a strong identification resource, of the “hot” ethno-nationalism and ethno-nostalgia. This results in the situation of a cultural polyglossia in the (post)modern, postsocialist society
Keywords: Tradition; Re/traditionalisation; Cultural polyglossia
Iraklis (Hercules) Millas
Bilingualism and ethnic identity: Prestigious versus unprestigious languages
Iraklis (Hercules) Millas
Bilingualism and ethnic identity: Prestigious versus unprestigious languages
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Summary
Languages which until the 18th and 19th century were only tools to communicate attained new roles with the appearance of the nation-states and nationalism. They were associated with national identity. It was assumed that every nation had a language and that every language group could claim a nationhood. Bilingualism was seen as a prestigious attainment provided the language next to the “language of the nation” is not associated with a nation or an ethnic group which is perceived as a threat to the nation. The unprestigious language which belongs to the “other” is suppressed or ignored. Cases from Greece and Turkey show that this preference/rejection practice is still experienced in our times as a problem of human rights.
Keywords: Bilingualism; nationalism; Greece; Turkey; nation-state; language
Румяна Л. Станчева
Има ли франкофилия при франкофоните? Четирима европейски френскоезични писатели за избора на език
Roumiana L. Stantcheva
Are Francophone Writers Francophiles? Four European French-Speaking Writers Choosing a Language
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Summary
This article briefly introduces the French-speaking writers Agota Christof, Georges Papazoff, Petar Ouvaliev and Panait Istrati and argues that the choice of a foreign language cannot be a sign of preference for this specific language, since the language does not decide for the content of literary work. Preexisting representations determine the nature of art.
Keywords: French-speaking writers; pre-existing representations; Agota Christof; Georges Papazov; Petar Ouvaliev/Pierre Rouve; Panait Istrati
Рая Заимова
Солунската католическа Семинария (края на XIX в. – началото на XX в.)
Raia Zaimova
The Catholic Seminary in Salonika (end of 19th Century - beginning of the 20th Century)
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Summary
The text introduces us in the atmosphere of the multiethnic Salonika and its Seminary (1884-1914), founded by the Catholic Order of Lazarists in order to provide education of the Uniate Bulgarians from the province of Macedonia. Based on some documents and memoirs of contemporaries, the article studies the questions of how the Bulgarians acquired knowledge of French during the educational process, as well as what were their responses to the foreign missionaries. The national dignity of both pupils and teachers was in search of its own space and realization beyond the Seminary’s walls.
Keywords: Macedonia; Thessaloniki; Catholic Mission; Bulgarians; Education
Надежда Александрова
Билингвизмът и българските авторки от 19 век: Рахил Душанова, Екатерина Василева, Богдана Хитева
Nadezhda Alexandrova
Bilingualism and Bulgarian women writers from the 19th century
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Summary
The article regards the advantages and setbacks of being bilingual when it comes to foreign women teachers and writers who contributed to the Bulgarian national project from the 1860s to the 1920s. They are the Serbian teacher Rahil Barak Dushanova (1845-1888), the Czech teacher and journalist Bogdana Iraskova Hiteva (1844-1929), and the second-generation Bulgarian émigré in Romania Evgenia Mihailova Vassileva (1852-1926) who was a poet, journalist, and writer. First, the article distinguishes the types of bilingualism for each case, attributing a coordinate type to the women teachers Bogdana Hiteva and Rahil Dushavova, and a subordinate one to Ekaterina Vassileva, who did not feel convenient in Bulgarian and wrote her texts in Romanian or French. Then the paper follows the biographical path of each of these women in order to distinguish whether her positioning in the receiving country displays a strategy of adaptation and inclusion into Bulgarian social and cultural life, and at what cost it was achieved. However, as it concerns the Bulgarian literary history, the identity of a bilingual woman writer has fewer chances for posthumous inclusion into the literary canon due to her unstable and transitive identity. The conclusion of the paper is that those women who managed to claim sufficiently their newly achieved and sustained Bulgarian identity have better chances for future remembrance. Yet, large parts of their writings need the application of a new and non-nationalistic perspective, which could acknowledge better their specific contribution to both Bulgarian literature and that of their birthplace.
Keywords: types of bilingualism; women writers; women education; translation; memoirs
Евелина Ламбрева Йекер
Да пишеш на два езика между две култури
Evelina Lambreva Jeker
Writing in two languages, between two cultures
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Summary
I have grown up bilingual since my earliest childhood: with the Bulgarian and German languages. Bulgarian is my mother language, German - my father's language. There is no moment I can remember in my life when I could only speak Bulgarian.
I started to write poetry in Bulgarian as a student at the Gymnasium. Translating my poems into German was never a topic, as long as I lived in Bulgaria. When I returned to writing after a 15-year break, I had been living in Switzerland for 10 years. And since my husband, friends, and colleagues were very curious about what I was writing and how my poems sounded, I began to translate them into German. There are no poems of mine, that I first wrote in German. To write poetry in a language, other than my mother language, is still unimaginable because poetry means to me the deepest emotional confrontation with the world, which is only possible in this language, in which one has learned to recognize and name his feelings.
Since I started writing seriously, I have been working with a professional publishing editor in both Bulgarian and German. That I not only write in two languages but that this also happens between two cultures, I became really aware in the collaboration with various publishing editors, when writing prose. The cultural translation (that means to me familiarizing with the respective unfamiliar attitudes, behavior, thinking, and mentalities between the German-speaking and the Bulgarian culture) of my texts, proved to me to be a much bigger challenge than the purely linguistic one. Because every language unconsciously carries with it a great deal of cultural content, which is shaped by historical, socio-political and people-specific experiences, and also by a country-specific understanding.
The texts, which occur in my head first in Bulgarian, and which I write for a Bulgarian target audience, mostly tell about the life of Westerners in the German-speaking world. Conversely, the texts that I write primarily in German mostly tell the German-speaking reader about Bulgarian life in the past and in the present. And since I always translate my texts myself, it is often the publisher's editor in the respective language, who draws my attention to culturally specific phenomena, that need better lighting in the text. Because in my bicultural identity, the boundaries between the two cultures in which I move, are already blurred.
So I can compare writing in two languages and between two cultures with building bridges. Bridges, which serve as a meeting place, bridges, that connect and make strangers familiar, bridges that facilitate and promote cultural dialogue.Keywords: language; culture; Bulgarian; German
Абдулфаттах Килиту
Нищожна утеха. „Арабският“ Борхес
Abdelfattah Kilito
Meager Consolation. The Arabic Borges
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Summary
The essay “Meager Consolation” is concerned with the state of contemporary Moroccan literature which is torn between its local audience and its desire to reach readers in France. The author argues that Arabic writers nowadays are preoccupied with matters of translation and achieving universal acclaim and recognition.
The essay “The Arabic Borges” is devoted to the Argentinian author and the inspiration he drew from works such as “One Thousand and One Nights”. The last years of his life are discussed in relation to the Arabic language and culture.
Keywords: Moroccan literature; translation; Borges; One Thousand and One Nights
Бруно Картойзер
Германофонската общност в Белгия
Bruno Kartheuser
L’autonomie des 74000
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Summary
L’autonomie des 74000
Au lieu de décrire les pratiques linguistiques en Communauté germanophone de Belgique, je voudrais orienter le regard vers la réalité politique du cadre qui soutient l’emploi des langues. Cette petite région qui compte 74.000 habitants dispose depuis quatre décennies d’un statut d’autonomie relative destiné à sauvegarder la langue et la culture. Modèle d’avenir ? Blague et épisode intenable dans la durée ? Voici un essai de portrait.
Keywords:
Пламен Антов
Литература за деца и „жесток реализъм” – между морала и природата
Plamen Antov
Children’s Literature and “Cruel Realism” – Between Morality and Nature
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Summary
As the title indicates, the article deals with the complex relationship between the specific method of so-called “cruel realism” (St. Karolev) in children’s animalistic literature of Emilian Stanev (1907–1979) and the specific moral/educational element that is presumably expected from children’s literature, in which the a-moral cruelty of nature must be mitigated. – On the way are proposed an intergenre division in two of Stanev’s animalistic in general with a view to a radically different ‘human–animal’ relationship. – The article also has its small factual contributions: for the first time, it draws attention to some of the writer’s long considered and worked but unrealized children’s works.
Keywords: Emilian Stanev; animalistic literature for children; “cruel realism”; natural a-moralism – moral/education