Nikolay Aretov

This paper looks at a series of “fearful” translated fictional texts around the short story “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1856) by Edgar Allan Poe that appeared in the periodicals after the end of the Crimean war (1853–1856), offered by authors such as Todor Shishkov, St. S. Bobchev, Konstantin Fotinov, Hristo Vaklidov, Nikola Mihaylovski, Dimitar Blaskov, Pandeli Kisimov, et al. These texts corresponded to the old human interest in horrors and the supernatural that gain new force in the mid-19th century in Bulgarian literature. In this context, their similarities with the Gothic novel are traced. Some transformations of the originals in the process of translation are marked, such as the shift from anti-Catholic line to anti-Greek, and also their influence on the original Bulgarian fiction from that time.

Images of the wealthy and the poor men/women are determined by different factors. We are often prone to think that communist ideology had imposed their axiological polarization in which the poor is appreciated positively and the wealthy was anathemized. Nevertheless, similar approach is much older, it is fundamental for Christian doctrine, especially for Orthodoxy. Hence similar polarization could be traced in other Balkan Christian cultures that were less infected by communist ideology. Some scholars are inclined to connect the notions of wealth and poverty in Balkan cultures with the prolonged absence of “own” nobility and with some peculiar forms of rural community as “zadruga”.

 Starting from such general premises this paper offers an overview of some representative images of rich men and poor men in Bulgarian culture, in some cases looking for parallels in other Balkan and East-European texts. Cinderella plot and the story about the abducted treasure as element of Bulgarian national mythology are some of the focuses of the study. The observations lead to the general conclusion that the discourse that idealize poverty and satirize wealth was dominant not only for 19th century.