04/11/2023
The two “Germanies” of Kiril Hristov – constructions of the imagined Otherness
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ABSTRACT
The essay traces the shifts in the modelled projections of the foreign cultural space in the poetic works of Kiril Hristov. Here I offer a comparative reading of two poems dedicated to Germany but written more than twenty years apart. The country praised in the ode “Germany” from 1914 as the ideal state appears as a sinister rejection of its own values in the untitled poem from the collection of poetry “Breakwater” from 1937. It only appears to be so, since the inclusion of this second text in the collection “The whole of Bulgaria” (1942) under the title “German” and its translation into German would open a completely different direction for its possible interpretation. My study of documents contained in the Prague archives of Kiril Hristov confirms that the second text also has the dimensions of an ode and is undoubtedly dedicated to Nazi Germany under Hitler.
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ABSTRACT
The essay traces the shifts in the modelled projections of the foreign cultural space in the poetic works of Kiril Hristov. Here I offer a comparative reading of two poems dedicated to Germany but written more than twenty years apart. The country praised in the ode “Germany” from 1914 as the ideal state appears as a sinister rejection of its own values in the untitled poem from the collection of poetry “Breakwater” from 1937. It only appears to be so, since the inclusion of this second text in the collection “The whole of Bulgaria” (1942) under the title “German” and its translation into German would open a completely different direction for its possible interpretation. My study of documents contained in the Prague archives of Kiril Hristov confirms that the second text also has the dimensions of an ode and is undoubtedly dedicated to Nazi Germany under Hitler.