Dr. Krastev

The text sets forth a critique of the concept of the Odesa Literary Circle, which has been widely employed in studies of the Bulgarian National Revival literature to typologically characterise the intellectual life of Bulgarians studying in Odesa during the 1840s. It reexamines the literary careers of Dimitar Mutev, Elena Muteva, Nayden Gerov and Dobri Chintulov and suggests that there is insufficient factual evidence to substantiate the relevance of the two main components underlying this concept: organised literary life and literariness.

The article is part of an extensive study on Dr. Krastev’s text “Art and Religion” (1904). The philosopher criticizes, above all, the differences between these two “actions of the spirit”. Under the influence of the German psychological and philosophical-aesthetic school of the second half of the 19th century, he sees religion and art in the light of modern experimental psychology. Dr. Krastev approaches the much later psychoanalytic research of K. G. Jung and his followers. The present text stops both from deviations. His views on art have been analyzed and a brief critical reading of the theories of T. Lips, K. Groos and K. Lange about psychology of the aesthetic is interpreted by Dr. Krastev. Some connections of modern art with the views of a critic-philosopher are pointed out, as well as the lonely contribution of his study to humanities.