literature

The article outlines the parameters of the horrific in the Slavic mediaeval literature of Byzantine type. The aim of the research is to compare the mediaeval Slavic horrific with the Gothic version of the same category through a prospective approach. Translated and original Slavic-language works (different in origin, genre and style) from the IX to the XVII century have been analyzed, but later texts have also been used for comparison. Among the main contextual meanings of the Slavic mediaeval words for horror are: 1. ‘fear’, 2. ‘compassion’, 3. ‘fear combined with astonishment’, 4. ‘combination of wonder and delight’. Attention is paid to the significantly reduced presence of verbal signals of experience of horror-compassion in the Byzantine martyrs’ lives and, conversely, to the escalation of the feeling of horror in the Slavic versions of the vitas (in the works of St. Dimitry of Rostov). The common features which unite the mediaeval horrific and the Gothic one are above all the supernatural as a source of horror and the connection between the horror and the sublime. Revelation (to the mind) of the Divine plan for the salvation of people, which is the most sublime phenomenon in the history of the world, stimulates the theological activity of mind and arouses delight. In mediaeval Slavic texts, however, this delight is often referred to by the lexeme оужасъ and its derivatives. The reason for this is sought primarily in the Greek equivalent ἔκστασις, which tends to be used as a generic term for going beyond the usual emotional states, for any kind of extreme experience – positive or negative.

The study, in the first place, summarizes some of the main features of the historical novel genre, with a special emphasis on its connection with the national epic novel. But this is not an ultimate goal, is made in view of the discussion of Under the Yoke (1889/1894), the Bulgarian national epic novel – whether and to what extent it is a historical novel? – In the second, more important part, the research focuses on the synchronous reception of the novel through аn analysis of two detailed critical studies, appeared simultaneously in 1896, presenting the eyes of the “young” around the “Misal/Thought” magazine. The problem of whether the essence of the “nationality per se”, the “spirit” of national history and “destiny” can be understood “from outside”, by the foreign reader, the European man, is at the center of the discussion. The structural reflections of the opposition between Literature and History in the form of the antithesis Work–Author are also studied. Namely, how in the spirit of neo-Kantian aesthetics the figure of the author Vazov is divided into an artist who difuses in the Work (in the role of a “naïve” everyday life descriptor of the era) and a poet, bearer of its philosophical-historical meta-consciousness. It is the second of them that is to blame for the failure of Under the Yoke as a historical novel (of national-epic type): the author-Vazov did not understand the broad “spirit” of the Age and History: he has humiliated, parodied History by “translating” it into the language of literary fiction/lie: Literature seen as an involuntary (and therefore “serious”) parody of historical truth. On this basis, the study formulates a genre aporia (double bind), referring to another great work from/for the same era – “Notes on the Bulgarian Uprisings”: historicity in the historical novel is possible only as an “object of desire”.

The article clarifies the concept of a story, narrator, memoirs, an eyewitness account and a major event in Bulgarian history according to the book Notes on the Bulgarian Uprisings by Zaharij Stoyanov.

The text is based on Georgi Tsanev’s big study On Historical Novel issued in three consecutive books of his “Art and Critics” Magazine in 1942 and explores the technic of historical novel composition in Bulgarian, Russian and West European works, as also the challenges of recovery in the game of realities, the different types of historical narrative and last but not least – the dynamics of writers’, critics’ and readers’ reception.

In the national story of Turkish slavery, the words “janissary” and “pomak” are code. They are charged with the absolute meaning of evil. Became the object of artistic fiction, their reception is almost always subject to prevailing conjunctures, not to historical justice. “Janissary” and “Pomak” are some of the most helpful labels aimed at keeping alive the myth of slavery, on which there are parasitizing ideological discourses. The latter include the ethnic dimension as the basis of the meanings sought. In the face of several novels, Bulgarian fiction presents different meanings of these historical figures, weaving their authenticity into certain cultural models.

The text examines the “open” readings of Anton Donchev’s novel Time of Parting of the last decades through the attitudes towards the history of its creation, the film of the same name and especially through the prism of two opposing ideological doctrines, to highlight the legitimacy of the boundaries of this type of interpretation. The main thesis is that in this way both opposing interpretations with their arguments are made meaningless in their interaction within the field of the novel as a piece of art, as they both neglect the main message of the novel and the actualization of this message in the first decades of the 21st century.

The “postmodern conceptual project” in contemporary Bulgarian literature chalked up an undisputed paragon of the genre with the publication of Iana Boukova’s novel Traveling in the Direction of the Shadow in 2009. But it was in 2014 with its reception and readerly success following the second edition of the novel that its literary critical value became apparent. The fiction dismantles ideological constructs of the historical metanarrative and rebuilds the authenticity of the pre-Revival by restoring its micro-narratives. By making use of postmodern compositional techniques and intertextuality, it offers a reinterpretation of the historical realia and the figure of the narrator.

The novel Photo Stoyanovich is an attempt not just to create another historical narrative, which will repeat painfully familiar scenes from the Bulgarian Revival, but rather to allow for dialogue with the history. The claim that recently was attributed to history to “speak” the truth is at the heart of this dialogue. The author takes advantage of some techniques typical of postmodern writing – the game, the hoax, the collage. The subtitle “novel-collage” draws attention to the specifics of the book, in which literature meets non-literature, and the novel itself is built on a collage principle, sketching – in the form of various fragments – photos, letters, articles (or individual passages) from newspapers, notes, diaries.

The text presents the absorption of historical plots in the epic novel narrative of the writer Konstantin Petkanov about Ravna Gora. In this unified novel corpus of Bulgarian fiction from the first half of the 20th century are resurrected not only legendary historical figures, but we are also presented, seen in an autobiographical light, the author’s countryman from the prehistories of his childhood. The text explores immersion itself of the writer K. Petkanov in the cozyness of Thracian patriarchal living and in the destinies of his idealized characters.

The matter of Power is one of the main topics in the Vladimir Zarev’s novels. This article analyses it through the universal prism of language. In reference to the question of the historical existence of the human the role of the Word is interpreted from a few points of view – the Word as memory, the Word as game, the Word as self-knowledge. In all three cases the Word acquires power over the time and individuality and the historical narrative grows into an existential and ontological one.

The most predictable analysis of Blood (1933) by Konstantin Konstantinov is the novel to be presented in terms of its social, historical, political characteristics, to look for reflections on the Bulgarian twentieth century or projections of real people. The present analysis offers a different view – the text to be considered as a work in which artistic aspects of literary utopia can be found. Such an interpretation allows a more complete presentation of the utopian world described in Konstantinov’s novel.

Thе aim of this article is to suggest a comparative analysis of the historical facts appearing to be the common focus in both Dimitar Dimov’s Tobacco and Yana Yazova’s The Salty Bay. Given the limited volume, it dares not claim to be exhaustive, but rather highlights the general story landmarks. From the position of a professional historian, Irina Yakimova reflects on the degree of event authenticity in each of the two novels, with either author actually proposing two alternative but mutually complementary views on the consequences of the Second World War, Bulgaria’s role in it and the notorious date 9 September 1944, as a major turning point in Bulgarian history.

The article addresses the period from the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945 and focuses on the historical events impact on the fate of people from different social layers, as this reflection is recreated in the novels War by Yana Yazova and The Meek by Angel Igov. The central characters’ story in the two novels, who stand on both sides of the line that radically divided Bulgarian society after the Communists took power back on September 9, 1944, is traced. The psycho-emotional profiles of the characters and the narrative strategies, that are used to motivate their personal behavior, are analyzed. The characters’ fate is the basis on which readers are left to value the historical events. The article also emphasizes the narrative techniques, which consider the time distance of the writing in relation to the depicted events, so that the historical narrative is as close as possible to the truth. 

The long-story Rally by Stefan Dichev (1960), one of the favorite youth-adventure works in Bulgarian literature, is a direct subject of the article. First of all, attention is focused on the restoration of the different, diverse contexts of its creation, not as a one-time act, but as a process lasting over time: the genre fluctuations and the changes in the various editions, the illustrations and the artistic design as a book, the extremely mysterious relations with another, simultaneously created work – Diyarbakir Exiles by M. Marchevski. The unusual creation of the “Rally” is an occasion to touch in a broader context on the relationship of literature with other, neighboring discursive territories, the “translation” of the literary text into other discursive languages: illustration and art design, film adaptation, but above all comics, as far as Rally was born just as the first successful experience in this intermediate genre.

The article examines three scenarios of the relationship between literature, history and parahistory through the prism of three novels: one was written before the collapse of socialism; the other two – in post-socialist culture. All three turn to the same historical epoch – the Bulgarian Middle Ages and focus on the same literary and mythical hero – Boyan the Magician. The first is an example of upgrading history through the author’s parahistorical penetrations, developed, thanks to the autonomous novel form, and moreover, the reversal of points of view and the placement of the parahistorical through parapsychology in an effort to rewrite the history. The second is an example of the use of the sensational historical for a sensational plot. The third is about the use of literature as a camouflage of parahistory and the risk of misleading the reader who wants to accept the historical novel as the absolute truth. The text notes the increased convergence of history, parahistory and literature in recent decades and connects it with the eternal shortage of history in the rise of any nationalism, backed by many historical and quasi-historical facts. The modern view of the Bulgarian Middle Ages is characterized by the attempt to radically correct the national memory. The whole offensive for a new “testing” of historical facts, the attempt to literally “reverse” historical conventions, speaks of permanent national dissatisfaction – a topic to be addressed later.

The text reveals the reckless human attempt to skip the a posteriori – a priori gate and on the side of the finiteness and immediacy of the occasional existence, to deny the infinity of the divine being. Two remarkable authors ‒ Friedrich Nietzsche and Emiliyan Stanev ‒ take this road and frustrate in their efforts to establish the moral rightfulness of the antichrist, including via loading themselves with this ungrateful existential role.

The radicalisation of Kant’s critical philosophy by the Jena Romanticism and, above all, by Novalis, is decisive for the understanding of the modern relationship between philosophy and poetry (i.e. literature or, more generally, art), which is both a relationship of continuity and rupture: such is the starting hypothesis of the study. The shared horizon, but also a matrix of the ambiguous relationship of philosophy and poetry, is the turn I venture to describe as a transition from ontology to ontogony. After Kant, ontology became a field of modal orientation: the world is a necessary world. The world is becoming a task. The study delves into the conceptual depth of this turn, respectively of the relation between philosophy and poetry, based on the reading of Kant’s critical philosophy proposed by Gilles Deleuze. The analysis sets itself the task of highlighting unexpected yet crucial dimensions of the complex relationship between philosophy and literature, established in modern terms only in the second half of the 18th century. The figures of “Reason” and “Madness”, expressing the immanent tension of Kant’s productive power for imagination, will occupy a central place among them.

In his study “Metaphor and Myth: Percy, Ricoeur, and Frye”, Hugh White aims to question the traditional dichotomy between the cognitive and affective dimensions of metaphor by proposing a theory of metaphor that brings these two dimensions together on an intersubjective level. Criticizing Paul Ricoeur’s theory, White draws on Walker Percy's definition of “catachrestic metaphor” in order to clarify Northrop Frye’s understanding of the ecstatic metaphor and its role in religious myth. Here is the place in advance to ask the question to what extent it is appropriate to equate the metaphor with an error (in the case of the catachrestic metaphor) and to what extent the believed absurdity in the myth can be defined as a metaphor. I propose an alternative to White's vision of metaphor, referring to Douglas Bergren's study “The Use and Abuse of Metaphor”. I will also refer critically to individual passages by Frye to show the steps taken to bring the affective and cognitive aspects of metaphor closer together in the perspective of “metaphorical construing”.

In the context of western utopian philosophical and literary tradition from Plato to Dostoevsky, Mikhail Gorbachev’s book Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (1987 and 1988) demonstrates not only its utopian character, but simultaneously tempts one to come with theoretical and practical dystopian objections. This essay analyzes six key utopian features of the book and their dystopian metamorphoses. First, the utopian postulate assuming all people are philosophers and, therefore, embrace perestroika’s only possible truth is an abstract philosophical concept, but not a practical possibility. Second, glasnost is the new garb of the old utopian requirement for a cataphatic language fully expressing the truth; language, however, can lie, too. Third, utopian self-criticism of Soviet dignitaries fosters incredulity and hatred in their subjects, who detest them as either weak leaders or self-serving hypocrites. Fourth, utopian belief in a future true and flourishing socialism is undermined by the paucity of real socialism. Fifth, perestroika as a utopia presupposes an idealistic temporality, which, however, contradicts perestroika’s claims to historical materialism and dialectics. Finally, following in the footsteps of utopia, which is an oxymoronic closed-open world not allowing imports of imperfection but exporting perfection, perestroika proclaims its self-sufficiency, but also lays bare its latent imperialism and militarism. Perestroika’s contradictory utopian-dystopian essence results to a great extent from the naïve quasi Marxism enjoying an unchallenged status in the USSR. Paradoxically, but also inevitably, pseudo Marxism smothers all other philosophical alternatives and thus leads not to strengthening, but collapsing of the USSR and its own philosophical and practical suicide. 
Keywords: perestroika, utopia, dystopia, philosophy, literature

Each literary work carries in itself the historical context of the era in which it was created, but the context of the time in which it is read and becomes popular is also superimposed onto it . Franz Kafka is one of the most analyzed authors because of his undeniable importance for modern literature, but also because of the extraordinary metaphorical nature and ambiguity of his texts. Kafka is an interesting phenomenon because his texts not only do not become obsolete, but they keep be- ing tirelessly translated all over the world. His most famous short story, „Die Verwandlung” (“The Metamorphosis”), has thirty-one translations in Spanish, twenty-five in English, and three in Bulgarian. The current study focuses on the questions why we need a new translation and what makes a new translation actually new.

Обект на изследването са фолклорните и митологични сюжети, които биват претворени по различни начини в българската белетристика от Освобождението до Първата световна война, както и идеологическите призми, през които тези сюжети са пречупени.