Bulgarian

The article examines some of the most problematic aspects of genre theory: the relationship between the concepts of architext and genre; the grounds for the existence of genre and its function in the social being of the work of art; the prerequisites that led to the emergence of genre as an important element of artistic communication. For a long time, genre was perceived primarily as a structural entity, serving mainly the needs of classification. Recently the idea that its function is related to the communicative essence of the artistic discourse appeared. In practice, genre fulfills the role of a discursive norm, organizing all aspects and levels of artistic impact. This circumstance also determines the role that genre plays in realizing the social functions of verbal art. Therefore, the main prerequisites that led to the emergence of genre as an important element of artistic activity are considered mainly within the framework of cultural anthropology. The most important prerequisite for the emergence of genre, according to the hypothesis defended by the article, is the appearance of the fiction related to the emergence of narration, dividing artistic discourse into two events – referential (the event that is narrated) and communicative (the event of the narration itself). It is this duality that defines any artistic discourse as fictional, regardless of whether it presents documentary or fictional events. The other two main prerequisites for the emergence of the literary genre are the nature of literature as writing, which is a specific social phenomenon, and on the other hand, the appearance of the idea of aesthetic activity, which in turn leads to the formation of such specific literary institutions as individual authorship and poetics as a manifestation of literary self-awareness.

My purpose is to show how the values ​​that guided Staiger in his attitude to literature and to society ceased to be relevant in the first half of the 1960s. I am also showing the more general shift taking place in research paradigms in literary studies and in social values. In the course of the chapter, I discuss how Staiger creates:

• his exemplary, ideal-type poetics; 

• how it is related with normative poetics, written before 1800;

• how it renews statements of normative poetics through the modern historical attitude towards literary forms.

The poetics sketched by Staiger is exemplary, but not prescriptive and restrictive; it includes modern literary forms and is open to future ones. This setting is different from the hostility that Staiger often shows toward modern literature in his publications during the same decade.

His understanding of style applies to literature and art as well as to the life of an epoch in general. He criticizes immanent interpretations, which are not based on historical knowledge of the literary work, but interpret it from the position of contemporary readers. According to Staiger, “the literary research begins only when we have reached the possibility of reading the literary work as its contemporaries.”

His concept does not allow interaction with the past, because it assumes that modernity is inferior in value, that it is not equal to “classical time”. Condemnation of modernity and modern literature is an element of the rhetorical strategy of Staiger’s texts during the 1960s. Modern art is unable to create moral models of community life, which classical art creates. Staiger’s concept is of community life, where law and personal freedom are not in conflict.

My general conclusion is that the dynamic changes in the humanities during the 1960s prompted Staiger to withdraw conceptually entirely from the contemporaneity. His approach loses its appeal, and his classicism begins to look anachronistic.

На 20 юни 2022 г. в Института за славистика, Университет Виена, се състоя Кръгла маса „Теодор Траянов всред българския символизъм / Teodor Trajanov inmitten des bulgarischen Symbolismus“. В този малък форум, проведен на границата между пандемията и „нормалното време“, се включиха видни изследователи на модернизма в българската литература: Михаил Неделчев, Иван Младенов, Елка Димитрова, Пламен Антов, Борис Минков, забележителният познавач на живота и творчеството на Теодор Траянов от периода Млада Виена Младен Влашки, както и изследователи с по-различен профил и научни интереси като Мариета Иванова-Гиргинова, Елка Трайкова, Александра Антонова, Мария Огойска, Вера Радева.

The article describes the early creative period of Teodor Trayanov, which took place as a transfer process between Vienna and Sofia. On the basis of texts and archival materials unknown to the researchers, the period is reconstructed and evidence is provided for the novelty of early Trajanov’s poetry as subject to the spirit of Viennese modernism.

The study follows two parallel but intertwining storylines. The first is the linear development of Trayanov’s poetry as a process of increasing hermetism of poetic language, i.e. a consistent, purposeful removal of all referentiality to reality. In this way, Trayanov’s poetic language comes as close as possible to the musical language, which is non-referential in nature. This is also the second highlighted plot in the article. The process reaches its final form in the book Pantheon precisely because maximum openness to external reality is conceptually assumed here; but that reality is eliminated. Trayanov’s poetic language is viewed as opposed to Liliev’s “musicality”; the musicalization of Trayanov’s poetry is of a radically different type – not melodic (song), but structural (symphonic). The personal ontogenesis of Trayanov’s poetry is designed as a literary-historical one: it is through the structural, highly rational, mathematical “symphonism” of this poetry that Bulgarian symbolism achieves its absolute end/telos.

In the article, Mihail Nedelchev’s own idea of literary personalism is developed and is applied more specifically to the symbolist poetry of Teodor Trayanov. This provides reason to call this symbolism of his “personalistic”. A lot of phraseology from poetry – mostly from the Pantheon collection – which defend the idea of turning many great poets from different literatures into national cultural heroes and personalities-emblems of entire epochs, are cited as examples of the construction of socio-cultural constructions.

Looking into the work of T. Trayanov it turns out that most of his emblematic titles appeared much later, only in the 1920s. If we exclude the vivid ornamental titles of the early twentieth century (“The Drop of Desire”, “Melancholy of the Petrified”), as well as the few surviving titles from then (“Sunflower”, “New Day”), the poet’s later titles were not spontaneously placed as the texts appeared, but were formulaic quintessences, used over a long period of time and applied with a particular aesthetic tendency in mind. Thus, Trayanov’s titles mark the changes in his poetics: there are either a small number of persistent titles, reimagined from a radically new context; or the proliferation of spring titles, a product of the ideological format of optimistic upbeat Bulgarian symbolism imposed in the early 1920s. These include titles associated with pagan-ritual origins (“Pyre”, “White Altar”, “Altar Flowers”), also titles produced by self-stylization in the spirit of German Romanticism such as “Blue Flower”, “Violet”, “Daffodils”, as well as all titles that emerged as a consequence of contextual links, correlations and affirmations in the magazine Hyperion.

The present study aims at examining the motif of death in the early work of the Bulgarian Symbolist Teodor Trayanov. The image of death in the poet’s first poems’ collection Regina Mortua (1909) was specifically studied. Worked on the anthology The Freed Man (1929), including works from the period 1905–1911, where Regina Mortua occupies the first part.

This article presents three texts by the talented, early departed critic Vasil Pundev, who closely followed the creative manifestations of Theodor Trayanov and his contemporary poets and prose writers and reflected on them on the pages of the Democratic Review and in his book Bulgarian Ly-rics of Today. Pundev’s critical view is deep and analytical, his tone is sharp, his conclusions are aguemented in detail, with almost mathematical precision, with the analysis of verse and composition also branching out into a psycho-archaeology of an imagined poet’s self. In his observations on Trayanov’s poetics, Vasil Pundev takes a specific approach, deriving his positive perception of the poet from critical comments that are mostly negative in their content.

The article represents a part of a study focused on the inheritance of modernist tendencies by the Bulgarian literature of the period between 1944 and 1989, when it was dominated by the movement of socialist realism. This continuity had not been conceptually manifested by its protagonists. It had often been deliberately underestimated and neglected by the critics and researchers who worked during the period. Also there were many cases in which it had been tendentiously distorted for the sake of rejection of some works and authors – through the frequent stigmas of “bourgeois formalism” and “decadent ideas”. Thereby, a tradition of its silencing was set, which, by inertia, was accepted to some extent even by the literary studies after 1989.

Предлагаме на вниманието на научната общност блок материали, подготвени в памет на литературоведа доц. д-р Румен Шивачев (1958–2022). Чрез него ние, колегите на учения от Института за литература на БАН, бихме искали не само да засвидетелстваме своето отношение към преждевременно напусналия ни колега, но и да отдадем дължимото към неговото научно творчество, като синтетично го представим пред научната и културна общественост.

The article is in honour of the literary critic R.Shivachev (1958–2022). It is an overview of his research contribution. A special accent is given to his works in the field of literary source study. Three books about the legacy of Dr. K. Krastev are in the focus of the article. As a conclusion a specific trait of the Shivachev's approach is figured out. His research starts from study of the written sources, then moves to concept summary and finally to particular literary study.

The article is a scrupulous review of the latest book by Assoc. Prof. R. Shivachev Perspectives Towards Early Modernity: Psychologism and Symbolism. Chapter by chapter the main author’s ideas are traced and analyzed. But the article has the ambition to transcend the review genre. By stepping on the concrete subject, the theoretical problem of the relationship between the method and its object is posed: when the method imperceptibly begins to emancipate itself from its object and sounds as an object in itself: the analysis of a certain work as a way to reveal the possibilities of the method. The bottom line: studies like this demonstrate the stand-alone va-lue of literary theory. Stopping it from being a servant of literature, an operational toolkit, and turning into an eim in itself, into full-fledged creativity.

Заявената в заглавието позиция на символа „между“ съвсем не означава, че изкуството стои на една страна, а науката в противоположната. Нямам предвид и някакво строго разграничение на самия символ като функционално автономна област или комплекс. Даже допълнително ще уточня, че в случая имам предвид само художествената литература, тъй като писмеността изобщо представлява литература, а тя се отнася както за „Фауст“, така и за Общата теория на относителността или за аксиомите и геометрията на Евклид. Струва ми се, че такава всеобхватност на символа е непостижима и за най-развития писмен език. Затова в изследването си „Ракурси към ранната модерност. Психологизъм и символизъм“ се ограничавам с художествената литература, и то само с поезията.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ROUMEN SHIVACHEV (1958–2022)

The South Slavic translation of the complete version of the Capita de temperantia et virtute (CPG 7862) is attested in more than 40 Bulgarian, Serbian, Russian and Moldavian-Wallachian manuscripts, the earliest from the opening decades of the 14th century. Text-critical research shows two translations (Middle Bulgarian and Serbian from Mount Athos) and one revision of the first translation. Translations circulate from Paroria and Veliko Tarnovo to Mount Athos, to the monasteries of Manasia and Ravanitsa. The ascetic collections in which it is placed are composed of works by Mark the Hermit (4th–5th c.), John the Carpathian (5th c.), John of the Ladder (579–649), Evagrius of Pontus, Nile of Sinai (345–430), and later in compositions together with Diadochus of Photiki (c. 400–c. 486), Thalassius of Libya (c. 590–660), Simeon the New Theologian (949–1022), Nikitas Stetates (1005 – c. 1090), Maximus the Confessor (580–662); after 1340 works by Gregory the Sinaite (c. 1275–1347) are included. The history of the Capita de temperantia in Slavic translation is largely connected with the history of Balkan ascetic literature. I am very grateful for the cooperation of the Hilandar Research Library at The Ohio State University and to the Monks of Hilandar Monastery for giving me the opportunity to work with manuscript copies.

The article systematizes and compares the copiеs of two versions of the offices for Petka of Tarnovo (Paraskeve of Epibatai) in Bulgarian and Serbian literature from the 15th to the 17th century. The different editions of the two offices are presented, and based on a study of their composition and structure, it is concluded that their editions are clearly distinguished from each other, and may be to be defined as separate offices. The Vidin office is preserved in copies and editions that occurred in the Vlachian-Moldovan principality, in the Kingdom of Poland and in Russia, while the Serbian office is missing from the manuscripts in the repositories of these lands (i.e. outside the territory of Bulgaria and Serbia). This leads to the assumption that Gregory Tsamblak, who established the cult of the Saint in the northeastern Slavic lands with an Orthodox Christian population, introduced the Vidin office into the liturgy, and it is much more likely that he was the author of the Vidin office for St. Petka of Tarnovo, than the Serbian office.

В статията е направена съпоставката между съдържанието на ръкопис ЦИАИ 182 – Панигирика на дяк Андрей от 1425 г., и още 6 ръкописа, разделени в 3 групи. При съпоставянето на съдържанията на ръкописите, включени в първата група и на тези във втора и трета група се разкриват особеностите на състава на ръкописи, писани с ресавски правопис на Света гора по времето, по което е създаден и Панегирикът на дяк Андрей в Белград при управлението на деспот Стефан Лазаревич (1402–1427) и по нареждане на патриарх Никон, което е отбелязано в приписката към ръкописа.

The article offers possible answers to the question of whether the dietary calendars disseminated among the South Slavs in the Late Middle Ages were actually practised or served only for reading. In this connection, it highlights the main specificities in the Byzantine and Slavic cultural contexts within which interest in dieteticons unfolded. On the basis of this comparison, it is suggested that, on Slavic soil, this applied genre may have had mostly symbolic value and that, although it provided a model of a concrete modus vivendi, it was primarily a sign of prestige, a marker of readers’ attitudes and cultural needs. Evidence is drawn from sources that demonstrate that the dietary prescriptions given in these calendars were entirely feasible. At the same time, considering the extant manuscripts, the copyists and, more generally, the spiritual changes that took place in the Late Middle Ages, the reading of dietetic works in this period is interpreted as a socio-cultural phenomenon, as part of a wider self-reflection of the emerging new reader and user.

A Serbian manuscript from the beginning of the 16th century with unique content contains a formulary with templates of letters to high clergy and rulers, which is the earliest known Serbian epistolary. The manuscript is kept at RGADA, Obolensky fund, op. 1, No. 88, ff. 211r–218r. The comparison with other Serbian formularies shows that it has a unique composition and most of the texts in it have no parallels. Similarities are noticeable between some of the samples in RGADA 88 and another manuscript which is kept in the Archive of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences 31, which probably have a common provenance, based on a Byzantine sample. The formulary collection in RGADA 88 reflects the emergence of the genre in Serbian literature, but also its enrichment with texts characteristic of Serbian reality.

The article offers a critical review of B. St. Angelov’s statement that there was a Serbian translation into Church Slavonic of the Modern Greek anthology Thesaouros of Damaskenos Stoudites (Venice, 1557/58). The outcomes of the current inquiry confirm the view that the Serbian tradition was resistant to the work. The account also presents new found data on the manuscript copying activity of Rila men-of-letters of the literary circle of Yosif Bradati in the 18th c., on the archaeographic history of the 17th-c. Belgrade damaskin that in the 1740s was owned by an upstanding Serbian clergyman in the metropolitanate of Sremski Karlovci. In addition, the author identifies the source of the only unquestionable Serbian copy of a Thesauros item – the “Sermon for the Third Sunday of the Holy Lent” included in the Hilandar set of cheti-menaia compiled in 1623-1626.

През 2021 г. доц. д-р Огнян Ковачев чества своя шестдесети рожден ден. Във връзка с това Катедрата по теория на литературата към СУ

„Св. Климент Охридски“ организира двудневен форум на 26–27 ноември 2021 г. в негова чест под наслов „Кино, канон, готика“ с фокус върху теоретичните и литературноисторическите му интереси през годините.

Кино, готика, канон не са само три събирателни точки. Те са цели изследователки траектории, около които Огнян Ковачев не просто фокусира научните си интереси, а прокарва като нови пътища в българското литературознание. Отделните тематични ядра на настоящия брой бележат ярките акценти от работата на О. Ковачев, които продължават да бъдат разработвани от самия него и от редица други изследователи. Такива са научните проблеми на адаптацията и репрезентацията, каноничното и извънканоничното в литературата и киното, готическото и възвишеното, алтернативни канони и алтерации на канона, световната литература.

Тези търсения са включени в настоящия брой на „Studia Litteraria Serdicensia“. Редакторите му изразяват сърдечна признателност към Института за литература при БАН и най-вече към проф. Пламен Антов, главен редактор на изданието, за поканата това начинание да се разгърне на страниците на изданието, както и за търпението, грижата към детайла и професионалната работа по целия път – от идеята до реализацията. Тези съвместни усилия Ви дават възможност като читатели да се срещнете с литературоведския свят на О. Ковачев, видян през погледа на авторите от следващите страници.

CONTENTS

The paper examines the transformation of narrative elements in the film adaptation of the collections “Roots” and “Eternal Times”, as realized in Assen Shopov’s 1974 film “Eternal Times”. Attention is focused on the differences in the construction of the image of Baba Nedelya in the literary text and in the film. The death of grandmother Nedelya, presented in the film, is seen as part of the overall strategy of cinema of this period, which dissolves the cyclical ‘eternity’ constructed by the literary text, locating it along the axis of socio-historical time.

This research elaborates on the recognition that Woody Allen’s films and short stories are markedly linked to the literary canon. It features the reiterated indebtedness of his scripts to the classical Russian novel and the ancient Greek tragedy. The paper makes observations on the specificity of Allen’s interpretation of exemplary literary texts, and proposes a hypothesis about the mechanism behind the transmedia references analysed here.

Starting from several Eisensteinian publications from the late 1920s, this article discusses the problem of a deep, essential closeness between the language of cinema as the perfect symbiosis of language and technology (and the film camera as the perfect machine) and different modes of Eastern/Japanese traditional culture: haiku poetry, kabuki theater, traditional ukiyo-e painting, and the nature of pictographic writing itself. This “language” plot is considered as part of the large-scale turn in Western culture/ art in the early twentieth century as a radical crisis-renewal act of overcoming one’s own “classical” tradition of relation to reality. The “second” Heidegger and particularly “A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer”(1953/54) was used as a philosophical paradigm of the plot.

This essay examines the varieties of intimacy depicted in the novel and the film “I Served the King of England” and shows how totalitarianism prioritized love to the Party and the Party Leader over the intimate love between men and women and how the Nazi idea of the pure race transformed human sexuality into animalistic copulation.

In the focus of the current analysis is Maupassant novel “Fort comme la mort” (“Strong as Death”), which treats the topic of the painter and particularly the image. We propose that its content to be reviewed through the prism of reflection multiplication (counterparts, repetitions, similarities) as an attempt to bring mimesis in question. According to our opinion the French author presents copies of characters and objects with different degree of deviation from the original, following the reflection principle, with the aim to blur the basic image and to bring gradual loss of its referentiality. Maupassant recreates a situation in which the mimesis is somehow empty of any meaning because of the so many reproduced reflections of the reflections which start replacing each other till they create hallucination picture of a world without possible stable representation. Such picture is too subjective and undermines the prerequisite itself of image objectivity connected to the principles of realism and naturalism. This is the reason why we suppose, that Maupassant is one of those premodern creators who seek new forms and techniques without cardinal detachment from the classical ones, although he realizes they are worn out, and he is trying exactly through numerous repetitions to involve them in the expression of their own denial.

In 2020, Julia Ducournau received the prestigious Golden Palm Film Award for her latest film “Titan”. It provoked a number of ambiguous reactions, some of them in Bulgaria. Although her latest work repeatedly focuses on the woman and her experiences, Ducournau’s brave solutions and feminist themes are visible in the 2016 production entitled “Raw”. This debut film plays with roles and concepts, long established in cinema, of the passive position of women. Ducournau’s heroine literally and metaphorically “tastes” the blood of life. Justin’s story and the course of her ritual transformation allude to the Gothic tradition of representing the vampire. But while the classical gothic vampire feeds on his immortality (and sexuality) by feeding on the blood of his victims, Ducournau’s bloodthirsty heroine “drinks” her way to realization of one’s own pleasure and emotional maturity. The origin of Justin’s thirst is not insignificant – she inherits it from her mother. This article analyses the film “Raw” as a female reading of classical gothic imagery and the typification of the female character.

The article explores the myth of the double and its manifestations in literature. The focus is on the novella “Adventure on New Year’s Eve” by E. T. A. Hoffman. The figures of doppelgängers in the novel and the wavering ego identities of the characters are consistently traced. The multiplicity of the self and its vacillation are examined through Carl Gustav Jung’s concept of total personality.

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.

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 text presents a genealogy of terror and terrorism by interpreting the political rhetoric of the French Revolution and the political theory of the Enlightenment in relation to the reception of Gothic fiction in late 18th century England. By doing that, the article tries to establish connections in the use of terror in literature and politics in order to present the links between fiction and power in relation to the problems of terror and terrorism in the particular time frame.

The article focuses on the dialogue “Lugubrious Nights” by José Cadalso and analyses it from the point of view of its Gothic and Enlightenment traits. While Tediato, the protagonist, embodies the ideas of the Enlightenment, the Gothic is associated with the atmosphere of horror and the constant presence of the supernatural. The dichotomies, constituent of the poetics of the Gothic, between the supernatural past and the devoid of supernatural present are transformed in the dialogue into oppositions between the rational Tediato and the superstitious Lorenzo. Thanks to the genre of the dialogue the tension between the two poles remains constant which on its turn enhances the impact of “Lugubrious Nights”.

The present text focuses on the idea of the self-reflexive nature of the Gothic. It is argued that one of the signs of such “Gothic” self-reflexivity can be linked to the notion of Gothic laughter, developed by Ognyan Kovachev in his work on Gothic literature. The central research question regards how the idea of gothic self-reflexivity can be found in contemporary literature through the analysis of the novel “Prince” by Argentinian writer César Aira.

The current paper aims to point out three points of intersection between the gothic tradition and surrealist art by drawing comparisons between some of the works of Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo and some key gothic fiction traits. The work of Max Ernst is represented by his three collage novels, while the text also focuses on Leonora Carrington’s fiction and some of Remedios Varo’s paintings. The paper examines the ways in which the three artists’ works relate to reality and dream and how the convergence of the two states forms surreality. The relationship between reality and surreality is examined through the lens of alchemy, madness and mystification, which are inseparable parts of the work of Ernst, Carrington and Varo, as well as key elements of the gothic cannon. Additional examples are drawn from the works of Vítězslav Nezval and China Miéville.

Matilda is the key character in Matthew Gregory Lewis’ novel “The Monk”: she is the seductress, the femme fatale, who sets in motion the series of sins committed by the monk Ambrosio. The text examines Matilda as a figure of seduction in Lewis’s novel, defining the heroine’s fatality through questions of the instrumentalization of gender, the exposure of the body, the dynamics between disguise and revelation. By outlining several techniques of seduction that the heroine employs in the realization of her goal (disguise of self, gender, virtues, face) it will appear that the use of disguise and the play of concealment and revelation are the temptress’s primary tools.

The current text is dedicated to the interpretation of Ognyan Kovachev on Edmund Burke’s treatise “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”. This interpretation is to be found in Kovachev’s preface to the first Bulgarian edition of the treatise of 2001, as well as parts of the monograph “The Gothic Novel” (2004). We interpret Kovachev’s introduction to Burke not only in its didactic and propaedeutic dimensions – as a text that introduces the Bulgarian public to the problems of a hitherto unknown author within the framework of its broad cultural, historical and philosophical context (the 18th century), but in view of the specific interpretation of Burke’s aesthetics, offered by Kovachev. The study claims that Kovachev reads Burke through the problem of doubling and duality. At the same time, for Kovachev, Burke’s doubling functions not as a subversive element in the logic of the philosophical exposition, but rather as a constitutive moment of the aesthetic subject of Modern age. The latter is related to the genre of the gothic novel and its interpretation in Kovachev’s monograph on this type of novel.

The article develops Ognyan Kovachev’s observation that in Edmund Burke’s influential Philosophical Inquiry of the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, “[t]he characteristic for modernity device of estrangement turns out to be an active principle.” Although Burke rejects at the outset novelty as an effective resource for aesthetic effects because of the destructive impact of the force of habit on novelty, he distributes its effects over various aspects of the beautiful and the sublime, and thus renders it ubiquitous.

This   article   examines   the   structural   relationship   between Kant’s philosophy and the genre of Gothic literature, in view of the formation of the modern idea of the subject. The paradox of Kant’s idea of the sublime reveals the blind spot of the Subject: Reason does not (can not?) know itself. The phenomenon is noumenal at its very core insofar as the existential condition is not susceptible to objectification because the existential idea presupposes the inseparability of the subject from the object. From this point of view, the appearance of the figure of the gothic Double is inseparable from the emergence of the category of subject itself. Ultimately, the Subject is the Double. Duality is an ontological structure determining for Modernity – the Double is the matrix of reflexivity, and therefore of Reason and the Subject. This experimental hypothesis was developed by juxtaposing Immanuel Kant and Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s ideas of the determinism of nature and supernatural necessity.

In the following text I advocate the opinion that the concept of “genius” is unconditionally necessary today, in our contemporary times, among the proliferating critical languages, institutions, strategies for recognition and affirmation in art, philosophy and the sciences. The Kantian concept of genius is given here the central stage and is partially implemented, where necessary, by the interpretations that follow. The aim is to outline the possibility for relativity between the activity and affectivity of the sublime and the activity of the genius. These approximations allow us to explore the possible relation within 1) the logic of analogy, doubling, as an apposition between two immense powers, 2) as a confrontation of two infinities; 3) through the concepts of “heterosimultaneity”, “counterfinality”, “freedom”. An additional hypothesis here – that the material forces of life are the forces of philosophy (namely, in Boyan Manchev’s philosophical fantastic they are Fire / Eros, Apeiron, Chaos, Chaos Unbound), which had fascinated Kant as well, are transitive within the modal foundations of existence – follows from the free play between the monstrous force of nature and the magic power of the conceptual language of the genius, from the necessity of thought as an active force of the transformation of the world. In the perspective of Boyan Manchev’s surcritique and modal ontology, I will attempt to extend the definition of genius. If the given law of nature must be overturned, this is only possible if the secret of nature lays open, the secret of creativity, of the genesis beyond the gene, of the necessary freedom. Тhe genius weaves the secret of free world-creation. The sublime is a representation of his technique. It is a measure of desire of thought; a front and a companion on the front of his unknown; a projective transfiguration of the internal eternal fire of thought.

The article examines the problem of the sublime in Pushkin’s ‘little tragedy’ “The Stone Guest”. The late Pushkin associates art not with beauty and contemplation, but with the sublime – with fear, power and justice. He imagines it as more powerful than life, able to abandon its separateness from life, and directly intervene in its course.

The paper examines several testimonies from Plato (from the dialogues “Laws”, “Protagoras” and “Phaedrus”), as well as several key verses from Theognis, which contribute to delineating certain characteristics of early canonizing thought in the field of the literature. There is a prioritization of poetry over prose and works that are examples of transmitting a model of virtue are more highly valued, whether from the position of the philosopher taking on the role of a literary critic, or of the author himself. More often, these works are ancient, but it is not impossible for a similar status to be attributed to contemporary works of the commenter, including own works. Until Aristotle, there is still a lack of real reflection on the artistic characteristics of highly valued literary genres/individual poets, insofar as emphasis is put both on the educational role (towards achieving general virtue) of the commented poetic examples and on the variability of receptive situations and the individual preferences and abilities of the recipients. However, a certain openness and liberality of the discourse on literary production and reception is also found, allowing the aesthetic and ethical benefit of the perception of works from different genres. This legitimizes Ancient Greek literature, along with similar theoretical reflections within its framework, as rightly recognized as canonical in its entirety.

The article insists that “the canon does not tolerate avant-gardes”. With examples from Bulgarian, Polish, Ukrainian, Austrian and Serbian poetry, the position is defended that even in the most representative “classical” anthologies of the respective literatures, avant-garde texts are usually “thrown out”, considered to be some “deviations” from the norm. Examples of such significant neglected avant-garde works are also given. The literary-historical situation is almost the same, whichever literature is concerned.

The article offers a reconstruction of the main moments of the relationship between Th. W. Adorno and G. Lukacs in the period after the Second World War. The first part focuses on the challenge provoked by Lukacs’s book “The Young Hegel” and on the interpretation of it by Adorno in the spirit of idealism and as a project comparable to Heidegger’s. For Adorno, these are forms of totalizing thinking through which the subject suppresses and muffles the originality of objects. The second part focuses on the effect of Lukacs’s book “The Destruction of Reason” and the accusation of German Classical Philosophy in irrationalism. For Adorno, there is room for irrationalism in true dialectics. But far more frightening to him are the variants of one-sided rationality, as well as its incarnations in the power structures that crush all dissent. This is where the specific problem that led to the enmity between Adorno and Lukacs comes to light – the so-called “partisanship” of art or the ideology – art relationship. The third and fourth parts deal with the relationship between avant-garde art and realism, in which Lukacs sees a subjective-antisocial escape from reality, and Adorno – an expression of heterogeneity of the socially-objective world itself.