Bulgarian

The paper makes an inquiry into the structural characteristics of the mainly internet based musical genre of sovietwave. The aim is to simultaneously observe certain features of the cultural context of its actualization and to problematize some contextual codes thought of as self-evident throughout its reception.

The article explores three contemporary Bulgarian novels in order to underline the characteristics that allow us to use the genre definition “documentary novel”. Based on Philippe Lejeune’s 1975 definitions of “autobiography” and “novel”, the article analyses the identity of the three narrative persons in the novels in order to define the distance they have with the two genres. Later, other bordering genres are discussed in order to establish the space that the documentary novel occupies. Certain literary approaches used in the novels are discussed, serving to present the narrative’s fictional side. The article concludes that the documentary novel as such has its place in literature, maintaining at the same time strong bonds with extra-literary genres.

The paper centers around a possible line of interpretation of literature-reality intercourse with the help of author-figure mediation. The autobiographical disposition of the latter in A ballad to Georg Hennih fictional space is what scientific lenses are set upon. Considered the opening first part of an autobiographical trilogy (followed by Germany – a dirty story, and A love story autopsy), A ballad to Georg Hennih short novel inaugurates autofiction as Victor Paskov’s literary style and means of recognition. The ballade’s world is based on a playful dialogue between fictional and real, skillfully handled by Paskov’s own maneuver of questioning author’s status in the twofold manifestation of self-revealing and being a novel’s character. The self-revealing dimension is imbued with childhood trauma thus launching the long-term journey of answering the essential question “Who am I really?”

The article researches Todor P. Todorov’s novel Hagabula as a distinctive contribution to Bulgarian magical realism, combining myth, history, and global exploration. Central are two female archetypes: the witch, embodied in a young, beautiful woman whose connection to the supernatural reopens humanity’s roots, and the grandmother, familiar from Bulgarian literature as a symbol of primal time and maternal essence but also appearing as a magical figure in the literature of the 1960s and 1970s. Todorov transforms the grandmother figure into a rejuvenated, magical witch, thus bridging tradition and innovation. The article examines how the novel stages both the loss of home and the search for the new in general, positioning Hagabula simultaneously as a departure from and a continuation of the Bulgarian literary heritage of root-seeking from the previous century.

The task of “Jests of the Infinite: Introduction to David Foster Wallace” is to mark some key aspects within the thought of the contemporary author David Foster Wallace. The main goal of the article is to open a conceptual field where the texts of a little known within the local context author could be discussed, analysed and criticised.

It is in this sense that the article is explicitly introductory and therefore limited not only to Wallace’s most famous work – the 1000+ pages maximalist novel “Infinite Jest” — but also to its title. Thus, what “Jests of the Infinite” presents is a speculative reading of the novel’s title, which is a quote from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. It is through this speculative reading that the article explores some of Wallace’s key ideas, themes and positions. Ideas and positions, which trace and weave together the fields of contemporary philosophy (both analytic and continental), Lacanian psychoanalysis and mathematics. So, what article еxplicates is how the mentioned fields can be found already within the title of Wallace’s maximalist novel. And furthermore, how such an explication opens the possibility for an interesting rethinking of modern culture’s constitutive tragedy (Hamlet) and also how it can ground the dynamic conceptual space for Wallace’s thought.

Last but not least, after the explication of the title, which will focus mainly on the concepts of the “jest” and the “infinite”, the article concludes with marking a specific counter-intuitive relation between Wallace’s thought and literary project and the philosophy of Alain Badiou whose project regards the fields of psychoanalysis and mathematics as crucial for the creation of a rigorous and operative contemporary ontology

Geo Milev’s poem “September” can be read as a socio-political dystopia-utopia. It belongs to a tradition that stretches from Plato’s Republic, through Plutarch’s “Lycurgus” and Thomas More’s Utopia, to Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World. The study begins by identifying several key signifying discourses and cultural codes that frame the poem as a dystopia-utopia. It then sketches the theoretical parameters of the dystopian-utopian genre. Finally, the analysis demonstrates that “September” embodies the core features of this genre. The study concludes by identifying those utopian aspects that enabled communist literary criticism to interpret “September” as a prophetic vision of communism’s inevitable victory in Bulgaria. The approach is comparative, engaging both Bulgarian and Euro-American historical and theoretical contexts. The interpretation examines the poem on multiple levels—philosophical, aesthetic, poetic, and phonetic.

Никита Нанков (1956, София) е българо-американски компаративист с докторат по американска и българска литература и сравнително литературознание (Институт за литература, БАН, 1989/1993) и PhD по сравнително литературознание и руска литература (двоен PhD, In- diana University, Bloomington, САЩ, 2006). Преподавал в университети в САЩ, Латинска Америка, Китай. Негови изследвания са публикувани в България, САЩ, Канада, Обединеното кралство, Италия, Холандия, Русия и Хърватия. Автор на две научни книги: „В огледалната стая. Седем образа на българския литературен селоград“ (София, 2001) и „Postmodern- izam i kulturni izazov“ [Постмодернизъм и културни предизвикателства] (Загреб, Хърватия, 2004), както и на книги с художестена проза и поезия.

Споровете около канона, избух- нали във втората половина на 1980-те и разгорещили се в следващите две десетилетия, са имали разнообразни следствия. Едно от тях е, че те са оставили до голяма степен извън критическото внимание понятието за „класика“ и „класическо“ със специфичното му място в историята на идеите. Така, след началната саморазправа с него, от една страна, то започва да изглежда твърде лесно заменимо, например от по-ясно ангажираното с политическите залози на хуманитарните изследвания понятие за „канон“. Класическото се критикува като канонично и канонизирано. Тъкмо поради тази причина то се оказва не просто заменимо, а отстранимо. В съвременното литературознание думите „класика“ и „класическо“ вече рядко се употребяват критически.

През 2022 година литературният проект Future Fiction, който обещава да представя научнофантастични сюжети, способни да ни помогнат да разберем утрешния ден, публикува малък сборник, наречен Meteotopia: Futures of Climate (In)Justice („Метеотопия: Сюжети на климатичната (не)справедливост“). Замисълът на тази социално ангажирана книжка бе наистина мащабен; тя започва с манифест от Франческо Версо и Ана Рюше, според които „от зората на времето отношението между човека и природата […] има две постоянни характеристики: уважение и подчинение“. През последните векове обаче „подчинението успя да прекърши уважението. Експлоатацията зае мястото на разумното управление. И науката разомагьоса древната мистика на природата, оголвайки я за всеки, който би пожелал да се домогне до нейните ресурси“. Основен виновник за всичко това, разбира се, е капиталистическата система, която днес, в епохата на антропоцена, изглежда, „вече няма конкуренти“ , и тази нейна неоспорвана хегемония прави въобразяването на алтернативни светове трудна, дори невъзможна, но пък за сметка на това необходима задача. Именно с това ужасно сложно начинание се захваща „Метеотопия“ – за да се провали главозамайващо на всички възможни нива

As a practice and a votive site, the vow has a significant place in traditional culture and is quite vital to the present day. It has its roots in Antiquity and is based on the belief that supernatural powers haunt all natural objects – caves, water springs, trees, etc., and are their owners. In order to settle on a particular territory and to use its resources, people should fight with the spirits and pay them for it – with gifts and sacrifices. Moreover, the sacrifices should be in a way equivalent to people’s expectations for favourable living conditions and abundant harvest, that is, the sacrifice should consist of what is most precious for the community. There are a number of rites containing some relics indicating that once even human life was sacrificed. Barbarous as they are, such rites suggest that striving for their living and paying a high price for all the earthly possessions they get from nature, people could not afford to squander and waste the earned resources; they were compelled to respect and highly evaluate them.

After presenting known and less known facts about the voynuks and the dervendjis, the article makes an attempt to clarify the reasons for the different stage of development of the different voynuk and dervendji villages. According to the author’s thesis, the privileged voynuk and dervendji status of part of the population in certain villages was not the main reason for their gradual transformation into significant economic and cultural centres, playing a major role in the Bulgarian history during the Revival period. Besides their geographic location in secluded mountainous areas and away from the main roads, a real reason was the adaptation of the inhabitants to the natural environment. The presence of pasture-grounds contributed to the development of the stock- breeding and the trade with wool, meat and dairy products, which were among the resources for developing some crafts. Certain settlements, on the other hand, developed because of the availability of resources for other crafts – production of rose oil, logging, metal-working, etc. The ethnographic features of the Balkan region can be added to the geographical situation, the natural environment and the development of certain economic sectors. Despite the fact that they had service farms (bashtina), in the situation of total control of the state over the agriculture and tax oppression, the voynuks, as well as the rest of the Bulgarians, could not easily turn into large landowners who directed their production mainly toward the market. For this, it was necessary to have such power and influence that belonged to the first big Turkish landowners, who usually came from the category of the askers (the military men), and in whose hands was the provincial administration. Although later on some Bulgarians obtained enough financial capital to turn into wealthy collectors of tax on sheep and goats, and of other taxes, and even large landowners, the primary means of their prosperity was stock-breeding, trade and crafts. It was precisely in these areas of economic activity that Bulgarians managed to get out of their dependence and total control of the state. Here, the Christians were sable more effectively to resist tax arbitrariness even with unauthorized means, and these dynamic and profitable industries managed to compensate it. They did not rely as much on tax privileges and service landowning, which actually made them dependent on the goodwill of the central authority.

This paper deals with two types of dependence of the Bulgarian journalists from the 19th century – the dependence of the editors from their editions, what they are inclined to do in behalf of them, even to the detriment of their personal writings, on one hand, and the dependence of the personal friendships and hostilities, on the other. The observations are based on some letters from the archive of Ivan Naydenov and other texts that draw the picture of his complicated relationships with Petko Slaveykov, Svetoslav Milarov, and Stefan Bobchev.

The paper seeks in the characters of G. P. Stamatov the tragedy of the modern man – the degradation from the creator of material culture to the slave of his own creations. This is an enduring topic in today‘s world, seen today in the prestigious prestige of our pseudo-elite – once at the bottom of society, now – accidentally unprepared at the top but without the necessary qualitative leap in intellectual and social terms. The text aims to show when the necessity of the accumulation of belongings becomes a disease and a dangerous dependence, as well as why the post-liberation Bulgarian in good standing in society feels a hunger not just to have a lot, but to show that he owns, to get legitimacy through others.

This text focuses on the specific dependence on the mother role which the childless woman in Julio Cortázar’s short story “The Condemned Door” warms to. The present work studies “fictional motherhood” and some of the possible explanations of the special double “play” of comforting the unborn son that exists both in the mind of the woman and in the mind of her neighboring man who seems to verify the child’s existence. This is a story of an obsession with what has no body, but exists in the form of a thought, a desire, and consciousness. The narrative tells how the dependence of the other reveals a need you may well feel too.

The article examines a main problem of late modernity in the 20th century: Technology as an atavistic shadow of Enlightenment rationality. As a force created by man but escaped from his power, which produces a new funda- mental slavery for the late modern das Man (in Heidegger’s sense). The article consists of two parts, unfolding two parallel but merging plots. The first part outlines the universal context of the era immediately after the end of WW II with an emphasis on Heidegger’s “second” philosophy (after die Kehre), the deepest critical self-reflection of late/crisis modernity in the mid-20th century and then: the basic idea of Technik/Machenschaft as an enslaving factor. The second part of the article examines how the same problem, which arose simultaneously but independently in the current Bulgarian reality in the 1960s and 1970s, was discussed by a representative part of Bulgarian prose: the “rural” writer Yordan Radichkov, the “urban” one Pavel Vezhinov, but above all Emilian Stanev, who, like Heidegger at the same time, paradoxically combines strongly right-wing ethno-conservatism and far-left eco-ideology.

The article interprets otherness as a distinctive feature of the person, positioning him beyond the scope of the community to which he belongs. That distinction is often behavioural and does not correspond to the moral conven- tions of the social group. It often brings about the rejection of the individual, and dooms him to misunderstanding, aloneness, even death. The following two works of the contemporary Bulgarian literature have been selected for observation: the 125short novel The Barrier by Pavel Vezhinov and the novella “Verse for Her” by Nikolai Vatov. The analytical parallel between the characters in the two lite- rary works has been driven by difference as a viewpoint for their interpretation.

The transformations we explore consist in the fact that from what is specifically contained in the text, the Absurdism passes into the principles of the director‘s thinking, and hence into the stage laws for constructing a new world. Now we think of this as an establishment of the unusual form of directors’ independence, hidden under the apparent dependence on drama. In Stoyan Kambarev’s practice, it manifests itself in a different light: independence, which does not reject, does not discredit, does not degrade the drama, but accepts it as an “accomplice”, and thus rehabilitates the director as seeking dialogue with the world around, instead of unambiguously staring at himself.

This text wants to pursue a somewhat different direction in the cur- rent con­versation on world literature; it seeks to ‘multiply’ world literature and demon­strate that there is no world literature per se, but rather different world literatures, because at different times different communities produce different constructs that they label as world literature. In my title, I signal that here we are dealing with answers to the questions what world literature is and how to write its his­tory that come from Soviet Russia, encompassing a period of some seventy years. My emphasis is on the lessons one could learn from the Soviet atten­tion to world literature; foremost amongst these is the compelling determina­tion of Soviet intellectuals to conceive of world literature in a systematically non-Occidentocentric manner. With this, the Soviets were pioneer- ing an approach to world literature that foreshadows our current concerns, as I will try to demonstrate. But there is also another lesson emerging from the Soviet preoccupation with world literature: the conversation on world literature does not proceed in a vacuum, it is constantly interacting with, impacting on, and being impacted by, the conversation societies have about national literatures and literary theory. I begin by briefly adumbrating four historically attest- able meanings of ‘world literature’ that are still at work in the Soviet debates; I then identify three different cultural and ideological horizons (or frameworks) of thinking about world literature in the Soviet Union and, significantly, locate their common ground, the glue that bound them together, in the master approach of de-Westernizing the very notion of world literature, an attitude consistently enacted by Soviet intellectuals engaging with the history of world literature.

The paper is concerned with the nature of fact, as a part of the struc- ture of genre-hybrid fiction biographies. It is assumed that any fact created by author‘s imagination is implicitly literary unless it is a specific document. This argument is being supported by theoretical justifications by J. Tynyanov. The examples of the peripeteia of real facts about the personality and work of F. Dostoevsky in the genre of fictional biography are from the novel The Master of Petersburg by J. M. Coetzee. In this work, the author‘s interpreta- tion is achieved through an original intertextual play that reproduces Dostoev- sky‘s literary personality and the complex construction of his creative world.

The study examines Russian poetry of the 20th century, falling into the field of the avant-garde, and presents the features of cultural processes, the development of avant-garde trends, changes in the functions of art and language, vectors, and concepts. The boundaries of the literary phenomenon are made meaningful. The rebellion against aesthetic norms requires searching for new proportions and aspects of perception. Both the early and the second half of the century avant-garde set themselves the goal of shaking the perceiver, breaking the automatism of reading, and causing active rejection or misunderstanding. Hence, techniques related to difficult reading include “memorized” creations, “cut-off” words, a multitude of neologisms, broken syntactic constructions, and the fusion of incompatible aesthetic or thematic phenomena. The avant-garde versions of twentieth-century art emphasize resistance to the label manifestations of culture, opposing as an alternative the reduced, careless form, affirming through negation the breakthrough to the sacred and the true, the search for new positive meanings.

The article is part of a larger study on Russian/Soviet dystopia in literature, and partly in cinema. Here, the subject of reading is Vladimir Sorokin‘s “Ice Trilogy”, containing the novels Ice (2002), The Path of Bro (2004) and 23000 (2005).

Някои предмети на човешкото размишление привличат – било защото има нещо в самите тях, било защото има нещо у нас самите – към все по-задълбочено размишление, и колкото повече се отдаваме на това привличане и се изгубваме в тях, толкова повече те се превръщат в един единен предмет, който ние – в зависимост от това дали го търсим и намираме в себе си, или извън себе си – характеризираме като природа на нещата или като определение на човека. Други предмети вероятно никога не биха привлекли вниманието ни, ако в свещена самота посвещавахме наблюдението си изключително и единствено на този предмет на всички предмети и ако не се намирахме във взаимоотношения с други хора, едва от общуването с които да изникват подобни отношения и понятия за отношения, които при по-внимателна рефлексия да се разгръщат и разпластяват до предмети на размишлението, т. е. включително тук да следват тъкмо противоположния ход на нещата.

Предложените по-долу на българския читател стихове са от късния период на Фридрих Хьолдерлин (1770–1843), когато поетът – състудент и приятел на колосите на Немския идеализъм Шелинг и Хегел от Тюбингенската семинария – вече е изпаднал в период на видимо умопомрачение, продължило десетилетия, до самата му смърт (въпреки спекулациите от някои тълкуватели, че то е било преструвка, помагала му да се крие от реални или въображаеми политически противници и преследвания, най-вече във връзка с опитите за съдебен процес срещу неговия другар Исак фон Синклер и конспирациите за сваляне на вюртембергския курфюрст). В този период поетът обитава прочутата си кула в Тюбинген, част от дома на семейството на дърводелеца Ернст Цимер, когато помрачението на съзнанието му се редува с кратки периоди на просветление, а приемането на рядко наминаващите любопитни гости – и с продължителни импровизации на пиано и опити за творчество, вдъхновено от гледката отвисоко към река Некар.

В последните семинарни занятия по „Литература на Българското възраждане“ симптоматично пролича овладяното, ала заразително пристрастие на Сирма Данова към мястото на Паисий Хилендарски като особен вид конструктор или по-точно – около което се фокусираше нейният изследователски интерес – субстрат на терена на националната културна идентичност. Тогава не знаехме, че привилегироването на този въпрос е свързано с актуалната ѝ научна работа, не си давах- ме сметка, че този труд ще бъде нейната лебедова песен.

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)

Събраните в настоящия брой текстове са резултат от малък научен форум, проведен през юни 2022 година под наслов „Литературни метаморфози – между живота и текста“. Обединихме се около идеята, че литературата има отношение към това, което обичайно се нарича реалност, т. е. че тя (въз) действа извън собствено литературното поле и флуидните граници на художествената условност. Към първоначалното ядро от текстове се присъединиха по-късно други, които си позволяваме да привлечем под тази обща рамка, тъй като намираме, че те също споделят схващането за активната, перформативна роля на литературата в света. Без да пренебрегваме идеята за автономия на литературната творба, изследваме напрегнатите граници на литературното; местата, където литературата и науката за нея се разтварят към други области, полета, сфери на човешка (а може би и нечовешка) активност. Интерференциите на литературата с нейния друг или множество други, са червената нишка, която свързва иначе толкова разнообразните и различни изследователски подходи. Понякога по-директно, друг път по-завоалирано, те разкриват симптомите, точките на напрежение, конфликтите, но и седиментациите в отношението творба – реалност. Ако бъдат четени заедно, тези, на пръв поглед безкрайно различни, текстове сгъстяват, фор- мират и позволяват да кристализират логически мостове, алтернативни преходи в мисловните конструкти, които наричаме „съвременност“, „форми на живот“, „култура“, „памет“, „любов“, „безкрайност“, „въображение“.

This text attempts to explore the correspondence between Immanuel Kant’s notion of genius and the representation of the figure of the genius in “The Chants of Maldoror” by Isidor Ducasse, Comte de Lautréamont. The aim is to show how and to what extent Kant’s well-known definition is supported and overturned in the medium of the fictional text. As the genius of Kant is a miraculous complex of imagination, reason, taste and spirit, Maldoror is his dark double, an inverted reflection, a daimon, who weaves the ontolog- ical texture of the world, a celestial force who sets the world in the flames of the revolution. By means of a recuperation of the classical heritage of the notion of daimon and its intersection with Kant’s aesthetic of the sublime, a new perspective reveals itself. Maldoror posits himself as a genius through the interaction with the sublime. The first front of the sublime unfolds in the traditional images of the ocean and the mathematics, representing the Kantian notions of the dynamic and the mathematical sublime. However, Lautréamont discloses new fronts of the sublime in the territories of sublimitas, of the apoc- alyptic, chaotic figures, matter and forces, the origin of which can be traced back to Antiquity. The genius is not anymore a figure of the light of reason, but an enigmatic darkness whose energy bursts on the surface of existence as destruction, violence, chaos and death. Negativity here presents a radical experience, which transforms all into absolute freedom, into a life without limits. Lautréamont breaks through the aesthetic limitation of the act of geni- us, drawn by Kant, and turns the fictional text into a laboratory in genetic en- gineering, projecting from the heart of aesthetics a new imperative: the use of the medium of literature as an experimental space for transfor

The study asks whether, after the dominance of individualism as the main life principle in postmodern times, there is a rethinking of the importance of intersubjective relationships and their renewal. The focus of the study is the representation of the heterosexual love relationship in the novel „Allegro Pastel“ by the contemporary German-language writer Laif Rand. It is examined against the background of theories about the postmodern community and the place of love in it by iconic sociologists and philosophers such as Ulrich Beck, Jürgen Habermas, Sygmut Bauman, Erich Fromm, and in comparison with even more recent studies on love such as those of Eva Iluz, Angelica Krebs, Aron Ben’Zeev. The text attempts to defend the thesis that Rand‘s novel presents a new, unprejudiced notion of love, which, through irony as the main tool, is opposed to the established (and problematic) notion of romantic love.

Lexemes, carrying a specific cultural charge in their native environ- ment, prove to be one of the most difficult stumbling blocks for translators of lit- erary texts. In this study, we aim to get to the heart of the culturally marked con- cepts found at the very beginning of “Don Quixote”, and to analyse whether and how it is possible to render them in a foreign language by observing the work of translators from different language groups and historical periods. Through a few code names and concepts, in a few sentences, the image of the knight is construct- ed almost materially in the original text – with the place he comes from, with his title, his spear and shield, his eating habits, his clothing (giving him social and religious belonging) and last but not least with the name he bears. A substantial part of this ‚materiality‘, however, appears to have been lost or misrepresented in the translations under consideration. Five of the Bulgarian, as well as one each of the French, English and Russian translations of the novel are presented. 127The choice of the foreign-language versions is related to the fact that Bulgarian translators, until the mid-twentieth century, translated the novel through the intermediary of French and Russian, while the English version is juxtaposed with the French due to the temporal proximity of their creation and the geographical proximity of the two host cultures. An attempt has been made to delineate the relations among the different translations and the influences they have had on each other, and to analyse the different strategies in recreating a nationally coloured vocabulary through the prism of the definitions and classifications of realia proposed by S. Vlahov and S. Florin, as well as the theoretical postulates of lan- guage as a cultural phenomenon and of translation as an intercultural transfer.