Geo Milev (1895–1925)

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.