Bulgarian

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.

There was a fierce controversy in Russian literary studies as to whether it is justified to speak of a romantic discourse in Pushkin’s poetry in the early 1920s (1819–1824) and what caused it, provided that there was no major social cataclysm to unleash the relevant conceptual  direction  in  literature.  It  missed  something  particularly  important: the Greek uprising of 1821, echoed among all Balkan nations, and the increased  fascination  with  Byron’s  rebellious  poems  (a  kind  of  “import” of Byronism) demonstrated by the first poet of Russia. How the ideas of “Megali Idea” and “Eteria” reflect on the strengthening of the Greek (rebellious) theme and the appearance of the Bulgarian hero in Pushkin’s work, and in a sense provoke the Decembrist revolt in late 1825, will be discussed with examples from his lyric poetry and prose, outlining an overall paradigm in the poet’s existential turn and his attitude to freedom.

This paper compares the short essays of two of the most prominent Bulgarian political exiles in the United Kingdom in the second part of the 20th century – Petar Uvaliev (1915–1998) and Georgi Markov (1929–1978).  Both  authors  wrote  their  essays  to  be  aired  on  the  radio – Markov wrote them for the Radio Free Europe, Deutsche Welle and BBC, whereas Uvaliev’s texts appeared in the weekly BBC radio program Five minutes with Petar Uvaliev. Even though the life and writing trajectories of these authors differ significantly, as well as their perspectives on the totalitarian regime in People’s Republic of Bulgaria, their writings find common ground in the exploration of religious ideas and stylistic devices. This article seeks to identify the similarities and the differences in the ways Markov and Uvaliev treat religious themes and motifs in their essays. The paper also highlights the great art of essay writing and their intimate and strong connection to the Bulgarian cultural tradition.

The paper compares the debut novel of author Ernest Cline and its film adaptation by director Steven Spielberg in terms of the way they construct and utilize an alternative canon, closely related to the video game culture. Of main interest to this study is the critical reception of both works and its possible implications.

Returning to “The Purloined Letter” introduces the question of interpretation on two intertwined levels – the internal (the fictional characters’ comments) and the external (the critics’ comments). The paper has the task of tracing interpretive strategies through characters’ voices, i.e. through the conflict of internal interpretations. Monsieur G’s method insists on the typical and on hermeneutic depth. The detective Dupin uses the contrasting approach; he conceptualizes the logic of the incommensurable and mimicry. The anonymous narrator's voice is not impartial, he confides in Dupin and so there are blind spots in the narrative itself. The following paper unfolds two detective micro-plots by following the tracks of the epigraphist and the author of the purloined letter. I examine the poetics of narrative as isomorphic to the manners in which we interrogate the interpretations of the characters within it. The conclusion is not surprising – reading is a real detective story.

The paper examines the French writer Marguerite Yourcenar as an example of world literature, going through three steps. The first step is to question why Marguerite Yourcenar is one of the authors included in David Damrosch’s “Around the World in 80 Books”. The second step is looking at the notion of world literature through the concepts of Harold Bloom’s “The West- ern Canon”, Ognyan Kovachev’s “Literature and Identity Transformations of Otherness”, and Galin Tihanov’s “Beyond Circulation”. The third step reads Yourcenar’s method as being in line with the idea of literary zones and zonality.

Настоящият брой включва доклади, четени на международната научна конференция по повод 70-годишния юбилей на Института за литература, която се проведе през м. май 2018 г. Поради голямото хронологическо отстояние от конференцията някои от текстовете бяха междувременно публикувани – частично или изцяло, но целта на съставителите на броя бе да запазят автентичния формат, с който те бяха представени преди четири години.

Празникът е добър повод да припомним мисията, която е обвързала личната и творческата съдба на поколения талантливи учени с Института за литераратура към Българската академия на науките. А тя е – да изследваме и да творим литература; да създаваме литературна наука, съизмерима със световните научни критерии; да съхраняваме културната памет и да я превръщаме в разпознаваем, достоен за уважение знак на националната ни идентичност. Като литературен историк познавам добре и капризите на историята, и суетата на литературата. Зная колко подозрителни са те към юбилейните равносметки. Но именно затова се усъмнявам в добре известното мнение на Гео Милев, че юбилеят „не е никакво чудо, нито загадка, нито въпрос. Напротив – една съвсем твърда, положителна черна точка, която пада като литературен надгробен камък над юбиляра си“.

The text examines the form of a stage presentation of the con- version of the Bulgarian monarch and his people and the preservation of the Christian religion in three plays of the German-speaking Jesuit school theaters, as well as the presentation of this plot in the engraving of German artists from the 18th century.

The sponsorship during the Bulgarian Revival is part of an ancient, centuries-old tradition and is a kind of continuation of the donation from previous historical epochs. Religious books are an important part of the books published during the Renaissance. In the period 1806–1856, a total of 77 books were published with assistance, and 24 of them were religious (or 31%). Religious books “in simple Bulgarian language“ set and achieve the goal of maintaining, upholding and strengthening the religious identity of Bulgarians.

At the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, Christian values for the Bulgarian community in the Ottoman Empire were in crisis. Joakim Karchowski responded to the crisis with two sermons published in his book. With them he set the beginning of a new theology. We will call it conditionally “weekday theology”. The high examples of Christianity, the holy fathers and teachers of the Church at that time were difficult for the ordinary man to understand. This led Joakim Karchowski to orient his theology towards early Christianity – simpler and more understandable. In his time, thinking about the physical dominated over thinking about the spiritual. This mental attitude leads community to moral decay.

In this article research interest is focused on the large-scale manuscript heritage of Nayden Gerov (Fund 22 of the SS. Cyril and Methodius National Library – Bulgarian Historical Archive). There is a brief historical overview of the current scientific activities with a small part of 2000 archive units in the personal archive fund of the Revival writer, linguist, teacher and politician Nayden Gerov. In the focus of the study are presented two unexplored until now educational handwritten stories – Bulgarian and universal (F. 22, archive unit 603 and a. u. 604). The facts surrounding the two historical textbooks are systematized, and separate hypotheses have been made about the year of writing, the presence of more than one author, the place and the function in the context of the other published historical textbooks.

The article notices the first critical assumptions about “Ivanko“ dramatic work by Vasil Drumev. It also directs towards the detailed comment by Yordan Trifonov about the historiography sources which the author used to construct the plot. After Drumev develops the character of Ivanko, it becomes attractive to other Bulgarian writers, too. The emphasis of the text is upon the fact that after the work of the playwright from Bulgarian National Revival, the image of Ivanko becomes recognizable and discussed historiographic character. Due to Drumev’s writer finding and the scientific interest of Trifonov, the historiographic plot about him develops right after its literature one.

This article presents Dimitar Shishmanov’s views regarding the new role of the woman and the change in the way she is treated in the existing conservative society during the years 60s to 70s of the 19th century. He shares his opinion in his dramas, in a published brochure and in some lectures, and defends it in practice by his attitude towards his family, as well as in his forty-one letters to his wife, kept in his son’s (Prof. Ivan Shishmanov) archives.

Images of the wealthy and the poor men/women are determined by different factors. We are often prone to think that communist ideology had imposed their axiological polarization in which the poor is appreciated positively and the wealthy was anathemized. Nevertheless, similar approach is much older, it is fundamental for Christian doctrine, especially for Orthodoxy. Hence similar polarization could be traced in other Balkan Christian cultures that were less infected by communist ideology. Some scholars are inclined to connect the notions of wealth and poverty in Balkan cultures with the prolonged absence of “own” nobility and with some peculiar forms of rural community as “zadruga”.

 Starting from such general premises this paper offers an overview of some representative images of rich men and poor men in Bulgarian culture, in some cases looking for parallels in other Balkan and East-European texts. Cinderella plot and the story about the abducted treasure as element of Bulgarian national mythology are some of the focuses of the study. The observations lead to the general conclusion that the discourse that idealize poverty and satirize wealth was dominant not only for 19th century.

The subjects of research are Bulgarian translations of “Anthem” by Ferenc Kölcsey, a true national song of Hungarians, which, among other things, lead to the historical characteristics of the text, related to the interpretation and assimilation of nationally coloured vocabulary, drаw paths of translatability. In a similar plan, focused are issues of the historical specificity in translation, which are presented mostly by certain lexical units – historical concepts and proper names (toponyms and antroponyms), related to the important issue of the realities in translation. Phenomena highlighting the specific historical moment (the present) but also the historical distance (the past) and the perspective (the future) are outlined in the meanings of the original text. Problems of foreign national identity stand out – historical and cultural, related to the spirit of the nation, more or less distant in time, which are reflected in the language of translation. The role of the translator is particularly important, he must bring the reader closer to the ideas, themes and the specific imagery of the source text with the means of poetic language. It is also necessary to take into account – especially in new translations – the reception attitudes, background knowledge, accumulated experience, the increased opportunities for expressing unknown aspects and concepts of foreign reality. This is also the way to overcome cognitive and cultural differences in translation.

The text works with the concept of canon in its sense of a set of ideas and cultural codes and their corresponding values ​​and norms that unite a given community. The canon is based on a collectively generated self-concept of the Self, which the research traces in possible directions of development in its relations to the other and the stranger in several stories and humorous sketches by Mihalaki Georgiev, illustrating the humor-generating collisions, inconsistencies, discrepancies between the Self and the collective, between the different collectives in the Bulgarian socio-cultural transition between the XIX and XX centuries. The encounter and failure in communication between cultural canons at the turn of the century demonstrate a rich artistic potential that sets artistic patterns in our literary canon.

Article discusses the thesis of the novel character of Bai Ganyu, one of the most mysterious works in Bulgarian literature, which is commonly read as a cyclic collection of short stories/fеuilletons. Here the novel-epic potential in the work is argued mainly in the “vertical“, historicalgenealogical aspect, in the traditions of romance. In parallel, the article included in the theoretical debate on the essence of the novel genre in general, using some ideas of Russian formalism, in particular V. Shklovsky.

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

This article focuses on critical texts, including Ludmil Stoyanov’s, in “Hiperion” journal. The writer’s complex and contradictory transition from individualism and ultimate aesthetics to a new type of humanism, democracy and social engagement is considered. Stoyanov defines the new direction as neo-romanticism, but according to author’s thesis it can also be described as neo-pantheism.

The essay traces the shifts in the modelled projections of the foreign cultural space in the poetic works of Kiril Hristov. Here I offer a comparative reading of two poems dedicated to Germany but written more than twenty years apart. The country praised in the ode “Germany” from 1914 as the ideal state appears as a sinister rejection of its own values in the untitled poem from the collection of poetry “Breakwater” from 1937. It only appears to be so, since the inclusion of this second text in the collection “The whole of Bulgaria” (1942) under the title “German” and its translation into German would open a completely different direction for its possible interpretation. My study of documents contained in the Prague archives of Kiril Hristov confirms that the second text also has the dimensions of an ode and is undoubtedly dedicated to Nazi Germany under Hitler.

This contribution closely focuses on the features of the first, as of yet not published, Prague version of the Kiril Hristov’s drama “Maystor i dyavol” [The Master and the Devil] written in 1935–1936. The manuscript is stored in the Museum of Czech Literature Literary Archive in Prague (unprocessed collection “Christov Kiril”). Attention is paid, first, to the original legend about the builder of the Church of the Assumption of the Our Lady and St. Charles the Great in Karlov (Prague) which Christov knew from various sources, and second, to the genealogical aspects of the drama (the author himself called it “a Prague dramatic legend”). It then deals with the circumstances of the genesis of the drama and possible genetic relations to other literary texts of diverse provenience. It has been supposed that, apart from newer literary treatments of the drama, the plot of the drama was built on Karel Navrátil’s (1830–1887) treatise about the aforementioned church in Karlov, written in the 1870s. Recently it was discovered that Navrátil’s treatise was only a impulse for the theater play, but especially Kiril Hristov’s own drama built its architectonic and plot line construction and composition on an older Eduard (Edvard) Herold’s (1820–1895) historical novella “The Builder of Karlov. A Short Story From the Times of Charles IV”, published in 1853.