Boyka Ilieva

The present article examines the reception of George Sand in Bulgarian Revival culture, considering it as a process of selective appropriation of Eu- ropean modernity. The main thesis is that nineteenth-century Bulgarian society did not adopt Sand’s work directly or in its entirety, but rather “domesticated” it by adapting it to its own moral and ideological norms. The study draws on 270reception aesthetics (Jauss, Iser), the theory of translation as rewriting (Lefevere), cultural transfer theory, and polysystem theory in order to demonstrate that translation functions as an active mechanism of filtering and rearranging foreign texts. In this context, Bulgarian translators act as cultural mediators who select and adapt Sand’s works according to the “horizon of expectations” of the National Revival reader. The analysis shows that predominantly moralizing and pastoral works entered the Bulgarian cultural milieu, while the more radical novels addressing issues of female autonomy, sexuality, and the critique of marriage remained outside the translated corpus. This selective appropriation transforms Sand’s image from that of a socially critical emancipatory writer into a “safe” moralist, compatible with the patriarchal values of Revival society. At the same time, her translations perform an important cultural function: they introduce new aesthetic models, romantic motifs, and social sensibilities, while contributing to the formation of the national literary system. The reception of George Sand in the Bulgarian National Revival is thus strictly selective and adaptive, admitting only those elements of European modernity that can be in- tegrated into the local moral and cultural context. This process reveals a broader mechanism of cultural mediation, whereby modernity is appropriated not as a direct transfer but as a transformed and ideologically refracted phenomenon.