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)

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.

The article examines specific aspects of the emergence and development of avant-garde literature, in particular Italian Futurism, focusing on its links with Bulgarian Modernism. Through the analysis of “Zang Tumb Tuuum. Adrianopoli Ottobre 1912. Parole in Libertà” by Filippo Tomazo Marinetti the relation of the author and the work to specific moments of Bulgarian history is presented. It also traces the development of the sonorous exclamation “Zang tumb tumb”, which became a byword for European Futurism. Attention is also paid to the changes in perceptions of these literary-historical connections and processes.

The article examines the satirical poetry of Petar Dimitrov Protich, which fits into the ideas of the Bulgarian Revival, affirming the Bulgarian identity and opposing “the own” to “the other”. The main themes in his poetry are knowledge, education and the role of the scholar and intellectual in social development. Through his work P. Protich criticizes the Hellenophilia among the Bulgarians and other Balkan peoples in the 19th century, ridicules the uncritical attitude towards Greek influences, and also the object of his satirical pen are folk superstitions and ignorance. Some of his most emblematic foreign- language works, which have not yet been translated into Bulgarian (except “Η Γραικομανία”, translated by Afr. Alexieva), are “La voix de la Bulgaria”, “Ο Εξελληνισμός”, “Le turcoman”, “Le passage du Danube”, “To the right hon. W. E. Gladstone, M. P.”, “Le repatrié”. The social and ideological line, the vivid portrayal of the Balkan syndrome in the poems of the Greek graduate to some extent at the expense of their literary merits. The notion of the “other” in the satirical poems of Petar Protich comes close to the massively embodied negative image in the artistic, historical and journalistic texts of the Bulgarian 19th century.

The paper examines the mediating role of Bulgarian Revival literature conserning the relationship between man and God and the function of its religious imagery, themes and motifs. Attention is paid to the broad biblical basis of genres, texts, paratexts; of morally instructive elements in works different in content and style. The active use of biblical models and motifs, visible throughout the whole period, is traced, as well as their restructuring that had began. Significant names that set the parameters of the National Revival and their spiritual mission to revive Bulgarian literature and culture and integrate them into the European one are also mentioned.

The study, in the first place, outlines the literary-historical context at the beginning of the 20th century in Bulgaria; provokes the first serious creative impulses in the field of Bulgarian children‘s and adolescent science fiction. Тhe study marks scientific and technical achievements and ideas which are important for bringing out the prognostic elements of science fiction and its educational role – to reveal not only the wonders of science, but to emphasize the attention and the responsibility that human being assumes (or not) for each new discovery. In the second and third part of the study, it examines the works of Emil Koralov and Elin Pelin. These texts are not just fundamental for the emergence and development of Bulgarian children‘s and adolescent science fiction, but also for tracing the progress/evolution of the fantastic image from the fairy tales to the science fiction, their convergence, through the texts of the authors.

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.