Ivan Hristov

Тази статия изследва как концепцията за време и идентичност на българския литературен модернизъм се променя през 20-те години на ХХ век. Анализират се както условията за, така и резултатите от тази промяна. В началото на 1920-те концепцията за време на българския литературен модернизъм е все още циклична. Статията отделя специално внимание на влиянието на книгата на Освалд Шпенглер "Залезът на Запада" (1918) върху формирането на представите за време и идентичност на модернистите от кръга "Стрелец". Повлияни от тази книга, те отдават предпочитание на XIX век, времето на Българското възраждане, заменяйки цикличното време на модернизма с историческо. Бидейки контрамодерен, българският модернизъм се трансформира в модерен проект през 1925-1927 г.

This paper examines how the concept of time and identity in Bulgarian literary modernism changed during the period between 1920 and 1930. The conditions for, as well as the results of this change are also analyzed. In 1920, the concept of time in Bulgarian literary modernism was still cyclical. In his article, “Native Art,” the Bulgarian expressionist Geo Milev proclaimed the postulates of the new art. According to Milev, this art would have to retrace its steps back to mythological man, towards “the primitive man of proto-being – to Adam.” Milev called for a representation of a mythical time and mythical space in art, favoring the past. According to Eleazar Meletinsky, “the urge to go beyond the limits of social-historical and temporal-spatial frameworks in order to manifest a pan-human content was one of the signs of the transition from the realism of the 19th c. to modernism, and mythology, by virtue of its iconic symbolicness, turned out to be a comfortable language to describe the eternal models of personal and public behavior, of the essential laws in the social and natural cosmos.” The paper will pay particular attention to the influence of Oswald Spengler’s book The Decline of the West (1923) upon the formation of Bulgarian modernists’ concepts of time and identity. According to Spengler, western culture would be replaced by an ascendant Slavic culture. Modernists from the Sagittarius Circle sought a place for Bulgarian culture within that new upsurge. They gave preference to the 19th century, the time of the Bulgarian Revival, exchanging cyclical time for historical time. They chose the past as their starting point, yet were oriented towards the future. They demanded that Bulgarian reality be expressed in art. During 1925-27 Bulgarian modernism transformed from contra-modern into a modern project. Concepts about time and space are examined in detail, while the concepts of continuity and tradition, as well as cyclicity and historicity are analyzed within the context of Bulgarian modernists’ writings.

The image of the hajdutin or the freedom fighter plays an important role both within Bulgarian folklore and the Bulgarian literary tradition. In this paper, I discuss the mythological roots of the hajdutin in Bulgarian folklore and its relationship to other mythological figures such as the dragon, the samodiva or nymph, and the hero. Then I turn to the poem Hadzhi Dimiter, by Bulgarian poet and revolutionary Hristo Botev, examining how his fusion of the mythical archetype with a historical personage creates a new model of heroism that the poet later plays out in his own death. Finally, I examine Peyo Yavorov, a later poet and hajdutin, whose failure to imitate Botev’s self-sacrifice lays the groundwork for a paradoxical modernist return to mythological archetypes more archaic than those used by the romantic Botev.

This paper analyzes: 1) Oswald Spengler's concept of the decline of the West and the rise of Slavic culture, the contrast between culture and civilization, between the metropolis and the provinces, between East and West, as well as the meaning and role of the Russian writers Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in the conception; 2) the influence of these ideas on Bulgarian literature during the 1920s in various circles and publications, and the original interpretations Bulgarian intellectuals reached during their intensive searches for their own identity; 3) the formation and activity of the Sagittarius Circle, the group most strongly influenced by Spengler's Decline of the West.

ABSTRACT The article thoroughly examines one of the most significant and also the least studied literary circles in Bulgarian literature - Sagitarius Literary Circle, which is regarded by a number of literary scholars as the end of Bulgarian modernism. The focus is on the problem of literary heritage.The most distinct gestures of literary heritage by Sagitarius are listed consecutively, namely: 1.Mythology and folklore as thresholds to Bulgarian culture. 2. Sagitarius Literary Circle and Hristo Botev. 3. Sagitarius Literary Circle and the Bulgarian Revival.4. Sagitarius Literary Circle and Pencho Slaveikov. The problem of acquiring and thinking over the tradition is not studied in itself only, but also in the context of the active search and the attempts to construct a new identity in the Bulgarian culture of the 1920s.

ABSTRACT Within the framework of the debate between Atanas Dalchev and Hristo Radevski on the nature of children’s poetry, this article examines several of the most import aspects of the socialist realist doctrine: In Part One, “The Problem of Reality,” the author analyzes the theoretical differences between socialist realism as opposed to realism and modernism with respect to understandings of the concept of “reality.” In Part Two, “The Problem of the Nature of the Creative Process,” the question of the ideological-political preconditions for socialist realism is examined. Part Three, “The Problem of Tendentiousness,” convincingly shows that socialist realism is a form of tendentious art. Part Four, “The Problem of Language,” analyzes some of the basic characteristics of the language of totalitarian art. In Part Five, “The Problem of Power,” the author persuasively demonstrates that socialist realism is not an aesthetic program, but a political-aesthetic doctrine. The author not only attempts to theorize these problems, but also to trace the actual establishment of totalitarian art in Bulgaria, as well as noting certain anti-totalitarian gestures.

In 1927 two poetry books written by Bulgarian women were published: The Eternal and the Holy by Elisaveta Bagryana and Macedonian Songs by Magda Petkanova. A series of researchers have defined the two books, which are similar in compositional structure and theme, as aesthethic explorations within the native art movement which was gathering steam during that time. However, while Bagryana’s book strives to affirm the figure of the woman in Bulgarian culture, Magda Petkanova’s book attempts to revive the Bulgarian national ideal of unity which had collapsed after the First World War. Yet another important difference between the two cases is that while The Eternal and the Holy became part of the literary canon and became a model for Bulgarian women’s writing, Macedonian Songs has been marginalized and interest in it is sporadic at best. In the present paper, I will attempt to trace how exactly the mechanism of canonization and marginalization took place. What does the canon not approve ...

The article examines a key episode in the history of Bulgarian literature, namely – the end of Bulgarian symbolism. It analyzes in detail the anti-symbolist criticisms which members of the Sagittarius circle aimed at the symbolist poet Nikolay Liliev. Atanas Dalchev, Konstatin Gulubov and Dimitar Panteleev’s main criticism of symbolism concerns “formalism” and “elitism.” Poetry was transformed from something living and active into something dead and unnecessary. The opposition to symbolism on the part of the new generation of intellectuals is studied both in the entire literary context of the 1920s in Bulgaria, and also as an objective law grounded in a concept and cultural vision for the New Bulgarian Revival, which the members of the Sagittarius Circle professed.

This paper begins by analyzing what a literary canon is and is not. The desire of certain writers from the 1920s to speak of various aesthetic expressions without a view to their specific characteristics is examined as a condition of extra-canonicity. For these writers it is important not to present a separate point of view in art, but to establish its correlation to phenomena from life itself. On the basis of this understanding, the paper is divided into three parts: art, architecture and music. The first part analyzes the article “Native Art,” by a representative of expressionism, Geo Milev. The second part focuses on “Native Architecture” by Chavdar Mutafov. The third section examines the article “The Jazz Band as Worldview” by Kiril Krustev, a representative of Dadaism. The paper attempts to answer the question of why even today these authors have problems with their canonicity.

The paper traces how the mythological motif of the “Dragon’s Wedding” from the folkloric tradition was interpreted in various ways in the different stages of Bulgarian modernism at the beginning of the twentieth century. Building on the work of Yeleazar Meletinsky, the author explores how modernist thinkers preserve the tale’s mythological core while at the same time transforming it in accordance with new goals. He also examines how the specific retelling of the myth in each stage of Bulgarian modernism corresponds to a contemporary concept of identity.  The interpretation of the motif is examined in light of the cultural context of Bulgarian modernism, highlighting parallels with works of literary criticism.

Монографията БЪЛГАРСКИЯТ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕН МОДЕРНИЗЪМ. ПРОБЛЕМЪТ ЗА ВРЕМЕТО И ИДЕНТИЧНОСТТА прави опит да погледне на времето и идентичността през призмата на литературната традиция. За фокус на изследването е избран българският литературен модернизъм в съпоставителен анализ с няколко важни за идентичността понятия, а именно – родното, женското, чуждото, медиите, социалистическия реализъм, българския литературен постмодернизъм. Българският литературен модернизъм е анализиран не само в своя статичен вид, като определен литературен период, обхващащ времето от края на XIX в. до Втората световна война, но и като динамично явление. Направен е опит той да бъде интерпретиран не само в контекста на своята поява, но и в контекста на превръщането му в традиция. Голяма част от проблемите, с които монографията се занимава, се поставят за първи път и биват осветени по нов начин.

This monograph examines the problem of time and identity through the prism of the literary tradition. The focus of the study is Bulgarian literary modernism, which is investigated through a comparative analysis using several concepts important for identity, namely: the native, the feminine, the foreign, the media, socialist realism, and postmodernism. Bulgarian literary modernism is analyzed not only in its static state, as a specific literary period that covers the time from the end of the 19 th century to the Second World War, but as a dynamic phenomenon. This study attempts to interpret it not only within the context of its initial appearance, but also in the context of its transformation into a tradition.

The phenomenon of America, similar to “the woman question,” became topical after the First World War. The US managed to emerge from the war as a power of global significance. Enormous natural resources spread over enormous territory, powerful technical and scientific revolutions, rapid industrialization and modernization transformed the US over the course of a single century from a European colony to a world leader, which especially after World War I exercised strong economic and cultural influence over the Old Continent. This caused European and Bulgarian intellectuals to attempt to understand this phenomenon. Exactly then for the first time the idea of a United States of Europe appeared. But how did it come about that the US’s significance increased? How did this country transform in a short period of time into a “metaphor of modernity?” This “American miracle” gave cause to the intellectuals from the Sagittarius Circle to analyze the reasons for its appearance and its meaning. This article examines in detail the presence of the American theme in the pages of Iztok or East newspaper – the mouthpiece of the Sagittarius Circle – exploring this theme in its political, scientific-technical and cultural aspects.

The feminine became a topical theme in European and hence Bulgarian culture with the outbreak of World War I. The male portion of the population went to the front and women found themselves filling social positions that had previously been considered as predominantly male. However, this led to a series of changes in the public mentality, as well as to attempts to make sense of this change. The late 1920s were also the time when the first female professional writer appeared in Bulgaria. The present paper analyzes in detail how this occurred. It examines the theme of the feminine as found in the pages of Iztok (East) newspaper, published by the Sagittarius Circle. In the broadest terms, this question is examined in three aspects: Women and the Great Artists – Goethe, Nietzsche, Wagner; 2. Female Artists – Zinaida Gippius, Ellen Key, Olive Schreiner, Selma Lagerlöf and others; and 3. Woman as a public-social phenomenon. The general approaches taken to the themes include: women and war; women and reform, women and alienation, women and artistic creation.

For decades under the communist regime in Bulgaria, literary modernism was renounced as a deviation from the “correct” norm of Socialist Realism. Modernist works by some of classic Bulgarian writers were disparaged and neglected, while other modernist writers were directly struck from the canon and forgotten. With the partial liberalization of the regime during the 1960s, some of the Bulgarian modernists, especially those with leftist convictions, were rehabilitated. However, the true rethinking of Bulgarian modernism came shortly before the Transition – during the 1980s. Modernism began to be recognized ever more often as a positive and creative movement, and after 1989, it was acknowledged as one of the most significant phenomena within Bulgarian literature. After 1989, numerous monographs about individual authors and literary circles, as well as whole modernist trends, contributed to a new interpretation of that period and to the objective construction of a heretofore unwritten history of the movement. The present paper aims to present and analyze this process of change, with a particular focus on the work of female modernists and on the question of the local/the global, as well as to examine the specific interrelations between the various modernist and totalitarian ideologies.

This paper examines how the concept of time and identity in Bulgarian literary modernism changed during the period between 1920 and 1930. The conditions for, as well as the results of this change are also analyzed. In 1920, the concept of time in Bulgarian literary modernism was still cyclical. In his article, “Native Art,” the Bulgarian expressionist Geo Milev proclaimed the postulates of the new art. According to Milev, this art would have to retrace its steps back to mythological man, towards “the primitive man of proto-being – to Adam.” Milev called for a representation of a mythical time and mythical space in art, favoring the past. According to Eleazar Meletinsky, “the urge to go beyond the limits of social-historical and temporal-spatial frameworks in order to manifest a pan-human content was one of the signs of the transition from the realism of the 19th c. to modernism, and mythology, by virtue of its iconic symbolicness, turned out to be a comfortable language to describe the eternal models of personal and public behavior, of the essential laws in the social and natural cosmos.” The paper will pay particular attention to the influence of Oswald Spengler’s book The Decline of the West (1923) upon the formation of Bulgarian modernists’ concepts of time and identity. According to Spengler, western culture would be replaced by an ascendant Slavic culture. Modernists from the Sagittarius Circle sought a place for Bulgarian culture within that new upsurge. They gave preference to the 19th century, the time of the Bulgarian Revival, exchanging cyclical time for historical time. They chose the past as their starting point, yet were oriented towards the future. They demanded that Bulgarian reality be expressed in art. During 1925-27 Bulgarian modernism transformed from contra-modern into a modern project. Concepts about time and space are examined in detail, while the concepts of continuity and tradition, as well as cyclicity and historicity are analyzed within the context of Bulgarian modernists’ writings.

Reuben Henry Markham was born February 21, 1887, in Twelve Mile, Kansas. In 1908 and 1909, he attended Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University in New York City, working on an M.A. in Education and a Divinity degree. Markham was an ordained а Congregational minister and served as a missionary in Bulgaria for the American Missionary Board of Boston beginning in 1912. In this post, he taught school and founded and edited several periodicals. He became Bulgarian correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor in 1926 and subsequently served as Balkan correspondent and as correspondent for central and southeastern Europe. For many years, Markham was prominent as a writer, lecturer and author of several books. He had spent much of his life in southeastern Europe and was recognized as one of the most widely known and intimately informed Americans in that part of the world. Markham was a vigorous opponent of tyranny and had distinguished himself on many occasions for such opposition. His books include Meet Bulgaria, Romania Under the Soviet Yoke, Tito's Imperial Communism, The Wave of the Past, and Bulgaria of Today and Tomorrow, the latter written in Bulgarian. He died December 29, 1949, in Washington, D.C. Markham’s life and work, however, are almost unknown in contemporary Bulgaria. One of the reasons for his consignment to oblivion is likely due to his denunciation during the Communist regime. This paper will explore the work of Reuben Markham in Bulgaria and his contribution to Bulgarian culture. It will pay particular attention to the periodicals in which he participated: socio-educational magazine Seme (“Seed”); evangelical newspaper Zornitsa (“Morning Star”); Polet (“Flight”) magazine; the newspaper Iztok (“East”); as well as the books Meet Bulgaria, and Bulgaria of Today and Tomorrow. The other goal of this paper will be at least the partial rehabilitation of Reuben Markham and his significance within Bulgarian cultural life.

The image of the hajdutin or the freedom fighter plays an important role both within Bulgarian folklore and the Bulgarian literary tradition. In this paper, I discuss the mythological roots of the hajdutin in Bulgarian folklore and its relationship to other mythological figures such as the dragon, the samodiva or nymph, and the hero. Then I turn to the poem Hadzhi Dimiter, by Bulgarian poet and revolutionary Hristo Botev, examining how his fusion of the mythical archetype with a historical personage creates a new model of heroism that the poet later plays out in his own death. Finally, I examine Peyo Yavorov, a later poet and hajdutin, whose failure to imitate Botev’s self-sacrifice lays the groundwork for a paradoxical modernist return to mythological archetypes more archaic than those used by the romantic Botev.

This paper analyzes: 1) Oswald Spengler's concept of the decline of the West and the rise of Slavic culture, the contrast between culture and civilization, between the metropolis and the provinces, between East and West, as well as the meaning and role of the Russian writers Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in the conception; 2) the influence of these ideas on Bulgarian literature during the 1920s in various circles and publications, and the original interpretations Bulgarian intellectuals reached during their intensive searches for their own identity; 3) the formation and activity of the Sagittarius Circle, the group most strongly influenced by Spengler's Decline of the West.

The phenomenon of America, similar to “the woman question,” became topical after the First World War. The US managed to emerge from the war as a power of global significance. Enormous natural resources spread over enormous territory, powerful technical and scientific revolutions, rapid industrialization and modernization transformed the US over the course of a single century from a European colony to a world leader, which especially after World War I exercised strong economic and cultural influence over the Old Continent. This caused European and Bulgarian intellectuals to attempt to understand this phenomenon. Exactly then for the first time the idea of a United States of Europe appeared. But how did it come about that the US’s significance increased? How did this country transform in a short period of time into a “metaphor of modernity?” This “American miracle” gave cause to the intellectuals from the Sagittarius Circle to analyze the reasons for its appearance and its meaning. This article examines in detail the presence of the American theme in the pages of Iztok or East newspaper – the mouthpiece of the Sagittarius Circle – exploring this theme in its political, scientific-technical and cultural aspects.

This course will examine the problem of time and identity through the prism of the literary tradition. The focus of the course will be Bulgarian literary modernism, which will be investigated through a comparative analysis using several concepts important for identity, namely: the native, the feminine, the foreign, socialist realism, and postmodernism. Bulgarian literary modernism will be analyzed not only in its static state, as a specific literary period that covers the time from the end of the 19th century to the Second World War, but as a dynamic phenomenon. This course will attempt to interpret it not only within the context of its initial appearance, but also in the context of its transformation into a tradition.