Радослава Илчева

This article was influenced by two anniversaries – 300 years of St. Petersburg and 170 years of the poem “Bronze Horseman”. Special features and peculiarities of the St. Petersburg’s mythology and Poushkin’s poem were examined in the light of the category “boundary” – one of the most useful concepts in the contemporary Bulgarian studies in Russian literature. This approach helps the reader see different faces of the city: ceremonious and tourist advertising, on one hand, and nightly, sad, infernal – on the other hand, and their reflections in the poem (“Petra Tvorenie” and “Petropol”). In this new way of reading, special attention was paid to the interaction and the counteraction between the two main myths of the St. Petersburg’s mythology – the myth about creation and the eschatological myth. For the first time in the same text the fragmented eschatological myth was examined in its close connection with the myth of creation typical for before-Poushkin era and the attention was focused on the changes in “behavior” of the last one. Undermined by Poushkin in the contraries of its nature, the myth of creation was first compromised and then inversed. After all, due to dramatic conflict between History and Mythology (where they were in condition of dynamic balance), the myth of creation was absorbed in an anti-myth.

For centuries Russia perceived the Europeans mainly through their outward appearance. Throughout the Middle Ages the foreign clothing was a serious and even a prime obstacle (together with language) in the act of the communication between different nations; it was not even a standing jest, but a target of a total and furious denial. To a considerable extent it provoked an undisguised hostility and modeled the negative Russian notions of the West. Placed in the paradigm of the confessional incompatibility between the Orthodoxy and the "Latin heresy" of a Westerner, it turns out to be a signal for a more serious danger of a cultural invasion. Since it is a sign of belonging to a world both "horizontally and vertically" opposite to the Holy Rus, the devil in the Old Russian texts appears sometimes dressed as a Pole, other times as a German. In this context the "Handsome is, handsome does" saying implicitly reveals the reception of the Self. The obsession with clothing and respectively with outward appearance was so strong, that for centuries the personal duality of the Other was ignored. With the development of trade and diplomatic relations with the European neighbors, these tendencies did not weaken, but sharpened and reached their climax on the borderline between the Old and the New Age (late 17th - early 18th century). During this critical and dramatic period of the traditional Russian mentality the outward appearance of the Westerner acquired impressive dimensions with its conflict, which reflects in some way even the present days.

The traditional for Bulgarian literary science idea about the Bulgarian presence in Russian literature is reconsidered in this paper based on newly discovered texts from the first half of the XIXth century with Bulgarian characters present in them. Answers to the following questions are sought: Which text should be considered as a starting point for the topic at hand? Who is the first Bulgarian character? Who is the forefather of the Bulgarian theme?