Пламен Шуликов

The present study deals with the meaning of the term "paraliterature". It is acknowledged as a common designation of various literary genres that paradoxically could be observed from "within and without" the mainstream literary standards. Moreover, paraliterature ranges over "the category of written works, as a whole, relegated to the margins of recognized literature and often dismissed as subliterary despite evident resemblances to the respectable literature of the official canon". The authors undertake the interpretation of two unidentified hand-written collections from the Bulgarian "Belle Epoque": "Album of various songs to remember" (1896-1901) (created, written and copied by the classmates and friends of Lubomir Targovski - Boyan Penev is also among them) and "Album" by Nikola Sapundjiev (1909-1911) (in the city of Razgrad and in the village of Slavyanovo). Generally, these albums are essential for the self-identification of certain social groups - the military, prisoners, girls, bohemians. Both collections are included the concept "album poetry" . The values in these works are concerned with "the multiculturalism" of Razgrad`s high school. The biographies of their respective owners are also of interest. As a literature of personal documents the works in these collections belong to different genres: songbook, scrapbook, hand-written book in the complicated relations between "high" and "low" cultural strata. The goal, which this study pursues, is to ask some questions, such as where, when, how and into what axiologic perspective these albums and other para-literary forms may find their place in academic periodisations and the history of Bulgarian literature.

Based on unpublished archive materials, the study deals with the topic of the so-called "Karjiev case", which, without leaving any important traces in the humanitarian ideas in Bulgaria, is one of the indicators of the forthcoming "humanitarian fever" and without which its ethnology could hardly be explained. The extrapolation of the not quite definitive "Beron's complex" to the metaliterary practice in Bulgaria from the beginning of the 20th century up to the late 1940s aims at the metaphorical strengthening of our idea about the fateful, but not quite logical, difference between the literary language and the language of its conception. It prompts at the idea that the inventive "uniformity" between them, based on native accumulation, could only be seen in the 1960s and the role of people like Krum Karjiev is particularly important from a historical point of view.