Балканите

Най-пълно отражение в творчеството на византийските автори е намерила митологичната сюжетност, разработвана в античността от Омир. И това е твърде понятно, тъй като византиецът започвал да се учи да чете и пише с Омировия епос и този „пръв учебник“ запазва своя авторитет и тогава, когато той стигне до творческа зрелост. Разработената от Омир митология в много отношения е била взимана за начало. Византийският автор се опитва да разкрие вътрешния смисъл на Омировата поезия като цяло. В този тълковен процес митът придобива исторически реален смисъл. На Омир било гледано като на автор, който поетизира историята на своя народ в едно далечно минало и който в най-пълна степен изнесъл напред това, което може да служи за поука през всички времена. През XII в. тази теза била поддържана от Евстатий Солунски. Според него поемите на Омир не почиват изцяло на митична основа. В това творчество той виж да да лежи зърното на една историческа действителност, а приказното в него разглежда като поетичен прийом. Митрополитът на Солун вижда мъдростта на Омировото творчество в основната цел, която самият автор си поставил. В Илиадата тя е да се извлече поука от избухналата война, а в Одисеята - да се възпита любов и съпружеска вярност. За Константин Манаси пък Омир е сладкодумен разказвач.2 Като признава, че много от написаното от него не отговаря на истината и че самият той няма да разказва за Троянската война по същия начин, по който разказва Омир, К. Манаси моли своите съвременници да бъдат снизходителни към този древен поет. Константин Манаси започва своята „Кратка хроника" за Троянската война с разказа за раждането на Парис и завършва с разказа за троянските коне. Характерното при К. Манаси е това, че той обединява изложението на Троянския митичен цикъл в циклическите поеми със самата Илиада. По този начин у него са обединени и двете версии за пребиваването на Елена, първо в Египет и след това в Троя, където тя наблюдава битката заради самата нея. У К. Манаси е налице нова трактовка на разказа за Троянската война. При него отстраняването на Ахил от битката с троянците не е резултат от отнемането на 1 Срв. Памятники византийской литературы IX-XIV в. М., 1969, с. 236. 2 Вж. И. В. Шталь, Т. В. Попова. О некоторых приемах построения художественного образа в поэмах Гомера и византийском эпосе XII в. - В: Античность и Византия. М., 1975, C. 78-79. 3Пак там, с. 79. 4 Пак там. Пак там, с. 78. 115 Бризеида, а на предателското убийство на Паламед. Константин Манаси прави опит да отстрани боговете от живота на човеците. Затова в неговата трактовка на разказа за Троянската война се срещат два враждебни един на друг лагера. И като не запазва нито един от Омировите епитети, употребените от него нови епитети внасят и ново съдържание в действията на участниците във войната. К. Манаси акцентува на физическата сила на своите герои и по този начин прави по-индивидуални и по-ярко изпъкващи.

The article deals with the dialogue between cultures as seen through the picture of the Balkans drawn in British literature. Using as his starting point two valuable studies of these problems – Imagining the Balkans (1997) by Maria Todorova and Inventing Ruritania. The Imperialism of the Imagination (1998) by Vesna Goldsworthy, the author endeavours to set out the facts examined in them as well as the current methodology used to portray others in literature. The literary colonization starts with the notes taken by travellers, explorers and adventurers who ventured into this outlying region. In their steps came novelists, playwrights and poets in search of novel plots and novel locale to use as settings for their works. So, the territory in question is “put on the map” and invaded by popular novelists who exploit it and put the finishing touches to the imagined topography of the region. Many diverse images of the Balkans abound in British literature. The strongest effect upon readers’ minds was produced by the romantic poets Byron and Shelley. Less well known are the depictions of the Balkans in popular fiction of the turn of the century such as Anthony Hope, S.C. Grier, J.L. Lambe and others. Other stock images from the Balkans are vampires, spies and killers on the Orient Express. They are to be met with in novels by Bram Stoker, John Buchan, Graham Greene, Eric Ambler, Agatha Christie, in some films of Alfred Hitchcock and others. The Balkans are viewed from another angle by authors such as G.B. Shaw, Saki, E.M. Forster, Lawrence Durrell and Evelyn Waugh. British critics devote particular attention to the representations of the “real” Balkans in the works of women writers like Edith Durham, Rebecca West and Olivia Manning. What at first glance strikes the researcher into the British images of the Balkan Other is dialogue with oneself, the search for solutions of the one’s own problems. One possible answer to the question why the Balkans spawn so many texts in Britain, given the fact that the region is largely peripheral to British geopolitical interests is largely due to some of these disputes (principally that between Gladstone and Disraeli). To some extent the absence of geopolitical interest bears on the absence of scientific interest in the Balkans; poor factual knowledge, in turn, provides a breeding ground for popular romances, crime novels and thrillers about spies and vampires which are massively exploited by the powerful English speaking film industry. The facts under discussion can be handled in several ways. It is no problem to condemn or ridicule the negative (and inaccurate) images of the Balkans in British literature. A more meaningful approach is to seek out the underlying causes and mechanisms which engender them. A promising methodology of interpreting these causes and mechanisms are offered by non-colonial critique which however is not in itself immune from hurried and light-minded conclusions.

Among the traditional definitions of backwardness and indiscernible inbetweenness the Balkans have been traditionally perceived, both from within and without, as a masculine space, i.e. as a place of non-modernized patriarchal domination. In effect a compound image of the Balkans as an unreasonable, underdeveloped, inconspicuous, brutish, swarthy macho has been constructed. Since measures are due, both modernisation and affiliation to the West are put at work. Yet the masculine image of the region is not yet challenged, neither outside nor inside. Modern gender imagology allows man to be weak yet not irrational; deprived of rationality man is but insane. The insanity of the masculine Balkans is promoted as hampering both modernisation and integration of the region. So do suggest the local and foreign media, former and contemporary travel writings, also the regional mass culture and popular art (yet the latter being less unequivocally negative). Such is the message shared by the regional cinematography bum from Kusturica to Tanovic: heroic masculinity of honour, revenge, imaginary rights and claims, of festive suicidality is to be overcome had the Balkans cherished hopes for brighter future. Yet the Balkan literature of today, the postmodern one in particular, shares a different vision. Instead of complying with the feminised modernisation, it assumes that the feminine element of Balkan identity has ever been there, yet the whole gender picture of the regional culture is more complex. It recalls the modern gender rereading of sexes with men weak in their strength or rather fragile in their rigidity, and women sick or rather indisposed with regard to the imposed order. Contrary to Freud's legacy, postmodern literature displays women as not deranged but rather indisposed: indisposed to possession and thus possessed in their posing disposal. Yet such a gender role distribution is shifted into premodern past and is thus provided with a mythopoetic a-historical endurance; therefore male weakness is promoted as somewhat feminine openness to mystical or rather astonished spirituality, whereas female sickness is sold as a kind of subversive susceptibility of a wise or rather insightful fatalism. What gathers men and women in Balkan postmodern is their vocation or inability to forget, to put aside the memory, to throw away the traces of the past that embrace the ability to think and solve problems. The Balkan postomodern is thus rather premodern in its hyper-textual after-literature of dictionaries, taro cards, crosswords, daily columns, critical reviews, etc., all of them challenging linearity and homogeneity of writing. What are the cultural and political implications of such a literary ideology of Balkan postmodern is to be discussed. As it is well known gender is not only an instrument for change and improvement of women's position, but also a tool for all-encompassing social and political change. Literature through its Balkan postmodern version is reconsidered as an instance of innately non-modern other within the Western cultural framework. Literature is the fading instance of otherness, lowness, nothingness, death and mortality within the operative aggregate of late modernity. Literature, postmodern suggests, goes at odds with certain fundamental principles of modern world: market, instrumentality, utilitarianism, uniformity under an apparent variety, universal law, formal logic, individualism, identity, success, velocity. At the same time it is in concert with other principles as selfless heterogeneous subjectivity, freedom of choice, of successive renovation, of a negotiation based on contractive constructivism which we call 'constractivism'.

The article analyses Modernism in the light of Dance, as a topic with a comprehensible aesthetic and philosophical meaning. The article also discusses the connection between Dance and Modernist aesthetics, stressing its individual uncommon character. The article begins (1) with a review of the philosophical views on Dance in the 19th and 20th centuries (Nietzsche, Huizinga, Freud). This is followed by (2) Modernism and Dance as criticism of modern life, and especially the fatal woman in the writings of Schnitzler, Wilde, Matei Caragiale, Tchavdar Moutafov; (3) Dancing and Transcendent Flight - Cendrars, Ion Barbu, Geo Milev, Luan Starova; (4) The structure of novels by Anton Strashimirov, Rebreanu, Cartarescu, Mile Nedelkovski.