Bulgarian modernism

The magazine Hyperion was the largest-scale and longest-lasting mouthpiece for Bulgarian modernism after World War One. The publication presented a moderate brand of late Bulgarian modernism, which excluded the avant garde’s explosive works. Symbolism, post-symbolist realism with a tendency towards the primitive, neo-romanticism, vitalism - these were the basic currents that intersected in Hyperion, while occasional avant garde appearances were not lacking. On the magazine’s pages, symbolism and post-symbolism, modernism and contra-modernism cohabitated both through parallel lines, as well as through complex interweavings in individual authors and words. The presence of Emanuil Popdimitrov was emblematic in this sense. In Hyperion, Popdimitrov published poetry, prose and theoretical articles on philosophical-aesthetic themes. His contribution in all three genres was representative not only of the magazine’s image, but also of the tendencies within Bulgarian literature and Bulgarian intellectual life in the 1920s. Popdimitrov ranks among Hyperion’s ideologues and was a part the intellectual circle that formed around the magazine. His articles in Hyperion, in which he makes an attempt to give his own reading to Henri Bergson’s intuitivism and vitalism, opened new horizons in Bulgarian humanistic thought after World War One and exercised substantial influence on the search for new artistic approaches in the literary and visual arts in Bulgaria. Popdimitrov’s poetic contributions to Hyperion represent a transition from symbolist to post-symbolist poetics. The excerpt of his literary prose published in the magazine is demonstrative of the interweaving of genres and the poetological tendencies in Bulgarian prose in the corresponding period. The critical reception of his work in the pages of Hyperion, where he was perceived dually, both as "our own" and as "foreign," is examined as a characteristic outline of Popdimitrov’s image. Popdimitrov’s publications in Hyperion are characteristic of the development of the author himself, as well as of Bulgarian literature and culture between the two world wars. They personify the impulse towards a new type of humanism and the elevation of the personality towards an "ethical individualism," which entered into synchronicity with European and global philosophical-religious and aesthetic attitudes in the period between the two world wars.

The reviewed book includes articles and studies by Nadezhda Alexandrova, dedicated to the life and creativity of Dimcho Debelyanov. Nevertheless, her work has the character of a monograph, which combines research and publication of archival sources, an in-depth textual and literary analysis of his poetic texts and comparison with the works of authors of his generation, such as Dimitar Podvrazacov, Nikolay Liliev and others. The lyric, poetry, prose and humor of Dimcho Debelyanov are tied to both his biography and the peculiarities of his spiritual world.

The present study makes a comparative analysis of two works emblematic of Bulgarian literature – “The Fountain of the White-Legged Maiden” and “Ralitsa”. Both are poems, written on the basis of Bulgarian folklore motives, dealing with the tragic fate of two star-crossed love affairs. An interesting thing is that the two poems were written by father and son poets, both colossi of two epochs in the development of Bulgarian literature – Bulgarian Revival and Bulgarian Modernism. The study is founded on the supposition of clandestine rivalry between father and son on the literary field, as the son rebels against the father, striving to surpass him and impose a new set of literary canons to synchronize the nascent Bulgarian literature with European Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th century. The son (Pencho Slaveykov) takes the poem of his father (Petko Slaveykov) as a model, presumably with the intention to set an example how traditional means of expression, motives, ideas, beliefs etc. can be used and incorporated into modern poetry. Who wins this peculiar competition – the father, who does not question the anonymous genius of the people and uses the treasure trove of Bulgarian folklore freely to an extent of obliterating his own role as an author, or the son who reworks and recasts every bit of traditional views and approaches in order to shift the emphasis from the collective and the mythological to the individual and the psychological?