Иванко

The present text sets out to examine the transformation of generally human, philosophical, mythological (also folklore) patterns into the literature of Bulgarian revival, as it concentrates its interest on the way different power and leadership models intertwine in this process. The attention is focused on the mechanisms of authority-display, as they are presented in V. Droumev’s masterpiece “Ivanko”. This drama has been acknowledged as a highly symptomatic manifestation of the specific manner of Bulgarian revival literature. It absorbs and gives new meaning to traditional heritage, as well as to the interpretation of power as a specific essence melting into one different sphere of the deeply human – religious, psychological, social, intellectual, ethnic. The network of different semantic layers, the mutual transformation of micro- and macro- segments of power ontology has been investigated. A basic question for the text is the place of power between the opposition’s strength (involving inducement) and justice. The study attempts to analyze this split and the paradoxical configurations, combinations and unexpected coincidences in various syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions. Power (being not only domination, supremacy, oppression, tyranny, control, but also authority, influence, arresting magnetism) is explored as simultaneously blending the oppositions and transitions between some basic reference points. Power is the peculiar unity which merges the worlds of might, intensity, vehemence and stamina with the rules of justice, fairness, equity, impartiality under the arch of the conditions of the ethnic and social wholeness and integrity. The double mutual identification is the main notion of power in the text. It is regarded as an activation of the archaic cosmogonic myth of ambivalence, which is semantically equal and relevant to completeness.

The image of the traitor takes a specific, intermediate place in the system of values, presented by the dramatic play literature of the Revival. The traitor is not a positive hero, neither an enemy of Bulgarians, because he himself is a Bulgarian. The otherness (the characteristic of difference) in the historic dramas is to be read as difference from the moral required (when the traitor is concerned) and as ethnic difference, combined with the inherent lack of morality (when the enemy is concerned). The dramatic play literature of the Revival presents the image of the traitor in an up-going scale. The most hesitant of them is the hero Mortagon of Voinikov. Ivanko of Vassil Droumev and Mitra of K. Velichkov illustrate next grades in the development of this character. The inner discrepancy of the Droumev’s hero, as well as the moral problem of the duty to the motherland, of the liberty to make choices, turns Ivanko into the most commented drama of the Revival. The elaborate review, conducted here, of the critics’ opinions and elated evaluations, of the various readings of the main hero’s image, prove his provocative character. The efforts of the critics seemed insufficient to comprehend Ivanko and literature further developed his image during the next decades. Ivan Vazov’s drama “Borislav” and Tsv. Minkov’s short novel “The death of the regicide” put in other situations and give other solutions to the hero of Droumev.