Паметта

In his novel Gods and Ants: Chronicle of the 20-th Century Stefan Tsanev uses some representing techniques, typical for the magic realism, to describe the fate of the Bulgarians in the context of the historical events. The fate of the characters is present in the light of Proto-Bulgarians’ heritage and Bogomilian tradition. In this way it attracts the readers’ attention to the roots of the common Bulgarian fate, closely connected to the history of the state. The succession of events in the novel’s world is presented as a matrix which reproduces itself during the centuries. The reality is presented as a demonic realm (like in the Bogomilian myths) and contrasts with Enlightenment’s ideas of people’s progress. The belief in collapse of all kinds of utopias leads to a typical postmodern loss of hope for the illusion of the sense.

This paper aims to illustrate the functionality of the term "sites of memory" with reference to the study of two national canons with overlapping time-space continuum. I use the term as defined by A. Szpociсski (1986) but I give it a "territorial" dimension. By "sites of memory" I understand a past space-time continuum that embraces past events and their participants. Even in biblical times, places were named after events so to record for posterity their spiritual character (E. Dressler, 2003). The Akeda, or the offering of Isaac, took place on the Mount of "har-ha-Morija", which means "the Eternal One watches". Mount Morija, i.e. the site itself, is in this case treated as the witness of the event. The "sites of memory" analysed in this paper verbalise values that are treated by Bulgarian and Macedonian elites as an integral part of their identity. Owing to its connotations in both cultures, the concept of Macedonia determines the semantics of the image of Nikola Vapcarov, a poet belonging to both national canons. Vacparov as an image and symbol of the territory functions in both national circulations by token of his territorial association. Thus, the image of Vapcarov is a mythologem of Macedonia in two separate national canons, Macedonian and Bulgarian. An analysis of Vapcarov's poetry and his biography as part of the symbolic concept of Macedonia in both national cultures confirms at the same time the functionality of the term "sites of (collective) memory" with reference to phenomena, which emerge in the environment of cultural and ethnic contacts.

The text traces the memory of Islamisation in various Balkan narratives created and spread in different historical periods and in different political conjunctures. It seems that this process, thought of as the most traumatic (at least in Bulgarian memory), is interpreted by other national historiographies and folk narratives in a completely opposite way. Islamisation is remembered as the liberation from the aspirations of the Catholic and Orthodox churches (in Bosnia) or as a national awareness and cohesion (in Albania). Weather the different narratives choose as a motivation of the process the grievances of heretics ( the Bogomils thesis ) or the adoption of Islam primarily by the aristocracy which wanted to keep its property and privileges (class thesis) in most cases the conversion is presented as voluntary . Some isolated cases of violence are mentioned but a mass forced Islamisation policy of the Ottoman Empire is dismissed - with the exception of Bulgaria. The attitude of the non-Muslim majorities to the converts and the interconnection of the narratives with specific political conjunctures are also traced.

Review: Accumulating memory and building the literary cannon (Емил Димитров, Памет, юбилей, канон. Увод в социологията на литературата. С.: Изток-Запад, 2012)