socialist realism

The study presents the conception of the project “Islands of the Unblessed. History of the Unconventional Bulgarian Literature from 1944 to 1989 in Its Socio-Cultural Context”. It is based on the idea of a kind of fragmentation of the Bulgarian literature from the period of the totalitarian regime, dictated by the non-inclusion of a number of authors and texts in the official stream of socialist realism without placing them by all means under the sign of dissidence. In this sense, twelve thematic “islands” are outlined – as areas of resistance, non-belonging, various types of marginalization in relation to the socialist canon. On the other hand, the Bulgarian literature of the period itself is presented as relatively isolated from the world – exactly because of its ideological closure.

This article is an observation of Platonic inclination to control and plan literary creativity. Such a proclivity will be noted by analysing some elements of its fundamental philosophical concepts, which relate to literary art in “Cratylus”, “Pheadrus” and “Republic”, as dialogue-works. The analysis will focus on his denial of naturalness of language, writing, and imaginative and creative freedom, as well as his intention to establish the institution of control or censorship. We will also discuss the projection of the ideological future of literary writing and emphasise that this tendency has assumed an atemporal character. We will notice how some of the platonic elements of the desire for control over literary art were exploited by the method of socialist realism, which, as such, requires the creation of literature planning by escaping from the agon of the tradition. As a counterbalance, we will emphasize the immanence of freedom of literary expressiveness based on the concept of thymos, precisely proposed by Plat