текстове

The article treats of translations of Schiller’s and Lessing’s dramas in which the “imagined” is present not only as written words, but as theatre acting, too. The following Schiller’s plays are included: Robbers, The Plot of Fiesko from Genoa, Wilhelm Tell and The Orleans Virgin. The first translation of Robbers, made by D. E. Shishmanov, is “imagined” in different directions. It was not published; its beginning – the first three acts – was thought to be lost, but there is information that the text has been found; the translation was made for the stage of the Community Centre of Svishtov, but there are no documents for a concrete performance. The second translation, made by Ivan Kasabov, is not known as manuscript and it was not published. The third one, made by Nesho Bonchev, was published and realized as a theatre event (1876, Ruse). Bogdan Goranov translated Fiesko. But only the first act without the last (13-th) scene was published. Announcements about two translations of Wilhelm Tell appeared in the press, but none of these translations is known. Nesho Bonchev planned to make a translation of The Orleans Virgin, but he did not accomplish it. Nencho Yu. Nenov translated the play and it was published a year after the Liberation. Lessing’s Emilia Galotti was translated twice: by Panayot Semerdzhiev (1873) and by Bogdan Goranov (1870). Semerdzhiev’s translation was published, Goranov’s one was documented but unknown. According to it the play was staged in Tarnovo (1871), and Goranov was a translator, an actor and a producer at the same time.

The article once again raises the issue of the most controversial or rarely asked questions related to medieval literature - is it literature per se and how its genres ought to be classified what is its terminological apparatus and the symbolic-mythologizing function of the Bible for each medieval work.

The search, edition and study of the earliest narratives for the Dormition of the Theotokos are the most important stage in the investigation of the narrative texts for the festivity. The author of the present article makes an assumption, that probably a series of narratives in Greek linked with the subject of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary existed. The text which appears in Slavonic milieu which gathers the most important moments of that cycle of narratives, as in the Slavonic text individual subjects (the final part for example) are further developed, enriched and begin their own life. Yet another assumption is made, namely, that the hypothetical narrative in question was an entire, complete and contiguous narrative with an original final part. This final part sets the beginning of the apocryphal visions and revelations, as a continuation of the apocrypha for the Dormition.

Bulgarian literary critics of the 1930's century became the material basis of the article, where the analysis of the problems concentrating around certain concepts has been done. The texts in question are treated as the evidence of the new cultural identification formation in the time when Bulgaria regained its independence. The crisis and East vs West are the key concepts here, being stable and recursive, implying, as it seems, the dilemmas of the Bulgarian elite of that period. The quandaries concerning cultural choices of the first half of the 20th century are the common denominator for those concepts, although their genesis is of a more complicated character. The proposed use of sociological definitions as tools of analysis is caused by the character of the material in question. The key words from genre-homogeneous texts appear in similar contexts. They become inscribed into the wide background of Bulgarian choices and searches for national values, for which European culture conditions are the natural context.

The text sets out to examine the transformation of folklore and mythological family patterns in the literature of the Bulgarian national revival, concentrating its interest on the way different power and leadership models intertwine throughout this process. The attention is focused on the mechanisms of authority-display, arranged on several levels of power constructions. The first one considers family from an optimistic and utopian point of view. Family is interpreted as a hierarchical structure of subordinations which follow the model of Universal order. The conclusion is that through the sacred comprehension of marriage, through its interpretation as a secular correspondence of the sacred archetype, the matrimonial institution is accepted as an irrevocable stage of the personal development, as a compulsory element of everyone's socialization. The general perception is that relations in family are governed by love, affection, harmony and mutuality. Observing the general line of interpreting power simultaneously as authority, influence, arresting magnetism, on the one hand, and as domination, supremacy, oppression, tyranny, control, on the other, the text unfolds the next aspect of power-roles distribution in the family. The second part concentrates on the pragmatic and realistic uses of power. The attention is focused on the problem of the split symmetry - inequality in family relations. The turns start when the sacred archetype passes through all degrees of desacralization, when authority converts into a form of property - of one person over the other. The profane aspect of the male-female relations debases the "high" concepts and degrades the elevated values to a degree of general negation. The third part examines family as a manifestation of coercion, force, anger, violence and outrage. It turns out that the general moral standards and the noble rules of behaviour are not able to control the mighty world of savage selfishness; that culture and love are defeated and shattered by destructive instincts. The symbolic imagery of marriage is presented by a full-toned scale of evil. Family turns into a total collapse of the social contract.

The Bulgarian reception of Euriprdes' Medea is complicated and controversial. The paper presents the discrepancies between the literary and the theatrical aspect of the reception. Special emphasis is given to the unprecedented intensity of the current stagings of the tragedy. The increasing degree of invention in that wave of recent adventurous adaptations appeares as a sort of compensation for the absence of transgressive and experimental spirit typical for the Western stage of the 1960s from the scenic reception of Medea in Bulgaria during the respective decade. Discussed is the important role, independent from Euripides' play, which the theme plays in Bulgarian culture and society (in music, in literature, in modern ballet, in painting and artistic photography, as well as in politics and advertisement) as well as the paradox involved in the fact that the Medea figure invades the political discourse actually before the tragedy itself has been translated and staged to stay there permanently remaining impressively productive.

The novel "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight" (written in English in Europe in 1939 and published in America in 1941) has a peculiarly borderline position in the author's life: it represents the first real creative step taken into the realms of the new language and focuses on the issue of the new language identity, on the trying on of masks and the tracing of the consequences of this change and play. This transition theme, as an aspect of the metamorphosis in its biological and metaphorical dimensions throughout the years, never stops occupying Nabokov, yet here it is most immediately outspoken, the novel being an attempt at solving a personal dilemma. Against the background of the transition theme's intensive discussion by the characters and the plot, this novel can serve as a showcase for the whole "catalogue" of Nabokov's techniques, themes, images. On the other hand, there is one of his subsequent texts, written in English already in the United States, aimed directly at the English speaking reading public and per definition being assigned to the genre of a writer's biography - the book "Nikolai Gogol" (1942-1944). The study endeavours to see these two books from two standpoints in a parallel, outlining their similarities (while presuming identity), especially observing their modernistic nature of metaprose, of a text concerning the writing of a text, a text that is constantly regarding its own reflection in order to continue being written. The end of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s is a time of territorial, linguistic, aesthetic transitions and changes for Vladimir Nabokov. The momentary change of masks and scenes in the novel "Sebastian Knight" can only be attributed to high-class craftsmanship, already achieved earlier by Nabokov in his Russian language novels. The histrionic re-clothing and re-making up in this novel - "a second birth" - appear to be one of the rehearsals for the actual transformation from a Russian to an English speaking writer, from Sirin to V.Nabokov. V. is simply an intermediary phase in the metamorphosis. In this unstable environment Nabokov seeks for support, and finds it in the Russian classic Nikolai Gogol, who will lend him some of his legitimacy in the New World.

What makes possible a dialogue with the dead across periods of time? In this paper, the author wants to return to this question, focusing neither on the social transactions nor on the hidden potential of images but on the text in its written and printed form. The scholar shows how the Renaissance myth of reviving the dead is literally rooted in letters, that is, in an epistemology of writing as a medium able to transcend time as well as space.