“Time Shelter”

By focusing on the communicative strategy of G. Gospodinov’s “Time Shelter”, the paper aims to identify some of the reasons for the success of the novel in a non-Bulgarian environment. The focus is also on the image of Bulgaria that “Time Shelter” builds; in relation to this image, the paper considers concepts such as “pamphlet” and “feuilleton” from a functional perspective.

In Albena Hranova’s “Statements on “Time Shelter” the thesis statements are rather questions to the flexible but vague ideography of Georgi Gospodinov's novel “Time Shelter”: the new status of personal history in the author's writing; the relationship between the material items and verbal stories; the transition from early-romantic to late-romantic characterology in Gaustin; the relationship between memory and the past in the modes of the individual and in the actions of societies; and the presence of “lyrical” arguments in the armature of this dystopia.

The text offers a departure from the dominant paradigm of critical interpretation of “Time Shelter”, related to the political and philosophical ideas in the novel and the author's strategy. Observations are directed at genre constructions and narrative structures that can be connected to G. Gospodinov's novel. Some of them, perceived as prestigious, are explicitly stated in the text of the work; others remain in the shadows.

The novel “Time Shelter”, by Georgi Gospodinov, parodies both the ideological arsenal of communism and that of nationalism, with their symbolic dates, kitsch, and material legacy. It made me think about what and how I was trying to convey them through my translation: much more than "culture" that is transmitted through education, whether in the family, at school, or in society, and which is, therefore, more or less consciously assimilated, it concerns the imaginary on which ideologies rest, since the imaginary contains many emotions, irrational and unconscious things. Yet the notion of “imaginary” has been surprisingly rare and belatedly included in critical reflection on translation, even though philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, and literature have been interested in it since the mid-twentieth century. In this paper I seek to answer the question: is the power of the imaginary translatable in “Time Shelter”?

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov – Translations and Critical Response. Initial Bibliography