SLAVISTIC PRINTINGS AND REPRINTINGS edited by C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Indiana University 112 A HISTORY OF BULGARIAN LITERATURE 865-1944 by CHARLES A. MOSER The George Washington University 1972 MOUTON THE HAGUE ' PARIS © Copyright 1972 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 76-170000 Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., Printers, The Hague. FOREWORD This volume treats Bulgarian literature in its historical context from the earliest times to 1944. Although for the sake of completeness I have in- cluded information on the post-1944 careers of authors who were prominent between the First and Second World Wars, I have not attemp- ted any general summary of literary events in Bulgaria after that date, since this period is still unfolding and cannot yet be considered objectively. Many histories of national literatures slight recent writings, but in this book I have attempted to strike what seems to me a more equitable balance between the older and the modern periods in Bulgarian literature. Thus nearly half the volume is devoted to the roughly fifty years from 1896 to 1944, a division which in my opinion accurately reflects the literary — though not historical — value of works published before and after 1896. In order to avoid writing a history which at numerous points reduces to a listing of mere dates and names signifying little to the uniniti- ated reader, I have tried not even to mention an author if I could not give him at least a paragraph which would convey a notion of his individual literary personality. In the main I have adhered to this principle, although on a few occasions I have disregarded it. All titles are cited in the original, with English translation at the point of first mention, with a few exceptions for medieval works now known only by varying modern Bulgarian titles. Before 1 April 1916 Bulgaria followed the Julian calendar (old style), which in the twentieth century was thirteen days behind the Gregorian (new style) calendar, in the nineteenth century twelve days behind, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries eleven days behind. Occasionally this correction factor may be needed, although ordinarily very precise dating is unnecessary for our purposes. In the course of preparing this history I have worked in the National Library in Sofia, the library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the Library of Congress, the Sterling Library at Yale University, and the 6 FOREWORD Widener Library at Harvard University. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to utilize these collections. Anyone who undertakes a history of this sort must necessarily rely to a substantial degree upon the labors of other scholars in the field. Though this book is not ordinarily footnoted, I have included one note to acknowl- edge my indebtedness to a scholar upon whom I relied unusually heavily at one point; where my debt was somewhat smaller, I have tried to mention the name of the individual scholar or critic in question in the text; and in any case I have listed in the bibliography all articles and books which I found helpful. Without the contributions of many specialists, this book could not be what it is. I should like to offer my special gratitude to Professor Vivian Pinto of the University of London, who has assisted me both through his published writings and also by reading this volume in proof and making suggestions for its betterment. This history of Bulgarian literature is dedicated to my wife Anastasia. March 1969 C.A.M. CONTENTS I. Old Bulgarian Literature (Ninth-Eighteenth Centuries) . .. 9 II. The Bulgarian Renaissance (1762-1878) 37 III. The Post-Liberation Epoch (1878-1896) 91 IV. The Age of Modernism and Individualism (1896-1917) . .. 120 V. From War to War (1917-1944) 181 Bibliography 251 I OLD BULGARIAN LITERATURE (Ninth-Eighteenth Centuries) A. THE GOLDEN AGE OF OLD BULGARIAN LITERATURE AND ITS SUBSEQUENT DECLINE (NINTH TO THIRTEENTH CENTURIES) The literature of old Bulgaria at the end of the firstm illennium was part of a generally homogeneous medieval culture deriving from the widespread and unquestioning acceptance of the Christian faith by almost all those who created it. Literature was designed to serve ecclesiastical purposes and promote orthodox Christian doctrine, so that there is often nothing either specifically Bulgarian or very original in the major literary monu- ments of medieval Bulgaria. Consequently medieval literature seems quite foreign to the modern reader, who is alienated by writing so thoroughly ideological and disappointed at its lack of national color or originality. Indeed the medieval mind hardly recognized many features which modern man seeks in literature, of which originality is among the most important. The chief cultural institution, the church, encouraged the production of translations of the Holy Scriptures for liturgical use, different types of service books, lives of saints for the edification of the faithful, and other works such as sermons and homilies designed to explain the main tenets of the Christian faith to the unlettered believer. The intellectuals who were the guardians of this ecclesiastical culture considered it their mission to transmit the Christian message to the people in as pure a form as possible, which meant that for them any originality was a vice. They drew heavily upon Scripture and the accepted church authorities, and many of their 'original' writings consist in large measure of quotations from these sources. Though the writers of the Golden Age of Bulgarian literature — that period of intense cultural activity following the country's official Christianization in 865 — labored under great handicaps from the modern point of view, some of them possessed sufficiently powerful personalities to produce works of stylistic excellence on interesting topics. They refined certain literary devices to a remarkable 10 OLD BULGARIAN LITERATURE degree within the all-encompassing tradition, and many of their writings are still of value to the modern reader willing to approach them with an open mind. It should be remembered that old Bulgarian literature did not reach the bulk of the population in written form. The written literature of the period was read by a thin layer of the educated classes, of whom most were churchmen. Some works of old Bulgarian literature which have reached us in a small number of copies probably were not accessible to more than a few readers in the course of the centuries. With the exception of the sermons and homilies delivered orally to groups of the faithful gathered for worship, we cannot speak of literature's reaching anything resembling a mass audience before the modern period. In its earliest phases Bulgarian culture was closely linked with the eastern, Byzantine tradition. Because of its geographical proximity to Byzantium, Bulgaria was the first Slavic area of significance to be con- verted to Christianity. Bulgaria continued to draw sustenance from the Byzantine heritage after its conversion; moreover, it transmitted Byzan- tine culture to the other Slavic nations as one by one they were added to eastern Christendom. Scholars speak of the 'Second South Slavic In- fluence' on old Russian culture borne by refugees from Bulgaria and Serbia after the Turkish conquest of the Balkan peninsula in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The 'first' South Slavic influence on Russia was precisely this early transmission of Byzantine ecclesiastical culture to it through the South Slavs, particularly the Bulgarians. In recent years several Bulgarian scholars have asserted that some form of written culture in the native language existed in Bulgaria before its Christianization. Attractive and even plausible though this hypothesis may be, we have no documentary evidence of such a literature and thus must assume for the time being that the beginnings of written Bulgarian literature date from that country's Christianization. At this point a word should be said about the texts of literary works from the oldest period of Bulgarian literature. In no case do we possess anything resembling an author's manuscript. In some rare instances we may have a manuscript dating from as early as the twelfth or occasionally the late eleventh century, by authors who had died by the early tenth century. More often — since the devastation of the Turkish conquest entailed the destruction of numerous older manuscripts — we possess manuscripts of works originally written in the ninth or tenth centuries which are no older than the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Plainly there is an excellent chance that such manuscripts may contain texts substan-