Modernism: Representations of National Culture

Boyan Penev: History of new Bulgarian literature

BOYAN PENEV: HISTORY OF NEW BULGARIAN LITERATURE Title: История на новата българска литература (History of new Bulgarian literature) Originally published: Sofia, Държавна печатница, 4 vols. (1930–1936), ed. by Boris Iotsov Language: Bulgarian The excerpts used are from the second edition: История на новата българска литература (Sofia: Български писател, 1976), vol. I, pp. 468–470, 477, 500–501. About the author Boyan Penev [1882, Shumen (east Bulgaria) – 1927, Sofia]: literary critic and historian. He completed his secondary education in Rousse and graduated from the ‘Department of Slavic Philology’ at Sofia University in 1907. He became a professor in the ‘Department of Bulgarian and Slavic Literature’ at Sofia University in 1917, and then department chair in 1925. Between 1923 and 1924, he gave lectures on the history of Bulgarian literature in Poland (in Cracow, Warsaw and Lwów (Ukr. Lviv). Close to the circle around the modernist periodical Мисъл (Thought), Penev was, together with its leading figure Krastiu Krastev, one of the main proponents of the modernist approach to literature and culture in general. His modernism and positivism were aligned with liberal political views. Descending from a family of modest social status, Penev was an exemplary figure for the new Bulgarian intellectual elite, which, in contrast to that of the first post-liberation generation (coming mainly from the urban elite), comprised people from all social strata. This generation shared common cultural standards imbued by the national educational institutions. Penev married Dora Gabe, the most important Bulgarian poetess at the beginning of the century. She came from a renowned Jewish Levite family, which had moved to Bulgaria from Russia. Gabe converted to orthodoxy to get married to Penev in 1908. Penev dedicated a series of influential works to the history of Bulgarian literature and to contemporary literary development. He also contributed to the debate on national culture and especially to discussions regarding the relationship between the people and the intelligentsia. His important essay ‘Our intelligentsia’ became one of the formative texts of the Bulgarian cultural project as a whole. Penev championed the idea that the Bulgarian people and its elite latently possess the best qualities of all European nations. However, he argued that their fulfillment could be achieved only through conscious efforts and well-formulated common aims. Penev’s ‘History of BOYAN PENEV: HISTORY OF NEW BULGARIAN LITERATURE 49 new Bulgarian literature’ is considered to be the most important modernist interpretation of the national literary canon. Main works: Начало на Българското Възраждане [Beginnings of the Bulgarian national revival] (1918); Паисий Хилендарски [Paissy Hilendarski] (1918); Българска литература. Кратък исторически преглед [Bulgarian literature. A short historical review] (1930); История на новата българска литература 6 vols. [History of new Bulgarian literature] (1930–1936). Context In the first histories of modern Bulgarian literature, where the national canon was first constructed (Marin Drinov, Ivan Shishmanov, Alexandar Balan), the monk Paissy Hilendarski (1722–1773) is considered to be the first author of modern Bulgarian literature. More generally, Paissy’s figure was established by Romanticism as a founding figure of the Bulgarian national revival. A significant example of the use of the figure of Paissy in Romanticism is Ivan Vazov’s ode ‘Paissy,’ placed at the beginning of his national canon-building work ‘Epic of the Forgotten.’ Paissy Hilendarski wrote the famous История славеноболгарская (Slavo-Bulgarian history) (1762) during his stay in the Khilandar (Hilandar) Monastery on Mount Athos. Thanks to this seminal text, the first Bulgarian history in the contemporary , vernacular language, Paissy was ascribed the role of the ‘creator of new Bulgarian literature’ in the national canon. Also in literary history, Paissy is considered to be the creator of the modern Bulgarian literary language . In fact, on a discursive and generic level, his text shows features relevant much more to the rudimentary and petrified medieval rhetoric, typical of the monastic schools. He also used the tradition of the popular Bulgarian дамаскинари (damaskin) authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Iosif Bradati, for instance), ecclesiastical literature, and also humanist authors writing in Latin or Italian. The ‘damaskin’ literature (after the name of the Greek author Damaskenos Studites, who wrote the book ‘Treasure’ – prototype of all its subsequent variations), produced between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, represented the most important trend in the secularization of literature before the revival period (the ‘damaskins’ being written in vernacular language), although it remained strongly influenced by the thematic scope and the generic structure of monastic hagiographical writing. Boyan Penev, similar to Benyo Tzonev in the nineteenth century, opposes this view. Penev sees the beginning of new Bulgarian literature as a cumula- 50 CULTURAL MODERNIZATION tive process. At the same time, he also depicts the...