В памет на Валери Петров

[Read the English version here.]

На 27 август 2014 г. загубихме поета Валери Петров. Загубихме писателя, драматурга, преводача, хуманиста, мислителя, примера Валери Петров.

И тъй разкошно-звездна бе нощта,
че всекидневните неща,
суетни, летни,
мимолетни,
със своите “Чудесно!”, “Цар си!”, “Браво!”
във бягство се отдръпваха стремглаво.
…
чувствах се голям под свода гъст
– а бяхме уж нищожества, уж атоми –
и всичко беше мир околовръст,
и красота изпълваше душата ми.

Из “Августовска нощ”

С поезията си той умееше да предизвиква в един куплет искрен смях и нежна тъга, да ни опише и есенния хлад, и топлия пролетен ветрец. С преводите си на Шекспир той положи в краката ни невероятната красота и благозвучие на българския стих и създаде нещо повече от превод: сюжетите и картините на Барда на нашия собствен мелодичен език. Със сценария на “Рицар без броня” той ни разкри най-наболелите язви в нашето общество през погледа на едно невинно, все още безгрижно дете. С “Пет приказки” той подари на децата ни въображението да покоряват планини, да играят с еленчета и да изследват дъното на безбрежния океан. Той никога не надрасна детската си фантазия, но и геният му никога не залиня, не отслабна, чак до края.

Celebrating Cyrillic

May 24th is celebrated in Bulgaria as the day of two saints: St. Cyril and St. Methodius, of Bulgarian education and culture and Slavonic literature. It is a widely observed holiday in the country, on par with Liberation Day (March 3) and Christmas. It is a day largely devoted to celebrating the creation and the existence of the Cyrillic alphabet, which Bulgarian is written in.

Bulgaria may not be the largest user of Cyrillic today, but it is the first. The Cyrillic alphabet was the official script of Bulgaria before it was spread to Russia, Croatia, Serbia, etc. and it was Bulgaria’s Boris I who commissioned the two literary schools where thousands of monks would be educated and the first thousands of books in the new alphabet would be hand-copied and spread across the land.

It may be strange to see such importance placed on a set of symbols that we take for granted, but there is a great reason for our fascination with our letters, and a great accompanying story: the story with the greatest cultural significance in Bulgaria’s history.

Gamebooks in Bulgaria: the Reader as Protagonist

Dear readers, long time no update. Please forgive my absence. I’m restarting regular contributions to this blog with a post I’ve been meaning to put together for a while.

 The early to mid-nineties were a strange time in Bulgaria. Many people growing up in those days (like myself) found themselves in a gaming vacuum. Computers and gaming consoles were exceedingly rare, yet we were all well aware of their potential as entertainment devices, and we were desperately searching for something to fill the entertainment void. All that was needed was a fortuitous event and an invention to fill the void.

One day, Lubomir Nikolov (Любомир Николов), an English-Bulgarian translator, stumbled across an English gamebook in a used bookstore. He quickly figured out how to read it, and realized that no one in Bulgaria had seen anything like it.

A gamebook is a piece of interactive fiction in which the reader makes choices that affect the progression of the story. In a sense, the reader is playing the book as a game, being rewarded for good choices and punished for bad ones. Gamebooks are often written in the first or second person, contributing to the illusion that the reader is in fact the main character of the book.

Poet Profile: Penyo Penev

Penyo Penev

Until recently, the name Penyo Penev brought to memory a thin book with faded red covers on my grandfather’s nightstand, and little more. I knew he was a fan, and I knew that they had been classmates in a Sevlievo high school.

I only had to make an effort, to get curious, to find beyond the faded red covers a truthful, unhappy poet’s hopes, ideals and disappointments, bared in stark rhyme.

Penyo Penev was born on May 7, 1930 in the village of Dobromirka, Sevlievo municipality. He began writing in grade 3, and upon graduating in 1947, he eagerly joined the first youth brigades. These were labourer brigades, formed with an idealistic gleam in the name of implementing the new Socialist ideal in massive construction and agricultural projects. From that moment on, Penev’s life was intrinsically linked to his work as a builder, through which he experienced the practical realization of his dream of creating a new, better world. His poems reflect the optimistic outlook of the first years of Communism in Bulgaria, the notion of sacrifice for the good of future generations. While working in the new city of Dimitrovgrad, he fell in love with its fresh, idealistic outlook. He married his wife there, he had his son there, and there he experienced his most fruitful and happiest years.

The Treasure of Slaveykov Square

Sofia’s Slaveykov Square, named after father-son poet duo Petko and Pencho Slaveykov, is a bustling marketplace for one of the most coveted and important commodities in the nation: books. As a small country with a significant contribution to world literacy, reading and books have always been prized very highly in Bulgaria. The years of the Socialist boom were also the heyday of publishing, with hundreds of Bulgarian authors being printed alongside translations of world classics. Many of these books, often produced in hardcover and printed to last, have been resurfacing in used book stalls alongside new books and editions.

Poet Profile: Valeri Petrov

Poet, playwright, screenwriter and translator, Valeri Petrov (pseudonym of Valeri Nisim Mevorah) is one of the most multifaceted talents in Bulgarian literature. In prose, verse and translation, his style is crisp, light and accessible and every rhyme underscores the beauty and melodiousness of the Bulgarian language.