MEETING AT THE CROSSROADS (BLAGA DIMITROVA)

When Blaga Dimitrova was giving me directions over the phone how to get to the entrance of her apartment building, she said, “Right by the door there is a phone booth like a sea shell.”

To this day, whenever I pass by the grey and faceless building, quite sooty and grimy from Sofia’s foul air I remember the sea shell. I involuntarily look for it, if it’s there, if it’s vandalized, which often happens on our streets and corners.

She invited me into the room with the giant tomcat Foncho, whose silhouette she used to autograph her books. I never had my dream come true to have a cat from his breed, though I was promised one. Foncho had gotten old and was in no hurry to reproduce.

I was surprised by her immaculate appearance – elegant low-heel shoes, stylish hairstyle and clothing masterfully combined from the brooch to the last button, moderate makeup. Her age seemed not to show at all, and her quick and clear mind was incomparable to the mind signals of any young female creature I’d known. She emanated aristocracy but also attractive femininity and spiritedness. We discussed her participation in the “Authographed Book” series. I was on my way out when her words caught up with me, “Actually, I have something to publish. About the love between Bagriana and the Serbian poet Rade Drainats.”

It turned out the book was just right, because it made its appearance at the time of the air strikes against the Belgrade bridges (April 1999). In May 2005, during the book premiere of “Prey” in Belgrade, the Serbian Deputy Minister of Culture and a known dissident the writer Ivan Ivanovich talked about the town of Prokuple in Southern Serbia, about Bagriana and Drainats. About the old spiritual relations, going all the way back to Lyuben Karavelov and Dositey Obradovich. We are so close to each other and so foreign to each other! He hadn’t heard of Blaga Dimitrova and Yordan Vassilev’s book “Meeting at the Crossroads”.

I promised to mail him a copy.


A POETIC EXPLOSION (LYUBCHO GEORGIEVSKI)

I always feel well in Sofia, Luybcho Georgievski smiles. He has an attentive and sensitive gaze, a poet is a poet, even if he’s neck-deep into politics. He emanates integrity, sincerity. He often exclaims, “How interesting! How interesting!” Because I keep giving him books which turn out to be new and curious to him. Here are the two volumes of “The Wars of Bulgaria (1978-1945)” with authentic photographs from our and foreign archives. Many of the pictures of the Balkan War are from the English press. The Bulgarians from the beginning of the century have left a mark on us with their self-sacrifice and bravery. A surge of students who left Geneva, Paris and Chicago behind to die for Bulgaria. I tell him this is our series “Memory”. He already knows of “Balkan Library” – after all he’s the 40th participant in it with his book of poetry “City”. The album pictures show women, children and men welcoming Bulgarian soldiers in Bitolia, Ohrid and Skopje. Other shots show sad lines of Macedonian refugees going to Bulgaria. It is enough to have seen them once not to ever forget them. “The Bulgarians in Nish” – that is also very interesting, he reaches for the volume like for warm bread. “Are the holy places alive?” The question is related to Toncho Zhechev’s “The Bulgarian Holy Places in Tsarigrad”. The first book with which the spiritual adventure “Balkani” began 16 years ago. I’m surprised Lyubcho doesn’t know – the Iron Church “St. Stephan” is open for visits and is being restored. He’s never set foot there, but wishes to do so around Easter.

After the premiere in “Sulza i Smyah” theater (31.01.2007) and the moving mono-spectacle of the actor Pero (Petar) Temelkovski we joked about the dinner menu. The Bulgarian-Macedonian friendship was reaffirmed with Serbian barbeque and Assenovgrad Mavrud free of political context. The poet Lyubcho Georgievski shared he felt exhausted, drained after the performance. He relived the text to such extent, even though it was created years ago as a surprising poetic explosion even to himself.

He heartily laughed at the joke according to which at the first elections you win with the motto “I’m one of you!” At the second the magic formula is “You know me!” And at the third “You have no proof!”



THE PRICE OF DIGNITY (GENCHO STOEV)


Gencho Stoev celebrated his last Easter (May 2002) in the Bulgarian Exarchy in Istanbul together with his wife Lyuba. I still see him standing with a long lit candle in hand. I still see his dignified and proud figure. He never sat down at the table of the satiated and the gluttonous. He never bent down for a privilege or a benefit. He came along on his own initiative to present the first two books of “Balkan Library” – “The Cursed Yard” by Ivo Andrich and “The Language and the Monster” by Georgios Seferis. We took a whole bunch of books, and from “The Price of Gold”. In Odrin, Silivria, Istanbul and the Prince’s Islands he gave many autographs. We gave books away to the Odrin church “St. George”. The priest pulled out a big 2-century-old gypsy nail from the wall and gave it to us as a souvenir. There was reconstruction going on at the time and the nail was barely hanging on. I have it to this day.

In the church we saw only four monuments commemorating the thousands who died in the battles for the Odrin fortress. The grasses of oblivion are high, especially when someone is afraid of memories and does all in his power to wipe them out.

At our last meeting, two days after which he suddenly passed away, he said, “We live in pre-Balzac times. Everything is ever more primitive.” It had taken him four years to write the novel “The Price of Gold”. What aristocracy compared to today’s fast and easy writings which are even easier and faster awarded prizes by juries of suspicious or outright lacking reputation. Gencho Stoev called himself and his generation “dinosaurs” used to the old nice psychological prose. He predicted the emergence of a new literary mammal who would want to sell the skin of a bear still in the woods. While the Bulgarian literature from the time of Chernorizets Hrabur to this day remains circumscribed and unknown to the wide world. After the beauty of our nature, the English, who are so many in Bulgaria already, will probably also discover the unadulterated beauty of our spirit.

Will Bulgarian culture have the immune power to withstand the assimilative immigrant pressure when we’ll be the outer border of the European Union? Whoever did Gencho Stoev leave this question to? To the Minister who confused Pancho Vladigerov with Zlatyu Boyadzhiev? To the King-Premier who called the father and son Petko and Pencho Slaveikov brothers?

He used to say he was family with the King. When he was hanged upside down by the Maritsa River (he was only 16), he had already received a death sentence in the King’s father’s name.



A PIECE OF STRING ON THE FOOT (YORDAN RADICHKOV)


The last two or three Christmases I managed to bring him a hare. Once when he saw the long whiskers of the droopy-eared creature, which had come from his native hunting fields near Gaganitsa, the writer thought, “I used to know this hare’s grandfather!”

Radichkov is Radichkov even in the smallest detail. He hadn’t spoken to his friend and rival Ivailo Petrov for nearly 10 years. That finally happened in the National Library “St. Cyril and Methodius” (May 1999) where 13 renowned Bulgarian writers and the artist Boris Dimovski gathered on Balkani’s initiative to celebrate the commencement of the series with “Mure” (decoy, bait) and show respect for each other, regardless of political inclinations.

There Yordan Radichkov, be it with difficulty, because of his illness, spoke about the eternal air corridors and the great Aristotelian route of the birds which passes over our country. He spoke about what used to be centuries before us and what would be centuries after we have passed into the nothingness. He rejoiced as a child at having written his novel earlier. This way the mure preceded the airplanes and ascended skywards through the falling snow.

For 16 years we’ve been flying towards Europe with a string tied to our foot. We’re starting to fly over Europe now but the abyss between our private, daily and civic attitude remains of a Krali-Marko proportion. Nobody’s keeping us tied to the swamp anymore, but we still can’t show solidarity with one another! Is that why our native oligarchy has put us behind the iron bars, which we ourselves have forged?

The mure has flown around the world too. An emigrant Bulgarian website posted it on the Internet in Australia. I remember the great author’s surprised smile. His literary character Pavleto ended up exceeding his expectations.


FROM UP HIGH (VERA MUTAFCHIEVA)


Through her terrace window you can see Stara Planina. In her book “The Denounced Balkans” she writes about the fundamental role of the Balkan in our history. The hills seem within reach, especially when the weather is clear and there is no smog from Kremikovtsi.

She claims she likes to teleport there – in the blue haze. From up high you can better see our fragmented way of thinking.

In the peak of the most Kurdzhali time she’s not afraid to go unescorted to the nearby pizza place. There she continues the meetings and conversations started in her welcoming kitchen-lounge.

Since ancient Bulgarians discovered a road of salvation to the future via the book in the 10th century what have we discovered today?

She lights a cigarette, takes a sip. The question hangs in the air. Or maybe the answer lies in the silence.


Recorded by Deyan Enev