WHY people write has always perplexed. To record one's thoughts, to engender thoughts in others, to record one's life, to incite life in others; to control, to influence, to encourage and to depress. Thousands of writers, thousands of texts, words, ideas, memories, passions, instructions. And out of so many, only few remain relevant enough for posterity.

Bulgaria's history provides many of these people.

Among the most important who are available in English are Elisaveta Bagriana, Georgi Gospodinov, Stefan Kisyov, Aleko Konstantinov, Elin Pelin, Georgi Rakovski, Ivan Vazov and Yordan Yovkov.

 

· On June 20 1893, Aleko Konstantinov (1863, Svishtov - 1897, Plovdiv region) set off from the Sofia Railway Station for a voyage to Chicago's World Exposition. A reporter and a few friends saw him off. The first Bulgarian author to visit the United States, he also fulfilled his desire of seeing Niagara Falls. This adventure is recorded in his "To Chicago and Back", available in a 2004 English translation by Robert Sturm.

Born in a town on the Danube into a rich mercant family, he studied law in Russia, where he took in the populist ideas of the era. Upon returning to Sofia, he worked as a journalist and lawyer, though his heart really hankered after travelling.

As such, he made certain to travel a lot, around Europe and in the United States, and this not with the purpose of brag rights, but to write. His travel writings could be classified as narrative satires.

In addition to Chicago's World Fair, he also visited the World Expositions in Paris (1889) and in Prague (1891).

His travels around Bulgaria led him on an 1895 climb up Cherni Vruh (a 2290m peak near Sofia), on which he took 300 people. He was also the creator of the organised tourism movement in Bulgaria, eventually founding the Bulgarian Tourist Union, which is still in existence.

Called a "refined intellectual", he loved walking and was also fluent in French. He had an openness of vision, which allowed him deep insight into the Bulgarian character.

Perhaps his most famous novel, published in 1894, demonstrates this perception.

Bay (alternately "bai") Ganyo represents the birth of the bourgeois class, at the moment it was appearing in Europe and the rest of the world. It recounts the story of a rube, itinerant rose oil and rug peddler with a big moustache, fur hat, traditional vest and large red belt with flasks, named Bay (a rustic-nuanced term for "uncle") Ganyo. His character has come to be regarded as an embodiment of all that is bad about the Bulgarian national character: arrogant, insolent, greedy and incapable of adopting any civilised principles of friendship.

Due to this negative personification, it was decided not to include Bay Ganyo as a figure on the current 100-leva bill, which features Konstantinov. A spring of edelweiss took his place.

Konstantinov also wrote feuilletons - Beelzebub's Triumph and Beelzebub's Prayer - that comically study the struggles of political leaders, who are driven by satanic wishes, and their hidden intentions, as they try to portray themselves as upstanding agents of democracy.
With him, Bulgaria's former metaphorical and fluid style of writing became more concrete; it acquired dimension and started to correspond to styles used in Europe.

Bay Ganyo has twice been made into a film - a silent short in 1922 and a full-length feature by Ivan Nichev in 1991.

On May 23 1897, Konstantinov was shot and killed. His Bay Ganyo had so much become identified with the Bulgarian national character, that it was said that Ganyo had jumped out of the novel and killed Konstantinov himself.

Aleko Konstantinov's heart is on display at his house-museum in Svishtov, 250km northeast of Sofia.

 

· Elin Pelin (1877, Baylovo - 1949, Sofia) is considered Bulgaria's best narrator of country life. Born into a large family in a village near Sofia, he loved writing and reading from his early years.

Studying to become a teacher, he taught for a year (1895) in his natal village.

His first publication appeared in 1901, and the respect it earned him in literary circles encouraged him to go to Sofia in 1903, where he worked as a librarian at the university library.

Sometime during this period, Elin Pelin, who was born Dimitar Ivanov Stoyanov, took his now-famous pseudonym. The word "pelin", in Bulgarian, means "wormwood".

He spent 1906-07 in France, perfecting his skills in the language. By this time, he was already a popular writer.

In 1910-16, he was director of special collections at the National Library. He also served as editor of numerous magazines, including the children's publication Vecelushka.

In 1911, one of his most famous works appeared. The Gerak Family (Geratsite) is one of the best-known pieces of Bulgarian literature. It deals with a traditional village family experiencing the transition from the simplicity of rurality to the modernisation of Bulgarian society, a world in which old world practices founded on family love and dedication to the land start to disappear.

During World War 1, he served as a war correspondent.

His second great work Earth (Zemya) was published in 1922. In this book, Pelin created a gallery of characters who identified with the national character and conscience.

Pelin's works - poems, short stories and novels - recreated the peasant and countryside atmosphere of the old Bulgaria. His predilection for short stories led him to write many, of which the humouristic Pizho and Pindo is perhaps the best known.

A genuine realism, with descriptions full of light and colour, classifies his works.

Considered one of the masters of Bulgarian prose, he was also one of the initiators of Bulgarian children's literature. His tales of Yan Bibiyan and his voyages to the moon still delight today.

From 1924 to 1944, Pelin served as conservator at the Ivan Vazov Museum, all the while continuing to write - specifically for children - and be published.

In 1940, he was named president of the Union of Bulgarian Writers.

After World War 2, he managed to escape being blacklisted as a forbidden author by the new communist government. The regime choose to consider his works as those of a realistic, critical author, "а precursor of socialist realism that, although not having correctly seized the true nature of the bourgeois state, knew how to tell about the working life and individual revolt of exploited peasants".

His works Zemya and The Gerak Family have been made into films (1930 and 1957, and 1958, respectively).

Elin Pelin died in 1949.

 

· Poetess Elisaveta Bagriana (1893, Sofia - 1991, Sofia) wrote her first verses while living with her family in Veliko Turnovo in 1907-08.

She, along with Dora Gabe (1886-1983), is considered one of the Bulgarian mothers of literature.

Bagriana (alternately Bagryana) taught in the village of Aftane, where she experienced village life, from 1910 to 1911, after which she studied Slavic philology at Sofia University.

Her first poems were published in 1915 - Why (Zashto) and Night Song (Vecherna pesen) - in the magazine Contemporary Thought (Suvremenna misul).

It was after World War 1 ended that she truly entered into the literary world, at a time when poetry was undergoing a transformation.

By 1921, she was already active in the literary life, and was collaborating on the Newspaper of the Woman and the magazine Modernity, among other publications.

With the arrival of her first book, The Eternal and the Holy (Vechnata i svyatata, 1927), she earned the confirmation of her peers. She also started writing children's stories.

Her poems are straightforward, sensitive and serious, as in The Well (Klandenetsut), a fable-like piece relating a well she dug when a little girl to the wellspring of poetry in her soul. They often are undeniably feminine - as in the poem The Eternal, in which the writer contemplates the body of a dead mother, or Evening Prayer - and spirited, as shown by the youthful, rebellious spirit in The Elements.

Bagriana passed her life surrounded by words, editing a number of magazines and writing. Her works have been translated into over 30 languages. Her poems are most recently available in a book entitled Penelope of the 21st Century: Selected poems of Elisaveta Bagryana, translated by Brenda Walker.

In 1969, she won a gold medal from the National Association of Poets in Rome.

She was also the second of three Bulgarians ever to have been nominated for a Nobel Prize.

 

· Georgi Gospodinov (1968, Yambol) is considered one of the lighthouses of modern Bulgarian literature.

His first book came out in 1992. A collection of poems, Lapidarium, won the National Literary Prize for a debut book. His second publication The Cherry-Tree of One People (Chereshata na edin narod, alternately, The Cherry-Tree of a Nation), also poems, was published in 1996. It won the Union of Bulgarian Writers prize for book of the year. Together, the two collections established him as a writer.

It is, perhaps, Gospodinov's Natural Novel (Estestven Roman) that has won him international fame. When the book appeared in 1999, it brought him first place in the national competition Razvitie for a contemporary Bulgarian novel.

Bulgaria's Egoist magazine described it as "the first novel - by birth and by glory - of the 90s generation".

Since, it has been translated into many languages, including Czech, English and French.

Natural Novel deals with random topics - ranging from toilets to marital infidelity to how the author should put his thoughts on paper.

Comic, it is driven by the narrator's need to deal with his wife's affair with their close family friend, by whom she becomes pregnant. As it flips among genres and storylines, the novel somehow works the numerous starts and restarts of the plot (or lack of) into an account that presents the impossibility of portraying life truthfully.

Gospodinov, in an interview on bookculture.org, calls the novel natural in terms of the Ancient Greeks' natural philosophy on life, which he considers to be "an essential element and pattern of everything in the world", and also in terms of a man's ever-leviathan search for a relation between patterns in the cosmos and patterns in his personal life and failures. The novel is also natural in the sense of man's everyday life, done without pretence and pose.

A theatrical version of the novel was performed at Sofia's Sfumato theatre.

More recent works of his are a collection of short stories And Other Stories (2001, I Drugi Istoria; has been translated into French); verses, Letter to Gaustin (2003, Pisma do Gaustin); and a literary criticism, Poetry and Media (2005, Poezia i Media).

While not writing, Gospodinov is a professor at New Bulgarian University, editor of Literature (Literaturen) newspaper and a columnist for the Bulgarian daily Dnevnik.

 

· Family insistence to study trade could not keep Ivan Vazov (1850, Soport - 1921, Sofia) from pursuing a literary life.

This "poet of the people" started writing verse at an early age: his first poetic ideas saw ink while a student at Plovdiv's Central Bulgarian School in the mid-1860s.

Sent to Romania to study commerce, he soon strayed from this path, preferring to write poetry. His time in Romania did not prove lost, however, as he met Bulgarian writer Hristo Botev in Braila, and again in Galati, where Vazov's uncle lived.

In 1874 in Romania, he joined a liberation movement for freedom from the Ottoman Empire, and in 1875, returned to Soport and became a member of a local revolutionary committee.

After Bulgaria's failed 1876 April Uprising against the Turks, Vazov had to flee the country, and returned to Galati. Here, he again met Botev, and absorbed many of his ideas. Together with other revolutionaries in Romania, they started writing poems.

Vazov's first published work appeared in 1876: Praporets and Gusala. In 1871 he had published another collection of poems, Bulgaria's Sorrows. Both dealt with Bulgaria's struggle for independence.

When Bulgaria obtained this long-desired freedom in 1878 following the Russo-Turkish War, Vazov became editor of the political reviews Naouka (Science) and Zora (Dawn).

He was soon again forced into exile, this time to Odessa, Russia, due to prosecution of the Russophile faction in Bulgaria under Stefan Stambolov's government.

His poems The Bay of Naples and What is a Poet's Soul Like? appeared in 1880 and 1884, respectively.

In 1889 he returned to Sofia - after having worked as a teacher in Svishtov, a Bulgarian town on the Danube - and started publishing the review Dennitsa. He was soon elected as a Member of Parliament, and in 1897, was appointed Minister of Education.

His most famous novel, Under the Yoke, appeared in 1893. In October 2005, a new translation of this work appeared in English. It, like much of his poetry, deals with Ottoman rule of the Bulgarian people. Here, the citizens of Byala Cherkva effect an unsuccessful uprising against their oppressors. And, despite the horrid machinations of man, nature retains her divine beauty.

His New Country was published in 1894, followed by other works, including Under our Heaven (1900), Songs of Macedonia (1914), and plays, his most famous being Vagabonds (1894).

Ivan Vazov died from a heart attack while lunching one September day in 1921. He is commemorated with a statue and public tomb in Sofia, near the Church of Saint Sofia.

 

· Better known as a revolutionary, Georgi Sava Rakovski (1821, Kotel - 1867, Bucharest) also contributed to the 19th-century Bulgarian literary world.

The spawn of a wealthy and patriotic family, he attended monastery schools in Kotel and in Karlovo, and in 1837, went to study at a Greek school in Istanbul.

In 1841, he was convicted to death whilst involved in revolutionary plans against the Turks, but thanks to a Greek friend, managed to escape to France.

A year-and-a-half later, he returned to Kotel, only to be arrested again in 1845. Sent to Istanbul for seven years of solitary confinement, he was released in May 1848.

He decided to remain in Istanbul, where he worked as a lawyer and tradesman, and took part in campaigns for a Bulgarian national church.

Rakovski was soon arrested once more, this time due to his creation of a secret society of Bulgarians to assist the Russians in the Crimean War. While being deported to Istanbul, he escaped, and gathered together a group of rebels.

In June 1854, they transferred to Bulgaria.

Between 1854 and 1860, Rakovski spent his time writing, publishing reviews, and avoiding arrest.

His best-known work, Gorski Patnik (A Traveller in the Woods, alternately, Forest Wanderer), he penned during the Crimean War (1853-56) while hiding from Turkish authorities near Kotel.

Considered one of the first Bulgarian literary poems, it was not actually published until 1857. The published version differed from the first version, in that it had a clearer plot and improved style.

It concerns a Bulgarian man who recruits a rebel group to mutiny against the Turks. His aim in writing this was to awaken people's spirit to the fight for freedom and to take revenge on the Turks for their cruelty. The novel opens with the main character admiring the beauty of nature on the Bosporus. A preoccupation with national problems and lack of freedom clouds his mind, and he encourages others to join him in a revolt. As the insurgents travel toward Bulgaria, the reader takes in their courage and trials of the journey. The work is said to "unite all the ideology, hopes and beliefs" of the Bulgarian people in their brave fight against the yoke.

Rakovski left Gorski Patnik incomplete. Written in archaic language, it was difficult to read, but still had a great influence in society.

Eighteen sixty-one found him in Belgrade, where he organised a Bulgarian legion, and travelling through Europe recruiting support for his country's cause. While his radical views often met with opposition from more moderate minds, his writings incited youth to go against the Turks.

It was in this year that he wrote his Plan for the Liberation of Bulgaria.

After the Serbs dissolved his Bulgarian legion, he moved to Bucharest and organised a small group of revolutionary fighters, called cheti, to instigate unrest in Bulgaria, thus motivating the population to fight the Ottomans.

Led by Hadzi Dimitar and Stefan Koradza, 120 chetnitsi entered Bulgaria in 1868, and fought their way to the Balkan range before being surrounded by the Ottomans.

True to their ideals, none surrendered, and, thus, all died.

This group of Rakovski's was the first group of armed Bulgarians to rise up against the Turks.

Creator of the Bulgarian revolutionary movement, poet, writer, journalist, Georgi Rakovski died of tuberculosis in Bucharest in October 1867.

 

· Stefan Kisyov (Stara Zagora, 1963) has always considered himself as a writer.

"It was my childhood dream to grow up and become a writer," he said.

Recipient of the VICK Foundation's Bulgarian Novel of the Year Award, this dream has come true. The prize, which he received in 2004 for his novel The Executioner (2003), awarded him 10 000 leva and a translation of his book into English.

The "black humour" novel is a mix of politics, comedy and fantasy/science-fiction, and tells of the life and times of a bug of a man who works as an executioner in Sofia's central prison.

"It was an experiment," said Kisyov. "When I wrote it, I didn't know what to do with it. It wasn't finished, but I was tired of writing it and gave it to the editor, not yet perfected."

He believes that in Bulgaria, the arts have a greater future potential than the economy, as more people are interested in the former. The potential he sees in EU integration is that it may help the arts, particularly financially.

Here in Bulgaria, he said, artists earn beans, but that doesn't stop him from counting among his penchants nature, women, and traditional Bulgarian cuisine.

Kisyov studied at Sofia and Plovdiv Universities, and also at the Sorbonne in Paris.

He has worked as a journalist and opinion columnist, and has published five novels. His first, Jukebox (1996) tells of love in the present era in Bulgaria with an Irish girl.

Don't Wake Up, Sleepwalker (Ne budete somnambula) and Nothing Anywhere (Nikude Nishto) appeared in 2000. Follow The Executioner, and A Waiter at Boyana Residence (2004).

In all his novels, he uses real-life people as characters. For example, in Nothing Anywhere, Bill Clinton shows his face.

He is currently letting rest an as-of-yet untitled story based on his personal experiences with an American girl he met in the 1990s in Bulgaria. She - Ellen - was a Fulbrighter from San Francisco, and though she wanted to remain, had to leave the country because of Bulgaria's economic crisis.

"I had a great love for this girl," said Kisyov. "Maybe I'll name the book after her."

He has also written a play, Peculiarities of Bulgarian National Sex.

"If I'm not content, if I don't have a good conscience, I can't live," he said.

 

· Yordan Yovkov (1880, Zheravna - 1937, Plovdiv) is, along with Elin Pelin, considered one of Bulgaria's best between-the-two-world-wars writers.

Born into a provincial family, he studied at First Sofia Men's High School - from which he graduated in 1900 with honours - and became a teacher.

After teaching for one year in a village in central Bulgaria, he entered as a cadet into the School for Reserve Officers in Knyazhevo, and in 1904, he began studying law at Sofia University.

When the First Balkan War began in 1912, he received orders to enlist, and did, and along with his brother Kosta, went to Bourgas and joined the 41st division.

Fighting in a Second Balkan War (1913) battle near Doyran, he was wounded by a bullet in his leg.

After this, he settled in Sofia and became an editor of the magazine People's Army (Narodna Armiya), and then librarian for the Minister of Interior Affairs and editor of a state publication.

World War I sent him to work as a border officer at the Greek border near the Mesta River. While there, he received summons to work as a correspondent for the paper Military News.

He spent trying years teaching in Varna until the autumn of 1920, after which he served as a press secretary in the Bulgarian legislation in Bucharest. For unspecified reasons, he was demoted in 1927, so he resigned and returned to Sofia.

Yovkov's war involvement greatly influenced his mentality and style of writing. Whereas 1910 saw his first literary effort as a short story about village life and patriarchal customs, his post-war pieces were more harsh and militaristic.

Eventually he moved away from the melancholic, depressive themes towards authentic descriptions of villagers and country life.

In his short story  Shibil, he integrated Turkisms to give a sense of realism to the work.

His story Legends of Stara Planina (1927, alternately known as Balkan Legends,  Staroplaninski legendi) and play Inn at Antimovo (1927) established him as a major writer. In 1929, he received the Cyril and Methodius Prize for Literature from the Bulgarian Academy of Science.

Other works of his include the dramas Albena (1930) and Boryana (1932); a comedy The Millionaire (1930, Milionerut); and a book, The Family by the Frontier (1934, Chiflikut krai granitsata).

A number of his stories were made into films, including Nai-vyarnata ctrazha (The Most Loyal Guard, film in 1929); Shibil (1968); Nona (1973, from the novel Chiflikut krai granitsata); and 24 Chasa duzhd (1982, based on the novel Chastinyat uchitel).

Yovkov's natal home in Zheravna was turned into a house-museum in 1957.

In1985, a dam in northeastern Bulgaria was named after him. Yovkovski Dam - 5km from the town of Elena, supplying water to Veliko Turnovo and surrounding areas - contains 223 000 decares and is a hygienic protected zone.