/ world today news/ A word from Elena Alekova about the book “I’m not here” by Velin Georgiev
For several years, Velin Georgiev has been surprising his fans with his highly innovative books: “The Taste of Pain” (2016), “Mercury from a Broken Thermometer” (2017) and another “I’m not here yet”, which came out very recently. They represent some special diary-memoir-poetic-prose alloy, interspersed here and there with literary critical elements, for which even a new genre should be invented. Continuously with him, poetry flows into prose (in the general sense, including fiction, journalism, essays and literary criticism) and prose – into poetry, memory turns into diary sketches and sketches – into memories, reality mixes with dreams, moments of inspiration and creation – with the everyday and everyday, the high – with the low, the personal – with the public and universal. Where one begins and the other ends is difficult to grasp. And it’s unnecessary. It can be said another way, in his words:
“While I’m packing, I’ll say one more thing. I’ve beaten this life. Ever since my Muse left, I’ve been on the edge of my seat. I’ve caught one thing – I’ve let go. And I’m supposedly shaping up, but when I look – I’m falling apart. The crowd has given me an ultimatum to to gather myself – in folders, boxes, bags so that they can put me in There – in some closet, just in case – this is my proof that while I’m packing, there’s more to finish all”.
The way in which Velin Georgiev writes his books is unprecedented in our literature. And not only in ours. In a general sense, they are something like a loner’s diary. But to say that this is just a diary is not quite accurate. He himself refutes such suggestions: “I do not imitate a diary. I catch the fireflies of my time. I stick them on the forehead of the white page and foresee something”. It is not entirely accurate that he is a loner, because even if he lives alone, Velin Georgiev is not lonely. And so he says: “How big is my world? I don’t say. Why? Because it is boundless. Here. I enter it. And I see Man. I enter Man. And I see the world. Creation”. Velin Georgiev, like no one else among us, is in constant communication with the whole world – backwards and forwards in time, in breadth and depth, here and now, with the living and the dead from every corner of the universe, here or there and beyond. His dialogue with the living Petko Totev, for example, continues with Petko Totev, who is no longer among the living, as if he had never left us. Not to mention Snezhana Peycheva – the love, the support, the spiritual provocation and the constant inspirational challenge for Velin, “My Muse”, as he calls her, who in the form of a traveling plot passes from book to book. “There’s room for every significant friend of mine in this patchwork book,” he admits. And so it is.
* * *
If someone had told me some time ago that I would be reading books of this kind with such unquenchable interest, I would not have believed it, but here it is a fact – I read Velin Georgiev’s books with an ever-inflaming curiosity. There are people who – and the most interesting story to tell, are boring and annoying. And with him – no matter what he picks up, his narration holds curiosity until the end. Every detail is attractive to him – even the most insignificant incident, a thought that flew by by chance, an association that suddenly erupted. Even the monologue of the beloved dog Chani – one of the main characters in this book by Velin (the poet has become so attached to the dog that he even thinks and writes poems on his behalf). Are you a loner? Although alone…
It is not enough to say that Velin Georgiev is a magician of the word and that he does with the word what he wants. The word loves him. The word is as if stuck to his hand and leads him wherever he wants. Everywhere. Talented and strong. Charged with his – purely Velin-Georgievska – energy, which immediately makes him stand out among everyone: “Only writing new texts – he shares – still has meaning for me… Here – the urge comes, it comes like lightning. I’m just cursed to be a slave to myself… And I rejoice in the new morning, the clear day…”. Every thing that his perspicacious mind touched – even the most insignificant! – becomes big and significant, important, full of meaning. I don’t know how and why it happens. Velin Georgiev makes everything he writes about big and significant.
With him, in addition to the NLS “Ancient Phaeton” and creativity, we are also connected by a deep and lasting family friendship. But there is one more thing that I highly value and want to mention. Velin Georgiev remains faithful always – even under the most unfavorable circumstances for his friends; he does not withdraw distractedly from their surroundings when they are in trouble, he does not plunge into Tilleian forests, but repels unauthorized attacks against them, for their sake he drinks bitter pills, but does not betray them, because treason in his eyes would mean betraying himself. His insightful writer’s heart unerringly sifts justice from injustice, and he has no fear when injustice is stronger – he fights against it, whatever it costs him. This is how a truly talented writer is known.
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“I’m not here”. In the original writings, the title was “While I Pack.” Because Velin Georgiev started writing the book, hurt by injustices related to our life-being and the Phaeton, and prompted (somewhat!) by me – I just wanted him to get out of the vicious circle of his vulnerability. He called me then hour by hour to say how he knew the day of his death and even saw me in the Ritual Hall reading farewell words for him. Too depressing an experience for me. I don’t know what happened to him. Gradually, his strong nature and the urge to create overcame despair, because the strong nature at first wants to live and does not tolerate anything that pulls it back and down, and creativity itself is the overcoming of corruption. And the title of the book began to vary: “This title, “While I’m packing” – he writes – is conditional, I even wrote another one under it – “Deep inside me”, and later I thought of a third – “On the shore of Summer”. I’m already thinking about something else. And the other: “Where is my possible reader now, so that I can tell him that I have come up with a new title WITHOUT, which will puzzle him and no wonder he threatens me: “Without…”.
In brackets… Velin Georgiev loves monosyllabic titles. Many of his books carry them, let’s recall: “No” (1998), “Shock” (2002), “Code” (2002), “Act” (2003), “Escape” (2013), “Sign” ( 2015)… The curious thing is that for the first time he chooses this to be a service word (preposition), which by its nature does not have an independent meaning, but standing in front of another full-fledged word, it is connected to it in meaning. “Without” as a preposition has the task of giving the word to which it is attached, a shade of… absence or “minus”, but with Velin Georgiev, “without” also becomes a full-fledged word, i.e. takes on different meanings, a meaning that is somehow not, let’s say, actually existing, but rather premonition, perceived by the inner senses, unfathomable and somehow spilling into some meanings and shades of meanings, not fully designated: “I am Chani – the prince-dog. Now I like it, then I say: without…”; “I can’t do without them—without these little hours. They are my life—vote, they say yes and no. Still, at least. Still whinnying horses, saddled in the seventeenth year in which a Cavalry passed . . . A century now. And the horses roam the planet. With them – and my dog… How come without…”; “You, who are out of the game, travel for free on days in the fast-paced express, supposedly with a ticket, but without…”; “Everything is love. That is why God is love. Without love there is only the birthless without…”, or:
When the demons catch you,
and all the directions say no…
what’s the matter with you, hangman?
The old address does not fit you…
And while you are wondering about one thing, another, the title of the book has suddenly become something else: “…my wonderful friend Pencho Chernaev told me yesterday that there is a nice connection between my first title “I am here” and the last one for now “I don’t I’m here”. The book came out under this, the last one. And “I’m here” is the title of Velin Georgiev’s first book, which was published in the distant year 1972 – four and a half decades, if not more, have passed since then…
“I’m here” and “I’m not here”. At first glance, they are similar, but in fact they are in opposition to each other. One is a simple sentence (“I am here”) – the other is with a subject (“I am not here”). One is an affirmation (“I am”) – the other is a negation (“I am not”). One is with a demonstrative pronoun (“here”), the other with an adverb (“here”), but their root is the same. In one – the logical emphasis is on “here”, also loaded with the meaning of that magnificent Zen Buddhist state of existence “here and now”, which gives it incredible depth; in the other – “to here” (as if even the word “here” itself is stretched) simply denotes a limit, a border, which, above all, is somehow overcome: “Who said that if you reach Kota Edikoyasi, you should sigh: I I am here… Only I am aware of myself that I am not here…”. Velin Georgiev – in his characteristic way of expanding the meaning of words – adds another meaning to his “here I am”:
And when I found out that I was born –
I became a cry that breaks the darkness,
overtook Krupnik’s roosters.
And my heart is pounding, pounding – I’m here…
I’ve been trying to prove it all my life.
At the same time, “I’m here” and “I’m not here” complement each other, mix and, in the end, become the same thing, because very elegantly in the book the limit of “here” is skipped: “I’m not here” , which also has the meaning of “I am not yet”, i.e. I will continue to be – not only in space, but also in time. “I am not here” – respectively, I am not here and now, I am not in this world until the end of my life, I will be after that, and as soon as I continue on, it will say that I AM again and I am HERE again , because I simply cannot be anywhere else apart from myself. In other words, in this and that world or any other world… wherever I AM is HERE (and of course NOW).
I shared all this because it is curious in itself. But my point was about the movement of titles ie. of the inner states of Velin Georgiev from “While I pack my bags” (of despair) – to “Deep inside me”, “Or should I call it the second layer, deeper inside me, where my life also took place and there are important things for my pen. Yes, from here on…” (of refutation and hope), from “On the shore of Summer” (of despair) – through the impersonal, formless “BEZ” – to “I am not here” (of refutation and hope), until hope finally took over in the moods: “I don’t ask what, I grab onto the words. And in every word my heart ponders. And blossoms begin – daisy to poppy and rose. New rhythms and destinations.. . I’m still writing my book. You’re still a bird… Sing, heart.”
#grow #vineyard #bay #build #home #Parnassus
