/ world today news/ Several poetic states of the historian Plamen Pavlov
Prof. Dr. Plamen Pavlov was born on July 12, 1958. He graduated in history from the VTU “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, and since 1984 he has been a teacher at the same university on the history of Byzantium and the Balkan states during the period 4th – 15th century. He is a screenwriter and consultant for a number of documentaries dedicated to the Bulgarian past and the fate of Bulgarians abroad. He is the author or co-author of more than 250 articles, studies, books, textbooks, encyclopedias, journalism, among which: “Who’s Who in Medieval Bulgaria” (1994, 1999, 2012, in collective), “Chronological Encyclopedia of the World, vol. VI (1995, in collective), “The Bulgarians and the Ottoman Conquest (1995, in collective), “Called to Beg”, (1999, in collective), “The World after Jesus” (1999), “Saints and Spiritual Leaders from Macedonia” (Toronto, 2004), “Tarnov saints and miracle workers”, (2006), “Bulgaria – the cradle of European civilization”, (2007, ed. and in English, Russian, German and French), “The Bulgarian writing – a European phenomenon” (2008, in collective, ed. and in English, Russian and French), “The Bulgarian Middle Ages: known and unknown”, (2008), “100 things we should know about history of Bulgaria” (2008), Macedonia – Bulgarian Land (2009, in a collective), “Bulgarian Saints” (2010, in a collective), “Forgotten and Misunderstood” (2010, Events and Persons from the Bulgarian Middle Ages), “Byzantium and the Byzantine World ” (2011, in collective) and others.
He has also published two collections of poems “In the Darkness of Foreboding” (2001), “Black Thoughts, White Magic” (2010).
This is what Raina Mandjukova writes about his book of “magic”: “Once this book is in your hands, then you are ready for a magical journey, on which we invite you with its author. Plamen Pavlov was born on Saturday, and the people say that “Saturday people” know magic. But his spells are white, though his thoughts are sometimes black…
There’s one more thing you should know. Plamen Pavlov is a “cancer”, and cancer is known to be secretive. So “Black thoughts, white magic” is not an easy revelation for him. And for all of us – an extraordinary opportunity to share the inseparable moments when he is alone with himself – in the magical reality of that flooded seashore, the mysterious smile of a girl, among all those things that are simply called love… It’s also permission to share with him the burdens and cares of this life where we sometimes forget the essentials, get lost in the middle of the day, and want to feed the cats in the parking lot to escape the monsters inside us… Like and an unsettling reminder, for at least six seconds, to sit on some ancient stone, to listen to the angelic chords of insanity and the rumble of impending catastrophes…
Such is the world of black thoughts and white magic of Plamen Pavlov
Did I manage to lure you in? Let’s go then…
But yes, I almost forgot… You’re not seasick, are you? Because we will travel by ship. Even with a few. We are sailing on a chalky, orange ocean. With that other one, the rusty one, in the middle of the desert, it must be a bit scary… But maybe you’ll be the lucky one to finally catch a glimpse
the Admiral’s caravel
suffered
a bottomless faith
in new ways
And whether you will find these paths, whether at the end of this journey you will feel desperate or hopeful, reconciled or determined, crushed or inspired – I don’t know…
I’m just giving you the direction…
You choose the path yourself.
KV 60-a
(1)
Although clumsy and tortured
let me tell you one
history
for the female pharaoh
the great ruler
the female god
in the posture of a man
with the armor of a warrior
woman with artificial beard
of a king
a woman with a divine face and body
“There is no greater beauty than this
to glimpse her!”
exclaims some ancient flatterer…
“Beautiful beautiful beautiful!”
(… old fat and flabby
with big saggy breasts…)
(2)
The female pharaoh
Daughter of the Sun
Maatkara Henemetamon Hatshepsut
preceded by some si
three or four thousand years
queen elizabeth
Catherine the Great
Maria Theresa
Indira Gandhi
Margaret Thatcher
Angela Merkel
Dilma Rusev
and other powerful women
on this planet.
(3)
And my chaotic retelling
(see “National Geographic”
its April 2009 issue)
in the words of Dr. Zahi Hawass
(the Egyptian Indiana Jones
head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities
under Hosni Mubarak’s regime)
for The Mummy in a Tomb
KV 60th
in short:
“…There was something unusual
in her fingers…
…Otherwise in every other respect
she had lost that
grace
characteristic of the female body…
…Her eye sockets –
filled with pitch-black resin…
…Her nostrils are obscenely stuffed
thick rolls of fabric…
…Hatshepsut
the extraordinary woman
the ruler of Egypt
from 1479 to 1458 BC…
…It was so hard for me somehow
to connect
the thing in front of me
with the great ruler…”
(4)
The thing…
The great ruler
daughter of the god Amon
brought
the country to its prime
never been
amazing
the builder of majestic temples
the inspiration
of artists poets and seafarers
of the unique reliefs from Deir el-Bahri
the magnificent Karnak
of the expedition to the country of Punt
great with her will and plans
with his deeds
great in everything
big big big…
(5)
The mummy with a label
KV 60-a
thrown away
thirty-five centuries ago
on the floor
of a small tomb
The great ruler
the female pharaoh
condemned to oblivion
thrown away
with anger and disgust
from her royal sarcophagus
deprived of the sacred insignia
beautiful ornaments
and so on…
The gold scraped with a knife
the statues defaced
her name erased
and others
others others others
obscene profanity
three thousand five hundred years ago.
What is the price of recognition
black ingratitude
the theft of foreign affairs works history
ideas?
(… we have gone no further, Hatshepsut –
if it’s any consolation, Queen,
to know it’s the same today…)
(6)
The mummy with a label
KV 60th
discovered by accident
then forgotten
devoid of identity
pathetic packaging
of a glamorous life
of one soul
great and boundless
this body
caused so much excitement
(7)
this pitiful and ugly
torso
(…. and these fingers – the only ones
kept the grace…)
The label thing
KV 60th
taken to Cairo
excitedly
among the dust in some storage room
(8)
and after tens of years
(absolutely nothing against the background of the past
three thousand five hundred!)
recognized by DNA in one molar
in a chest with the sign
on Hatshepsut…
And to make the absurdity complete
that tooth caused her death!
And to make it even more absurd
absurdity itself
the diseased tooth saved her from torment
of the one eating away at her cells
cancer…
(9)
The tooth
brought death
after thirty-five centuries
carries glory
top of the news
“National Geographic”
„Discovery”
and so on
crowds of people…
Big big big
like death
like immortality
like life itself.
THE WOLF
She sneaks in
with wolf steps
with cosmic fury
in the fiery eyes
wild pain in her little ones
killed by man
hunger hunger wolf hunger…
Here in this forest
kicking helplessly with their feet
maddened with hunger
blue from crying
two small human wolves
revenge
Not
just food
life…
She nursed them
then he was born
an Eternal City
after
a whole world…
I’m sitting on some ancient stone
I’m looking at an old postcard
and I think
about the fury about hunger
about overcoming instinct
on a predator
for the motherly feeling
for humanism
(God…)
of a she-wolf!
It just remains life
one whole remains
holy…
And then someone important explains
civilization.
KUBRAT’S MUMBLE*
When
we approached the mound
I didn’t feel anything
even
expected release
from fits of despair
and malice
to the indifference of the soulless
to the soullessness of the indifferent…
Not
I didn’t feel it in me
to awaken no romance
here are some 7th, 8th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st centuries,
I was not impressed by the speeches
the terrible sun
heated to white sand
Why?
there someone somewhere
outside and among the human anthill
was holding breath not breathing
unrecognized…
A handful of sand
a breeze in the branches
on that pine…
He was looking at me through the eye
of that bird
he had never died
was there
huge and invisible –
basically the obvious
is unnoticeable.
——————
* On August 18, 2001, on the initiative of Bessarabian Bulgarians, a monument to the ancient Bulgarian ruler Kubrat was erected not far from the village of Mala Pereshchepina (Poltava region, Ukraine). The creator of “Old Great Bulgaria” was buried there in the middle of the 7th century.
MODILIANS
This is confused ignorance
history
for a starving artist
supposed banking scion
and an even more improbable great-grandson
of Spinoza
genius after his death
(naturally…)
crazy hypercritical maniac
dissatisfied
obsessed with literature
so much
challenges hash hunger orgies
women paintings streets stunned policemen
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani
a hopeless romantic
in a deranged cannibal world
money and blood
blood and money
majestically built out of poverty
view
through the cobwebs and the dustpan
in the sky dungeon
of God.
THE ADMIRAL’S CARAVEL
In the womb of that
a huge monster – “Boeing – 747”,
a person is small
and powerful at the same time
in a casual way.
You dine, chat and kill
the weather
with a distant look
in the great bodies of flight attendants
and here it is for about nine hours
we fly over the path of Columbus…
god
how small is the earth
how strong the man was!
…and there is none
hope
to glimpse the Admiral’s caravel,
that old rotting shell
suffered
a bottomless faith
in new ways.
#60s #stories
