/ world today news/ Professor Valeri Stefanov is a doctor of philological sciences, professor of the history of Bulgarian literature at SU “St. Kliment Ohridski”
If we speak with the clichés of jubilee patriotism, we will say that Vazov is the Patriarch of Bulgarian literature, crown and core of the Canon, a great portrayer of the people’s woes and desires.
When we claim that Bulgarian literature has a Patriarch, we define ourselves as a flock – a community of believers, united around lofty words and fateful values. The question about Vazov is a question about the strength of this spiritual “church”, about that symbolic place where we entered through the Renaissance and from where we are perhaps already preparing to leave.
The name Vazov is a cultural and ideological password of the Bulgarians.
Vazov is the height of national romanticism and intuitive fears of the iron cages of the modern world, of the world of money, markets and scandals.
Patriarch Vazov confidently spoke the lofty words around which our collective destiny is centered. This makes him one of the most significant architects of Bulgarian national identity, a great builder of community spirit.
Vazov sang the romantically beautified image of the Bulgarian people – as a guarantor of values and a tireless traveler on the roads of history.
Vazov wrote “Epic of the Forgotten” to remind us that collective memory is the supreme guarantor of our historical existence. Collectives live through heroic narratives and perish in shameful silences. The day we stop telling about our high deeds and glorify our great heroes, we will cease to exist.
Vazov sang the sweetness of the Bulgarian language to convince us that the word is the place where scattered people gather and become a nation.
Vazov was moved to tears by the beauty of Bulgarian nature to show us that national communities do not live in natural conditions, but in cultural conventions – in a symbolic geography. The Balkan ceases to be a mountain range and becomes a hero of drama and epic, guardian of destinies and inspirer of exploits.
Vazov urged us to urgently look into the cracks opened between ideals and reality, to suffer from the spiritual and moral deficiency. The patriarch is not only a rapturous singer of the sublime, he is a biased critic of the wretchedness and ugliness of this world.
Vazov bequeathed us to be socially engaged – to be able to abandon the sofria and set fire to our houses in the name of freedom. The novel “Under the yoke” tells about how the private choruses of foresight and fear turn into crazy heads and a drunken people. The most crazy heads in this novel are driven precisely by heroic rage, the one that Giordano, burned at the stake, sang four centuries ago Bruno.
In moments of deepest despair, Botev called “idiots” those foresights who sat at home and wrapped up their fears. Let’s remember that in its deep “Greek” roots, the word “idiot” names exactly that – the private person who does not interested in common affairs, who sits with his back to the polis and is indifferent to its fate.For the ancient Greeks, this behavior became synonymous with a person of weak mind, and the sophists developed exactly this meaning in the word.
Last but not least, Vazov bequeathed to the “flock” the power of love and the energy of optimism. Without love for people and for the Motherland, I am nothing – this is the basic paraphrase of the Apostle Paul. Without the belief that the world will be different, that the people will grew and that Bulgaria will remain in the centuries, life is meaningless and value impossible.
And let’s ask the question again – “What is Vazov today?”
An old cliché tries to convince us – the Canon is a list of books that everyone respects, but no one reads. According to this logic, Vazov is read less and less despite the periodic seizures of a society jealous of lists and names.
Vazov is outdated, we are told, and cannot speak to the modern worldview. It increasingly becomes a “great shadow” embedded in the foundations of the ideological “church”. They said similar things more than a hundred years ago, when they included Vazov in the lists of the “old” to boast how different and advanced the “young” are. Today, if we read it carefully, we will be convinced of the opposite – how “young” and up-to-date in values Vazov is, in contrast to his aggressive cosmopolitan opponents.
The canon is alive because there are still understanding minds, not because hysterical voices praise it. The canon is a spiritual and dialogic space, not a chest of incorruptible dead and priceless creations guarded by angry nationalist militias.
Vazov is increasingly relevant in a country whose symbolic geography is shrinking and about to disappear under the layers of vulgarity, collective ineptitude and cultivated amnesia.
Vazov is more and more relevant in the days when the high symbolic space of the Bulgarian language is mired in the talentlessness of cynicism and the weakness of clichés. Where our collective future is described as a “long-term strategy” with no way out, and the worst enemies of Bulgarians are other “bad” Bulgarians.
Vazov is more and more relevant in successive conformist times, when love for Russia is personally denounced by the commander-in-chief of Bulgaria, the “tsar”, as the most shameful betrayal of our national interests.
In the eras of value disorientation, the old passwords of belonging (“I am Bulgarian…”) are reborn as parodies and harden into postures of servility (“I am an obedient international monkey, guardian of communist/European/American and other values”) .
What Vazov is today depends on us and only us.
Another name in the epic of the forgotten.
Or a meaningful spiritual experience that will help us walk on the side of good and truth, and not descend headlong into the valleys of lies, hatred and evil.
Growing darkness in the wardrobe of national symbols, opened on holidays, anniversaries and other sentimental events.
Or a responsibility that, even tomorrow, the country of Bulgaria can be more than a geographical concept and a geopolitical bridgehead.
Man is not just a given, a biological fact, a philosopher said, he is the ceaseless effort to be human.
This effort was bequeathed to us by Patriarch Vazov – the effort to be people with an identity, Bulgarians… The effort to be citizens, not idiots.
#Vazov #canon #alive
