Imagining of Literature

Всеки, който малко или много се интересува от история, бива привлечен от живи и плътни образи, които остават отпечатъка си в браздите на времето. Хиляди страници са изписани за енигматични исторически фигури и когато перото е добро, фикционалният образ е еднакво обаятелен с оригинала. Това предисловие цели да похвали начина, по който историческата линия в романа „Хавра“ на З. Карабашлиев разгръща пълнокръвните образи на Вяра Елегина и Джон Макгеан. Тяхната турбулентна история, разказана през интензивната им кореспонденция, е плътна, жива, въздействаща. Читателят живее с личната им, малка история на фона на големите исторически събития и съ-преживява болките и тъгите им. Безспорно качество на романа „Хавра“ е, че създава точно тези два образа, които живеят с идеи, които познават идеали, които обличат света в красиви думи, дори и да не описват лицеприятни неща. Ерудицията, любовта към четенето и споделянето на добитото знание в разговори с подходящи събеседници, както и силата...

My first encounter with Rhys’s work was when I was a student and participated in a literary course where we watched movies based on some of the books to be discussed. This first visual comprehension of the story, which I must admit was executed brilliantly, gave me a taste of the original. I eagerly read it and though it picked my interest, it was completely overshadowed by my fascination with Angela Carter that started at the same time (Even though Carter has a loudly outspoken opinion on Rhys, I would not discuss her views here. She is not completely uninfluenced by her predecessor – in Carter’s prose there are obvious relations to Rhys’s interpretation of womanhood but I will leave that observation for another time).

      The foreword of the book states that it is “twice born” – once in English and once in Bulgarian. The reasons for this lay in the idea of the story itself: it mixes past and present in an inseparable amalgam of experience. Similarly to the author’s debut work, the novel in question is deeply nostalgic and seeks to establish the lost connection of family ties.

Съвсем инцидентно попаднах на книгата на Йоанна Батор, една напълно неизвестна за мен авторка. Странно е, че досега не съм попадала на нищо, написано от нея, като се има предвид, че сферата на академичен интерес на полякинята съвпада донякъде с моята. Батор е писала докторска дисертация, изследвайки историята на феминизма и ангажирайки теории и практики на постмодернизма. Може би тези научни опити намират израз в известното колажиране и фрагментиране на сюжета в книгата „Тъмно, почти нощ”, както и отявленото отношение на романа към детективската история и наслагването на пластове на разказване.

В навечерието на деня на жената, реших да споделя с вас няколко разсъждения и наблюдения, които с годините се натрупаха в съзнанието ми на жена. Много от моите близки и познати проявяваха и проявяват плашещо неразбиране за същността и идеята зад честването на осми март. Като млада жена често ми беше отказвано правото да празнувам празника на жената, защото повечето хора смятаха, че той е тъждествен с празник на майката. За съжаление, в представата на повечето българи жената има една водеща функция – тази на майката – и всички други безброй роли, които тя изпълнява са второстепенни.

       I have never read a book which describes a main character so different from myself and yet so similar. Quoted as an acute example of écriture feminine the author Virginia Zaharieva wrote a book well-equipped with all things “womanly” the way she lives and “survives” them. The novel “9 Rabbits” is a bricolage of poem fragments, story-telling, graphics, dreams, recollection and recipes. Cooking here has the same fundamental elements as it does in the writing of one Isabel Allende. The novel, if I have to specify a genre, is divided into two parts, which are told from the perspective of a  6-year-old Manda and 46-year-old Manda respectively.

The book of the Armenian author Narine Abgaryan written in Russian is a story that combines fairy tale charm with the sweet smell of childhood memory. It is obvious from the very beginning that the writer knows how to knit a wonderful thread of words. Her language is full of adjectives and simile and she draws strong identity picture based on upbringing, national and regional identity, on family lore and traditions. 

История и разказ в Случаят Джем на Вера Мутафчиева “Палачът груб, до лакти в кръв, не е ли чиновникът с червени ръкавели, който историята пише? Вечно с работа зает.” К . Кадийски. “Площадът на Бастилията ” Аристотел говори за разказа като m y thos . Митът , с генеративните си способности да създава и обяснява света, се родее както с литературата, така и с историята. Но разказът също може да бъде мит, както вторичният мит е литературна фикция и както писането на историята превръща нейни участъци в митологични. Опълченците на Шипка е “правене” на литературен мит, оповаващ се на ars memoriae ( лат. - изкуството на паметта) . Няма да е пресилено, дори да сведем иносказателното патетично внушение на Вазовия цикъл до изповедното Августиново възклицание: “Велика е силата на паметта!”. И за да не се отдалечаваме прекалено - Батак, като частен случай, който като синекдоха може да се отнесе към цялото Априлско въстание, е типичен пример за историческо събитие, превърнало се...

The long-lasting tradition of print has established certain patterns of comprehension. Although literature is still and probably for a long time will be considered high-brow art, it is also a business based on profit and sales. Ever since the Gutenberg press came into being literature started to sell itself to wider and wider circles of people until it gained status of mass product. Literature is commodity. As Pierre Bourdieu asks in The Field of Cultural Production “Who is the true producer of the value of the work – the painter or the dealer, the writer or the publisher, the playwright or the theatre manager?” ( Bourdieu, 76 ). 

My Memories are Vultures They seek a decaying corpse Lying in a lush green field Of forget-me-knots To tear its flesh apart and Build a nest оf sun-dried bones Which would hold white illusions Of my days that are to come My Fancy drinks the corpse’s blood And Grins to ask : “You want some more?” “Yes!”, I scream, “Yes!” “Revive that ugly monstrous flesh And fill the void that held the eye And give the blood back to the heart And color back the death-ful hair.” “Let us dance once more through the endless field, Drink the odor of a cloudless summer, Or naked swim among the soft sun-rays, Until our senses are but scattered dull, ‘Till intoxicated with ecstasy We fall laughing, stupid with happiness.” But Fancy would not have it so, O! The blood dripping off her smile It kills the flowers at her feet.

The Cinderella complex [1] and Ugly Betty The Cinderella story is one of the most popular tales with strong roots in cultures all around the globe. It was adapted and re-told multiple times eventually becoming a productive and even archetypical theme especially in Western culture. The Cinderella story is almost synonymous with the quest of a person to endure injustice and to evolve in a higher society role overcoming the odds. Similar motifs were categorized and analyzed in theory by the Russian formalist Vladimir Propp [2] and his analytical approach proved to be very influential. His work scrutinizes the folk tales and develops a pattern of well organized repeatable structures and motifs. 

I.                   Introduction Unlike Atonement , where at the very beginning the reader encounters an epigraph from Jane Austin that more or less pre-supposes intertextual clues for further reading, On Chesil Beach does not offer such accommodating leading first steps into its highly condensed narrative. Preoccupied with a single event that provides multivalent analyzing points, the dramatic intensity of the whole book is encoded in that condensed way of telling. 

We talk about literature and its essence, trying to capture the inner secret of its Beauty and Truth. Here is a vain attempt to bridge interpretation and creativity.  Villanelle for two Somewhere in Drumcondra two are holding hands Dancing in the orange light of silent streets Nothing of themselves they do demand. Only the sense of midnight pleasure to command To roam the roads and their signs to read Somewhere in Drumcondra two are holding hands. Should they take a left or a right again? It matters least, for of choice they felt all freed. Nothing of themselves they do demand. Rows of moonstruck houses their wary eyes do scan 'To be lost with you' is the essence of the creed. Somewhere in Drumcondra two are holding hands. It is what they do, it is what they can To get entranced in a moment that should fleet. Nothing of themselves they do demand. To walk the streets and the hearts to mend In night's secrecy they sometimes m...

                        The Politics of Vision and Love in Midsummer Night’s dream In an essay on Shakespeare Frank Kermode acknowledges that “the [Shakespeare] conversation must go on somehow, for when there is nothing more to say about the book the book dies, and the parasitical criticism dies with it”. It is this somewhat artificially sustained academic conversation about an author who has been so deeply and intensely studied that breeds into one a slight fit of doubt whether anything new and exciting could be added to the vast volume of Shakespeare criticism. Bearing it in mind, I have decided to let my own close-reading suggest the textual problems that would require interpretation in an attempt to stray away from simply echoing other people’s work. Love is a centralling force in Midsummer Night’s Dream - being the power that is requisite for unity...

For centuries human beings try to answer difficult questions related to their origin and their purpose. Myth, later literature and arts are used to explore the topic and to enlighten or add to the matter extra doubt. Led by their insatiable desire to reveal, discover, invent people fulfill the mythopoetic role given to them in the Bible - God-like creatures destined to long for the lost divinity and trying to become demiurges.

Summer time! What better way to celebrate the summer than reading? To do it on the beach, of course! A list of fine summer readings that I strongly recommend: 1.“Passion” by Jeannette Winterson This book discusses universal questions concerning the meaning of life and love. It focuses on the lukewarm people and their search of a particular passion that will lit their existence. The quest of finding the answers is held at the maze-like Venice with its secrets and powerful enigma. You will meet such interesting characters - Villanelle that has webbed feet and whose heart beats separately from her body or Henry - the sane madmen, that you will be enchanted and puzzled and eventually made to think and re-think.

Angela Carter – Heroes and Villains “If the Barbarians are destroyed, who will we then be able to blame for the bad things?”  Angela Carter was born in 1940 and she joked with her mother who insisted that she had learnt for her pregnancy in the very day The Second World War was declared. Angela Carter won several literary awards, The Somerset Maugham Award being one of them. She is often described as a neo-Gothic author and a feminist. Before her death caused by cancer, Carter was working on a sequel of “Jane Eyre”, which draws an interesting literary kinship between her and Jean Rhys, alongside the one with Charlotte Bronte. The 20th century British writer can be described by the help of many adjectives, but despite the number they still will not be enough. Not only is she a prolific writer but also a journalist, author of several screenplays (some – adaptations of her short stories to the big screen). She studied English literature at University of Bristol. Her fluency ...

The beauty of literature is its capacity to entreat various, often contradictory readings the multiplicity of which seemingly betray that "standard" meaning. If literature grants the possibility of its own multi-understanding, how are we, as readers, to guide ourselves through its maze of words, avoid the dead ends and eventually reach the exit? There is no plan for this maze, no preconceived idea. To enter it with an array of prejudices is an instance of a lack of tact. Illuminating as most of the critical approaches have been, most of them suffer from the same impediment of being highly deterministic. Psychoanalytics,the blackmailers as Sartre dubbed them, see Oedipal complex in every story that has a man involved in it and Marxists tend to be oversensitive to the market economy and capitalism. They seek for predetermined answers rather than let literature guide their findings. Literature breeds its own conventions and to impose a ready-made interpretative model is, to say...

The following was written for a university assignment, hence its short volume and loose formality despite which I think of it as a decent and modest contribution to the blog. I believe a student should entertain a slight suspicion so as not to have his thoughts lured by the exuberant display of seemingly acute arguments which, try as they might to conceal it, serve to assert the marketing of a “right” way to read. It has been widely assumed that through his visionary poems Blake establishes a kind of social system of beliefs, a collective mode for experiencing the world through which the individual embraces his past and makes sense of his present; that he establishes a mythology. But what impresses me, and consequently intrigues me, is the role Blake as an author holds within his visionary work. It is a somewhat unsettling business to point to something which is obvious: what we have in Blake is no more than mythopoeia – “the conscious creation of a myth. The appr...

My first impression of one of the most praised Ian McEwan’s books - “Atonement”- was not very positive. But as time passed and I thought a little more of the story and the idea I came to the conclusion that after all the book is not that cliché. What I found intriguing was the idea of the authorship seen through the states of maturing. What I mean is that the process of writing is linked with the process of growing. In other words, the unstable carried away lost in fantasies young Briony and her fairy-tale-like writing concerned with twisting and reinventing the reality changes through the years in a sensitive, profound, searching answers and atonement writing.