Bulgarian literature
[1] Notable modern Bulgarian works of literature are The Peach Thief by Emiliyan Stanev, September by Geo Milev, Under The Yoke by Ivan Vazov, The Windmill by Elin Pelin, and Depths by Dora Gabe.
Evtimiy founded the Tarnovo Literary School that significantly affected the literature of Serbia and Muscovite Russia, as many writers fled abroad after the Ottoman conquest.
It was an earlier stage of the Bulgarian Renaissance and the most prominent poets at this time were: Vasil Drumev, Rayko Zhinzifov and Dobri Chintulov.
Rakovski's best-known work, Gorski Patnik (translated as A Traveller in the Woods or Forest Wanderer) was penned during the Crimean War (1853–56) while hiding from Turkish authorities near the town of Kotel.
[4] A typical feature of the period was the increase of the interest in Bulgarian folklore, as figures like the Miladinov brothers and Kuzman Shapkarev made collections of folk songs and ethnographic studies.
One of his most significant collections of poems is The Epopee of the Forgotten (1881–1884), consisting of 12 odes dedicated to the heroes of the Bulgarian history and the images and ideas which should be remembered.
Similarly to Švejk of the Czechs, Tartarin of Tarascon of the French and Ostap Bender for the Russian peoples, Bay Ganyo is a collective image of many typical Bulgarian features.
A person of European education and manners, he manages to modernize the Bulgarian drama and also wrote a series of powerful impressionist stories based on folklore motives, titled Idylls.
They have diverse and original forms, and rich and refined language; they are largely introspective, express the loneliness of the modern man, the impossibility to reach happiness and love in life, the constant threat and presentiment of death.
Under the influence of the French and the Russian symbolist movements, there were other popular Bulgarian poets, quite a large number, who contributed to the fast-paced literary development in the country in the first decades of the 20th century.
A great part of them is associated with the figure and the activity of Geo Milev (1895–1925) who published the modernist magazine Vezni (Scale), in Sofia, contributing as a poet, translator, theatre reviewer, director, editor of anthologies and even as a painter.
His skillful poems (The Cruel Ring (1920); The Icons Sleep (1922); September (1923)) and prose pieces (A Little Expressionist Calendar for the Year (1921)) combine traditional motives, modern ideas and experimental language.
Bulgarian prose flourished in the period between the world wars mainly because of the stories and the short novels of Elin Pelin (1877–1949) and Yordan Yovkov (1880–1937).
Both of them focus on the rural life, but Yordan Yovkov is known for his fondness of traditions and myths, while Elin Pelin is more light-hearted and witty; the latter is also a famous writer of children literature.
A remarkable writer of historical novels, Fani Popova-Mutafova reaches the peak of her popularity before the Second World War but despite her talent, suffers repressions from the communist regime after it.
Another figure which can hardly be forgotten from this period is the humorous writer and drawer Chudomir (1890–1967) whose short stories (often no longer than 3–4 pages) are brilliant both in style and originality.
After the Second World War Bulgarian literature fell under the control of the Communist Party and, particularly in the early years, was required to conform to the style called "Socialist realism".
Anton Donchev, Yordan Radichkov, Emiliyan Stanev, Stanislav Stratiev, Nikolay Haytov, Ivailo Petrov and Vera Mutafchieva are among the most talented and respected writers who managed to publish their books during the communist regime in the decades to come.
In fact, the Bulgarian national prose was not completely isolated from western literature and the ideas of surrealism, expressionism, existentialism, postmodernism, structuralism and the other theoretical paradigms.
The poetry becomes more intimate and confessional, and requires more invention in order to influence or provoke; nevertheless sometimes originality turns into an end in itself; the free verse allowed higher intensity of language and diversity of forms; abstractness increased and started affecting the balance between philosophical depth and clearness; the search of lyricism is sometimes more evident than the meaning of the poems.
The gradual change from communism to capitalism in the Eastern Bloc and the Fall of Berlin Wall in 1989 was followed by a considerable increase in the modern publishing both of state and private publications, as well as a complicated distribution at periods, and a consequent seemed as devaluation compared to communist status that was well established as part of the communist ideology and cultural praxis of the writer’s social status at middle 90s altogether.
Sometimes the lack state ideological dogmatism of national consensus and the emerging new ideas, novelist areas and writing styles were producing mainly experimental attitude without much need for literary criticism in Bulgaria or for overscope on literary topics, are yet other factors that make it difficult or near impossible to distinguish those more famous or influential experimenting authors, the genuine ones, or those who served the communist state ideology who only slightly changed their paradigmatic ways together with younger voices in literature and writing.
Some of them include: Konstantin Pavlov, Boris Hristov, Ekaterina Yosifova, Dobromir Tonev, Edvin Sugarev, Ani Ilkov, Georgi Gospodinov, Iana Boukova and Kristin Dimitrova.
