480096 KO Colloquium on Bulgarian Literature (2024S)

How does an author create his own literary image to meet the expectations of the public, or to fulfil the prophecies of the critics?
The poet Pejo Javorov (1878–1914), for example, revises his works, by subjecting his entire poetic oeuvre to the idea that it is situated between extraverted-social poetry and hermetic symbolism. His final versions and the structure of his anthology "Podir senkite na oblacite" (1910; 1914) not only confirm the idea of the distinctive poetic/ideological boundary in his oeuvre, but by his authorial revision he places the boundary as emphasised and made irrevocable.

The poet Teodor Trajanov (1882–1945) undertakes a radical revision of his early revision of his early work from the turn of the century and he succeeds (almost completely) inremoving the conspicuous decadent layer in his poetry. It was not until the 20s of the 20th century that he developed his striking monostylistic style, a poetics of incantation and life-affirming pathos, which is assessed as authentic by researchers, and which in fact emerged from the repressed, "forgotten" resigned moods and images.

The poet Atanas Dalčev (1904–1978) consistently destroys everything in his oeuvre that could have been related to symbolist poetics. Through the fierce confrontation he creates the image of his matter-of-fact, evidently prosaicised poetry. However, the question remains as to whether he had really completely eradicated the treacherous traits of Symbolism completely eradicated in his texts.

The KO is dedicated to all conceivable speculative acts in relation to his own oeuvre: attention is focussed on the approach on how to create a credible, aesthetically conventional work that corresponds to a certain reception. The basis of the constant parallels between the different versions of the canonical texts of an author is used to analyse how the "definitive" poetics is constructed: what is deleted, what is replaced, what is emphasised. The course is designed as a discussion of the discrepancy between the processuality of writing and the determination of the final version of the work.