Bulgarian Literature - Bulgarian Literature After 1944

Bulgarian Literature After 1944

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". Dimitar Dimov (1909-1966) was forced to revise his best-selling novel Tobacco (1952), adapted for cinema as the 1962 film Tobacco, to make it acceptable from the viewpoint of socialist realism by adding Communists and working-class characters and storylines.

The writer Dimitar Talev (1898-1966) was also prevented by the communist regime to publish his novels. Similarly to many other intellectuals, he was exiled to the province but continued to write. His best known work is The Iron Oil Lamp (1952).

Both Dimov and Talev were also renowned story-tellers with many story collections along with their novels. At the same time, even so early after the communists came to power, the development of their careers showed the ideological restrictions which writers had to face in the future.

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. Their works form the main novelesque body in the modern Bulgarian literature.

Some genres were almost sentenced to death like the crime fiction and the science fiction as very few writers cultivated them (Svetoslav Minkov, Pavel Vezhinov, Svetoslav Slavchev, Lyuben Dilov). Generally writers were tempted (or forced to) turn to realist or historical subjects. Allegorical theater comedies and dramas became a skillful way to evade censure which could cost the writers a ban to be published, repressions, exiles, a sentence to prison or even to concentration camp.

In fact, the Bulgarian national prose was quite, but not completely isolated from western literature and the ideas of surrealism, expressionism, existentialism, postmodernism, structuralism and the other theoretical paradigms. The avant-garde literature movements were scarcely and unsystematically represented until the 80s. Experiments with language and form were widely regarded as non-conforming with the principals of the dominant ideology and aesthetics. The political belonging and convictions of a writer became a leading feature for the judgement of his works; separate books were banned and some writers were altogether not allowed to be published or even read.

Nevertheless the postwar period was the most plenteous for the still feeble modern Bulgarian poetry. Both after the political changes in 1944 and 1989, thousands of poetry collections were published.

Some of the poets who have won a stable respect with time are Atanas Dalchev (1904-1978) and Valeri Petrov. Dalchev is also remembered as one of the finest translators from a wide range of languages.

The general tendencies can be noticed there and further on. 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.

Other noticeable poets contributing with strong personal ideas, a distinguishable voice, a devised view upon the world and a greater originality include: Konstantin Pavlov, Boris Hristov, Ekaterina Yosifova and Dobromir Tonev.

In 1981, Elias Canetti won the Nobel prize for literature. Canetti, a German-language writer, born in the city of Ruse, Bulgaria, became the first Bulgarian to win the Nobel Prize.