ALEKSANDĂR BALABANOV AND KIRIL HRISTOV: THE
DIMENSIONS OF AN ARTISTIC AND REAL-LIFE CONFLICT
Elka Traykova
(Summary)
The article traces one of the sharpest literary controversies in the 1920s,
provoked by a series of critical articles that Aleksandăr Balabanov
published in his newspaper “Razvigor”. In them, he not only denied
the talented presence of Kiril Hristov in Bulgarian literature, but also
painfully injured his personality.
The reason for the scandal was the
“Anthology” published in 1922 by the Ministry of Public Education
with selected works of the poet. In the socio-cultural and social context
in the aftermath of the First World War, Kiril Hristov’s chauvinistic
poems were associated with the horror of the national catastrophe, for
which he was also blamed. His name became an emblem of a venal
intellectual, a self-interested man, a kind of ‘a muse in uniform’.
Here are analyzed the reasons why the “Anthology” provoked a noisy
political discussion and the very unfair Balabanov’s assessment of
Hristov as ‘an ex-poet’ were unanimously supported by literary circles
with irreconcilable ideological and aesthetic positions. The article
traces the documentary, aesthetic and psychological dimensions of the
conflict that led to Hristov’s voluntary long-term emigration to Prague.
Keywords: literary scandal, poetic anthology, sociocultural and
political context, literary criticism
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