Classical Receptions Journal Vol 5. Iss. 3 (2013) pp. 299–319
Antiquity after antiquity: a (post) modern
reading of antiquity in Bulgarian poetry
Yoana Sirakova*
Only after the democratic transition in Bulgaria in the late 1980s was the concept of
the classical tradition, conceived as an ancient legacy, mobilized in a more or less
conscious search for a cultural identity that could be traced back to common
European roots.1 The present study traces the peculiar and inventive reception of
antiquity in the poetry of post-communist Bulgaria. I focus on two poetry collections
by the Bulgarian poet Kiril Merjanski (born in 1959), which, by reinventing ancient
epitaphs, articulate political concerns and cultural aspirations that were current in
Bulgaria at the end of the twentieth century. Merjanski’s poetry reflects a specific
attitude towards the near and more remote Bulgarian historical past while at the
same time aiming at rediscovering mislaid traditions. What is more, problems
related to historical memory are interwoven with a sense of the worthlessness of life
in the new cultural and political milieu, as well as with a sense of freedom and
shattered hopes for a new and better beginning. Both poetry collections represent
the shift and the contrast between an apparently fixed and stable society and the
instability of society in the present, and deal with global phenomena such as exile,
migration, and wandering, which are characteristic of the modern geopolitical
spectrum on the millennial borderline.
Antiquity after antiquity: the poetic reworking of ancient material sources
The example of Merjanski2 demonstrates the importance of the materiality of classical antiquity for classical receptions in contemporary Bulgarian poetry.
Characteristically, Kiril Merjanski’s book Selected Epitaphs from the Decline of the
Roman Empire touches on one of the more problematic aspects of the relationship
between contemporary Bulgarian society and the legacy of classical antiquity,
* Correspondence: Department of Classics, Sofia University ‘St. Kliment Ohridski’, Sofia,
Bulgaria. [email protected]
1 The Bulgarian search for communication with European and world culture can be traced
back to the Bulgarian Renaissance in the eighteenth century, when attempts were made to
find points of contact between ethnic groups within the Slavic–Bulgarian nation and
Classical antiquity. The connection of Bulgarian people with global culture through
antiquity has been emphasized as one of the main trends in the search for national
identity, together with the attempt to bind the Bulgarian nation to Christian civilization,
and with the quest for the Indo-European roots of the Bulgarian ethnos (Aretov
2006: 35).
2 The name of the poet may also be transcribed as Kiril Merdzhanski.
ß The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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doi:10.1093/crj/clt023
YOANA SIRAKOVA
namely the idea of rewriting and reinventing traditions. The lack of traditions does
not mean that they could not be (re)invented. However, Merjanski’s poems do not
search for a reconstruction of the past but for a construction of the present by means
of the past, as the collection presents a mingling of actual memories and creative
thought. By rejecting grand narratives and favouring mini-narratives, the stories
narrated in this collection refer to everyday practices, life experiences and local
events, and allude to a number of large-scale universals, thus creating a deep tension
between the details of ordinary life and the dominant themes of human existence.
Although at first sight the stories might seem contingent, provisional, situational,
and confined to an individual lifespan, ultimately they do make claims to universality
and eternity. The Selected Epitaphs adopt both a diachronic viewpoint on the otherness and remoteness of antiquity, and a synchronic viewpoint on the identity of the
featured characters and the narrated stories, which are linked and enclosed within
the geographic territory of the Bulgarian lands.
In contrast to other territories of Central and Eastern Europe, where the heritage
of antiquity did not manifest itself in any material form,3 the territory of Bulgaria has
proved to be quite a rich source of artefacts. However, the fact that the Bulgarian
lands used to be part of the Roman provinces and the Roman Empire has been
largely ignored and marginalized, while at the same time the importance of the
Thracian cultural tradition in the 70s and the 80s of the last century has been
highlighted. In contrast, in Merjanski’s Selected Epitaphs, which appeared on the
Bulgarian literary scene as a separate edition4 in 1992 and were incorporated in a
poetry collection entitled Antiquity after Antiquity in 2004, the emphasis is on the
significance of Bulgarian contact with Roman culture and history.
One of the most frequently used ancient literary forms in Bulgarian poetry is that
of the funeral inscription and its first instances may be traced back to the Liberation
(1878) and post-Liberation poetic tradition. The varying epitaphic usages find their
expression in two major aspects of the literary genre, tracing its development from
the panegyric to the satirical register. For Hristo Botev5 (Epitaphs 1873), Ivan
Vazov6 (Epitaph/Gusla 1881), Hristo Smirnenski7 (Epitaphs or Funeral Orations
for Leaders Most Ungracious 1920), the epitaph serves as a powerful tool for public
exposure while for Pencho Slaveykov8 (Epitaph9/On the Island of the Blessed 1910)
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Axer (2007: 137).
Merjanski (1992).
Hristo Botev (1848–76).
Ivan Vazov (1850–1921).
Hristo Smirnenski (1898–1923).
Pencho Slaveykov (1866–1912).
This epitaph praises and muses over the role and glory of the poet and differs from the
remaining eighteen epitaphs, included in the anthology On the island of the blessed (1910),
even though it demonstrates points of contact with primary ancient sources by the
inclusion of the characteristic motif of addressing the passing traveller.
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and Peyo Yavorov10 (Epitaph/After the clouds’ shadows 1910), the satirical mode is
replaced with moral and humanistic trends, true to the spirit of individualism,
typical of the day. From amongst these poets Slaveykov may be considered of
greater interest in view of the parallels and interaction between the ancient and
the modern, particularly evident in the eighteen epitaphs that are included in the
same anthology, presented under the authorship of the sexton Vitan Gabar11
(Epitaphs/On the Island of the Blessed 1910). Although engaged with the description
of characters from Bulgarian reality, by their very sprit and the sheer number of
specific motifs, Slaveykov’s epitaphs are reminiscent of ancient gravestone inscriptions: the idea of life’s transience, the caducity of the body, the address to the
traveller passing by the grave, the mention of details from the life of the deceased
— name (even though most of Slaveykov’s epitaphs are anonymous), profession and
social status (Slaveykov talks of a mayor, porter, judge, ragger, craftsman, a poet . . . )
as well as relatives, and wealth.
Since the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, the
epitaphic form has been exploited more intensively in Bulgarian literature: 1992 saw
the appearance of two volumes of poetry by Kiril Merjanski (Selected epitaphs from
the decline of the Roman empire) and Plamen Doynov (Post festum. Funeral inscriptions
and poems) while during the first decade of the new millennium, Roman Kisyov
(born in 1962) included two cycles of epitaphs in his volumes of selected poetry,
namely Kriptus (2004) and Voices (2009). All three poets demonstrate widely varying
approaches to the classical form of the epitaph, not only in relation to each other but
also in relation to the above-mentioned practice of appropriating the epitaph as an
inter-text. Veiled under the mask of real personalities12 and experienced situations,
10 Peyo Yavorov (1878–1914).
11 ‘Gabar’s epitaphs have never been printed. Reverend Mirko, the youngest priest at the
St. Tarapontii church, has long intended to collect and publish a book of these epitaphs,
which are known all over the Island, but up to now he hasn’t done anything and nobody
knows why . . . It is still the graveyard of the St. Tarapontii church that is the real book
which keeps the works of this original poet and each gravestone – and there are 5–6
hundred of them – is a page from that book bearing one epitaph’ (Vitan Gabar/ On the
island of the blessed 1910). It is worth noting the idea of the graveyard scenery as a specific
framework and source for the re-interpreted funeral orations as well as the fact that they
are ‘translations’ (Kiril Merjanski describes his epitaphs in the same way). Similarly,
another modern Bulgarian poet Plamen Doynov (born in 1969) captivates and invites
his reader to read his gravestone inscriptions and poems within the realm and the calm of
the graveyard (Post Festum 1992).
12 The titles of Plamen Doynov’s epitaphs bear the names of the dead, the dates of their
birth and death and — sometimes — their professions. With this feature they remind one
of the most well-known anthologies with epitaphs in world literature (Spoon River
Anthology 1915), written by the American writer Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950),
which includes over 200 lyrical forms and gravestone poems, most of which are dedicated
to people who the author knew personally and which paint a picture of the daily life in the
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YOANA SIRAKOVA
Plamen Doynov broods over death and the material, the bodily and the spiritual,
thus constantly trespassing against the borders of reality and artistic conventions. In
contrast to Plamen Doynov and Kiril Merjanski, Roman Kisyov has receded farthest
from the conventions of the classical epitaph, presenting types rather than individuals in his funeral inscriptions. The short lyrical forms are dedicated to the child, the
sceptic, the artist, the blind, the banished or the star-gazer. Kisyov’s depiction of
characters repeatedly transcends the limits of personal intimate lyrics, reaching
towards human universals.
One specific feature of Kiril Merjanski’s poetry — and this is what distinguishes
him from all other poets using funeral inscriptions in their work — is his very notion
of the epitaph as being not only a literary form, but also a physical, material form and
a source of poetic re-actualization and reconstruction. By the unexpected combination of ancient formulae and contemporary concepts, Merjanski is the only writer
who draws on the subject matter of the appropriated form. In Merjanski’s case the
dialogue between the ancient and the modern is particularly intense in the way in
which it aims to encompass both the ancient culture being appropriated and the
modern-day recipient traditions.
Despite the fact that they do not represent a reception of ancient literary sources,
Kiril Merjanski’s Selected Epitaphs can still be considered a specific kind of literary
reception of classical antiquity. The full ‘original’ Latin title of the Selected Epitaphs,
Carmina sepulcralia ad ocassum imperii Romani pertinentia vidit in loco incerto Cyrillus
Merjanski idem in Bulgaro convertit, refers both to the specific role of the author as a
historian, an archaeologist and a translator, and to the fictitious character of his finds.
The claim for (simulated) authenticity has been repeatedly pointed out in the notes
to the poems.
Selected Epitaphs constitutes an example of a literary reception of classical material
culture and ancient historical documents as a means of preserving classical traditions. These traditions have been recovered not only through archaeological and
historical enquiries, but also through being reworked and rewritten in contemporary
Bulgarian poetry. Merjanski’s attachment to ancient historical and archaeological
sources and literature acquires specific cultural connotations which stem from his
background in ancient history and his career. In the beginning of the 1980s he
received a degree in Ancient and Medieval History from Sofia University and
started teaching at the recently established National Lyceum of Classical
Languages and Cultures. As a result, his stance on classical materials has been
characterized by an element of duality as he looks at ancient sources not only
from a historical perspective, but also from the point of their poetic reframing.
Along with some other Bulgarian poets of the 1990s, Kiril Merjanski is identified
as a post-modern author in contemporary Bulgarian literary scholarship.13 He is a
small fictional town of Spoon River. By contrast with Plamen Doynov, who uses
Bulgarian names, Kiril Merjanski titles his poems with ancient names.
13 Doynov (2007).
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A (POST)MODERN READING OF ANTIQUITY IN BULGARIAN POETRY
collector, a translator, and a scholar, and his epitaphs are accompanied by notes and
expert commentaries. Merjanski pretends to have seen the inscriptions, that is, the
stones themselves, and to have translated them. The translations, however, are
translations without an original (so-called pseudo-translations). Last but not least,
they have been published in accordance with the conventions of editing classical
texts, with line numbers printed next to the text. Their content and their ‘archaeological and historical value’ have been commented on by the author/scholar. Thus,
every epitaph stands for both the copy and the (non-existing) original as a real postmodern simulacrum.
The technique of aesthetic mystification is not concealed in the texture of the
poems, but is made explicit even while the poetry simulates its own originality.
Paradoxically, mystification serves to demystify and tease out the illusive and allusive ancient originals. Obviously, Merjanski’s epitaphs can be characterized by some
of the emblematic features required by mystification models: they represent unknown epigraphic documents that have been discovered and translated, the only
element of uncertainty being the locus incertus in which they were found. All lacunae
are strictly registered either by dots in the text or by additional notes. Hence, the
macro-textual frame of the poems has been sketched, embedding not only the text
itself but also the notes, the comments and the indications of the stones’ sizes and
forms. As a result, it seems as if readers are invited to visualize exhibits in a poetic
museum. The cultural hinterland that Merjanski draws on for his visually and
topographically charged poems is informed by the dominant presence of classical
antiquities in the Bulgarian landscape, combined with Bulgarian toponyms and
echoes of Christianity.
The poetry collection includes seventeen epitaphs that feature different characters
and fates. The female characters are depicted within the traditional, idealizing value
system of ancient Roman culture, with the narration carried out either by the narrator,
or in the case of Aelia’s portrayal, by her husband who has dedicated the epitaph to her:
Aelia – vixit annos XXIX (Aelia – aged 29)
She was a loyal Roman
my truest and most faithful friend;
she always met me with joyous smile (12–14)
And even though she did not cook
(a typical Roman in her austerity)
my favourite dishes
she was an excellent housekeeper:
thrifty, modest, agreeable and deft;
but also arch, affectionately funny
whenever for another gift she needed money; (20–27)14
14 Kiril Merjanski’s epitaphs are translated from Bulgarian by Kalina Filipova (not
published).
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YOANA SIRAKOVA
Aelia’s epitaph provides readers with clear thematic references to a famous epitaph
from the town of Nikopol (northern Bulgaria) which was also dedicated to a woman
named Aelia. The passages from Merjanski’s poem recall, plainly and with subtle
irony, the following episodes from the Latin epitaph:
Qualis enim fuerit vita, quam deinde pudica,
si possem effari cithara suadere(m) ego Manes. 10
Haec primum casta, quot [t]e audire libenter
et mundi spatia Ditis quoque regia norunt.
Lar mihi haec quondam, haec spes, haec unica vita, 15
et vellet, quod vellem, nollet quoque ac si ego nollem.
Intima nulla ei, quae non mihi nota fuere.
Nec labos huic defuit, nec vellerem inscia fila,
parca manu, set larga meo in amore mariti.
Nec sine me cibus huic gratus, nec munera Bacchi, 20
consilio mira, cata mente, nobili fama.15
[She had such a life and she was so modest, only if I could with my cithara I would have
touched the hearts of the underworld’s shades. She was so chaste – you will willingly hear
that – and everyone knew it, the underworld’s god and the upper world too.
She was once my home, my hope, my only life, and she wished what I wished, and she did not
wish when I did not wish. There were no secrets of her that were unknown to me. She was
diligent and twisted threads so skilfully. She was thrifty, but generous in her love.
Neither the food nor Bacchus’ gifts were sweet to her without me. She was always giving
me wonderful advice, she had a keen mind and she was renowned for her honour.] [My
translation]
Characteristic of both female figures is their faithfulness and modesty (cf. pudica,
casta),16 their thriftiness (cf. parca manu), and archness (cf. cata mente). They are
both praised by their husbands for deftness and diligence (cf. nec labos huic defuit, nec
vellerem inscia fila). However, with witty appropriateness Merjanski gives the original character a more specific and ironic modern turn in presenting Aelia as an
‘excellent housekeeper’ and cook, and juxtaposing her thriftiness and her greed for
gifts. This particular contrast receives fuller expression in Aelia’s husband’s lament
for giving her money for ‘attar, bangles, sweet-smelling balm and ointments, and costly
henna from Numidia’.
15 Gerov (1989); and also in: Buecheler (1895).
16 Both adjectives are frequent epithets for women in Roman funeral inscriptions. They are
frequently juxtaposed to femina, coniunx, uxor or the name of the deceased woman. See in
Fr. Buecheler, Anthologia Latina sive Poesis Latinae Supplementum, Fasciculus I: for
example, 92, 96, 237, 368, B. G. Teubner, Lipsiae, 1895.
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The poet’s choice of male characters also provides an excellent point of entry into
Roman daily life. The depicted figures shape a gallery of different personages with
their personal mini-stories and actual experiences of life: Numerius Carus, a young
and literate man who ‘took to drink and put on weight’ after having been forced to earn
his living at Onocratus’ tavern; Julius Verecundus, who had apparently offended the
Emperor, is asking for mercy for his wife and for permission to bury her husband ‘as
marital devotion and fidelity require’; Naso Horatius Maurus, a ‘great poet’ with a
telling name.17
One of the main characteristics of the poetic aesthetics of epitaphs is that it is not
centred on the idea of catching up either with eternity, or with some intransient
values, as poetry tends to do when referring to ancient themes. Rather, epitaphs
focus on the moment of the ‘here and now’, and on the idea of carpe diem as it is
traditionally presented in ancient funeral inscriptions. No less crucially, ancient
material and cultural ideas prove to be almost unrecognizable in recent Bulgarian
literary criticism.18 In trying to decode and decipher them Bulgarian scholars are
much more interested in discovering universals and (post)modern ideas than in the
presence of the ancient medium, without even noticing that what is new could
sometimes ‘act as an introduction to the ancient’.19 A common interpretative
assumption is that such remaking concerns the receiving culture rather than the
culture received. The models detected on the surface of Merjanski’s poetic interpretations belong to the epitaphic genre as they present the reconstruction of quasiscientific practices of archaeology and textual criticism, and the mixing of ancient
and modern linguistic and behavioural replicas.20 These, in turn, emerge from the
intermingling of Latin formulas and words within the texture of the poems.
Furthermore, a set of ancient patterns could be identified throughout the poems’
narratives. They all record in a detailed and over-explicit manner facts and details
from the lives of the deceased, either through fictitious first-person narration,
or through the voice of the narrator. Behind (and before) those deaths there lie
17 Obviously he is of African origin (Maurus), but his name is also a combination of the
names of Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC to 17 AD) and Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 BC–
8 BC). At the same time, one of the notes to the epitaph informs readers that the name of
this poet is known to the audience only from his funeral inscription.
18 Bulgarian literary scholarship has tended to focus on the turn to antiquity as a technique
for validating poets’ and writers’ philosophical and existential concepts (Likova 2001;
Manchev 2002; Doynov 2007; Antov 2010). Accordingly, there has been an emphasis on
post-modern ideas and stylistic devices. Little attention has been paid to the two-way
historical dialogue between ancient Greece and Rome and contemporary Bulgaria. For
this reason Bulgarian classicists have much to contribute the study of classical receptions
in modern Bulgarian poetry.
19 Hardwick and Stray (2008: 3).
20 Doynov (2007: vol. 2, 125).
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YOANA SIRAKOVA
meticulously recorded lives that allude to different philosophies and stories that
abound in ancient gods and historical personages. So far, Merjanski seems to be on
the right track to a traditional reading of Latin inscriptions. However, the fact that
he chooses the epitaph form for his poetic inventions provides the poet with a
powerful and poignant tool for combining ancient conceptions with more or less
existential modern perceptions which intersect in the image of Fatum (Fate) that is
tangibly present throughout the poetry collection. Fatum is a crucial agent in human
life that marks the movement from illusion to disillusion (e.g. Oh, life and people, and
cruel fate (Julius Ianuarius, 1); the envious malevolence of Fatum (Aelia, 4). Although
they have been regarded as personal, the poems also recall universal themes. Rather
than impeding, the personalizing mode invokes and invites a parallel between ancient and modern by appealing to poignant universal experiences. For example,
consider Merjanski’s use of the carpe diem motif, familiar from ancient Greek and
Roman epitaphs, in the following epitaph:
20 So hear my advice, my friend,
take everything from this confused world –
without remainder. (Julius Januarius, 20–22)
The futility and vanity of living are recurrent themes in Merjanski’s collection,
while other verses seem to offer belated commemoration for a previously neglected
death (Who was Numerius Carius?/And what is it all about? (Numerius Carus, 16–17);
if death’s the end/is life worth living? (Nardus, 15–16)). Through his characters the
poet muses on happiness and unhappiness, baths, wine, offices, and love that provide meaning to life and become causes of death. However, in the Selected Epitaphs
worthless death ultimately echoes worthless life.
And yet, the most distinctive aspects of Merjanski’s response to ancient epitaphic
scripts are irony and parody. They become a prevailing feature in his elaboration,
permutation and mystification of classical themes and at once over-dramatize (or
rather un-dramatize) the existential human concerns about death and life.
Notwithstanding the variety of the individuals who they commemorate, ancient
funeral inscriptions are highly traditional and formulaic. By saturating these ancient
formulae with small, insignificant details, Merjanski subverts the original form.
Appropriating the laconic and trivial form of epitaphs, the poet tells his readers
something that stones could not tell. And yet, quasi linguistic analyses and philological scrutiny obscure the primary concern of the narratives: real-life stories and
exciting human fortunes. If everything in extant ancient Roman epitaphs seems
legitimate and full of dignitas, conversely Merjanski foregrounds the banality of
everyday life.
Parody takes different paths, often directed toward both antiquity and modernity.
In Selected Epitaphs it is the irony that provides the medium for linking different
discourses, times and epochs. Thus among the elements parodied are the notion of
the chastity of Roman women and the importance of ancient funeral rituals.
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The tomb of the vestal virgin Porcia Serena is defaced as if it reflects her broken
vow of chastity. In addition to the initial inscription (‘in larger letters’ as specified in
the ‘text edition’) forewarning travellers (and readers) of the fact that the plot and
the ground are cursed and that the punishment for performing funeral rites is death,
three other inscriptions suggestive of popular graffiti culture have been scribbled by
unknown persons:
I did perform triple
funeral rites – but no one saw me!
So you can’t do anything about it, stupid assholes!
An indignant citizen of Rome
And I shitted!
Fulvius Cerulatus
(In very large letters across the entire width of the tombstone)
MESSALINA IS A WHORE!
Merjanski’s poetic voices also resonate with reminiscences of the near past and
references to the present. Submerged references allude, more or less explicitly, to
problematic aspects of life in the socialist and totalitarian systems. Thus, Flavius
Victorinus confesses about his visiting the lupanarium too often ‘and what is worse,
using municipal cash’ but he is also proud of being promoted to the post of procurator
for he has always informed the delator (the note to the term indicates that this is an
informer), without fail, of everything he overheard in the tavern. He further explains
that his eldest daughter ‘wed none other than the frumentarius/(his secret office was no
secret to us)’ as the accompanying note clarifies that a frumentarius is an officer in the
secret service.
Parodying past, history and historical patriotism is among the central tendencies
in Bulgarian literature in the 1990s. A note to the epitaph of Martia Paulina parodies
the tendency in Bulgarian cultural politics of the last decades of the twentieth century to search for the ancient origins and identity of the Bulgarian population and to
foreground its cultural and historical achievements. The commentary points to the
‘high degree of cultural development of the people inhabiting our (i.e. Bulgarian) lands
during that period’. This conclusion has been drawn on the basis of the occurrence of
a caesura penthemimeres in the inscription. The mention of a ‘precious slab of marble
from Carrara’ on which the epitaph of the ‘great poet’ Naso Horatius Maurus has
been engraved reveals merely a ‘typical example of hyperbole’ and turns out to be a
‘simple sandstone from the Lom21 region of Bulgaria’ as indicated by the notes of the
poet/archaeologist.
21 Lom is a town situated in north-western Bulgaria on the right bank of the Danube. The
town can be traced back to an ancient village founded by the Thracians with the name of
Artanes, and subsequently settled as the Roman fortress Almus (29 AD).
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YOANA SIRAKOVA
Insofar as the inscriptions ‘discovered’ by the poet date from the period of the
decline of the Roman Empire, Christian resonances are to be expected. Accordingly,
in the epitaph of the slave-masseur of the Vestal virgin the Elysian Fields blend with
Christian Heaven. Eliahzar describes hearing Porcia’s voice while she was being
buried and was calling him to Elysium where they will roam in the ‘grassy meadows’
and will be ‘happy and forever young’. What is more, since he has already ‘put up a
cross’, has repented of his sin (the seduction of the Vestal virgin) and has praised the
Lord, he finally becomes a Christian and takes the road to Heaven, which makes
their common wish ultimately unrealizable. The paradoxical plot comes to a
humorous climax with the appeal to the ‘madding world’:
Oh, madding world, farewell!
No one can put you right but our Lord Jesus
even if he is from Galilee, and a Samaritan
25 (and of uncertain parentage)
and ends with the ironic linguistic mishmash ‘Hallelujah! Chaere! Vale!’
mixing even further the psychological map, overturning identities and drawing on
the interplay of Christianity, Greekness, and Romanness. Merjanski’s poem ‘provides evidence’ about the process of construction of individual identities in this
Roman province, for it points to the parallel existence of Greek, Roman,
Christian (and indigenous) identity in a funerary context. In a broader perspective, the epitaph reflects on the cultural hybridity of Romanness under the
Roman empire. It also illustrates how this peculiar hybridity manifests itself
in material culture and, despite the parodying and ironic mode, demonstrates a
way in which mixed cultural identities could be expressed. From the encounter
between different cultures comes a cultural hybrid that draws from the various
cultural spheres, but also stands on its own. The ‘funerary inscription’ of
Merjanski uses language to communicate a shared Greco-Roman heritage already
under the rise and growth of Christianity.22 The way in which the cultural intersection is represented by the Bulgarian poet provides modern readers with insight
into the concept of identity and self-perception, both in ancient and post-modern
times.
The closing inscription differs in several aspects from all the other epitaphs in
the book and provides readers with a peculiar poetic reflection which has
implications for the life of the poet. Half of the tombstone on which the epitaph
was chiselled is missing, therefore numerous lacunae tear the narrative to
pieces prompting the reader to grasp omitted snatches and reconstruct the whole
picture.
22 On the interaction of Latin and Greek in Thrace, see Sharankov (2011).
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A (POST)MODERN READING OF ANTIQUITY IN BULGARIAN POETRY
year
fear
strife
but life
5 like a dove
without love
useless and deserted
to the utmost exerted
and though I loved her dearly
10 only myself I blame, my darling
hardly sad, abandoned and alone
in the dark trap of the ergasterium
my consolation is that on this strong stone
my name will live for long! This was ordered
15 in my lifetime. Ave!
The poem contains no mention of ancient topics, mythological, or historical characters. Since the epitaph was written during the person’s lifetime, no particular cause
of death has been provided. Only two linguistic touches (ergasterium and Ave) refer to
and hint at a classically themed poem. The plot is characterized by a complex mix of
authenticity, ambiguity, and escapism. However, paradoxically the poem’s fragmentation does not result in complete disintegration and does not prevent readers from
building and (re)figuring the ideational poetic background. The most striking interconnection between the missing sections is provided by the thirteenth and the fourteenth verses which are actually not broken up by the lacuna, but are powerfully tied
up and remind one of Horace’s Exegi monumentum (or Ovid’s nomenque erit indelebile
nostrum). Nevertheless, the ironic hints prevail over ideas of everlasting art: paradoxically, the epitaph, which is fixed to a supposedly enduring material, has not
retained the name of the poet and the stone itself has been damaged by time.
In contrast to the common use of references to antiquity as a means of displacement and dissociation from the dominant ideological and aesthetic pressure of
socialist realism and as a way of overcoming the discredited link between politics,
society and literature in the totalitarian state, in the new historical situation in the
late 1980s the epitaphs’ raison d’être is to function in the opposite direction — as a
source of attachment and integration not only in a global European context but also
in the immediate Bulgarian milieu.
Reframing the world of Virgil’s Eclogues on the millennial borderline
Our second case study diverges from the material discussed in the previous section
in that it bears signs of (at least) two ancient textus recepti. The Myth of Odysseus in the
New Bucolic Poetry by Kiril Merjanski appeared in 1997, towards the end of the last
millennium, at an important juncture in human history.23 This fact is worth
23 Merjanski (1997)
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YOANA SIRAKOVA
mentioning because the concept of the coming new age is among the key defining
elements of the poet’s aesthetic reappraisal of ancient themes and genres. Unlike
most modern Bulgarian scholars whose interpretations foreground Odysseus’ archetypal text and figure, my intention is to focus on those characteristics of the poem
that have been either ignored, or underestimated. Merjanski’s eclogues are prefaced
by two epigraphs from Virgil’s Eclogue 4 (4–7; 50–3) which have not attracted
attention in existing discussions of the poems:
Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas;
Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
Iam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna,
Iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto.24
Aspice convexo nutantem pondere mundum
Terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum;
Aspice, venturo laetentur ut omnia saeclo.
[Now comes the last age of Cumaean song; the great line of the centuries begins anew. Now
the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns; now a new generation descends from heaven
on high . . . See how the world bows with its massive dome – earth and expanse of sea and
heaven’s depth! See how all things rejoice in the age that is at hand!]25
Virgil’s Eclogue 4 predicts the return of a new Golden Age, a theme that prompts
Merjanski’s visionary recreation of pastoral images. The epigraphs are suggestive of
a reworking of Virgilian themes, specifically the idea of the Golden Age in bucolic
poetry. So Virgil still remains a ‘standard ingredient’26 in this original reworking of
the pastoral.27
Merjanski’s bucolics inventively incorporate the figure of Odysseus into an eclogue environment, a move that works because pastoral elements are not alien to
Odysseus’ wanderings and to the imagery of the Odyssey. The character of Odysseus
undoubtedly serves as an important link between poetic pieces that appear fragmented on the surface. However, these poems embody several unifying themes that
look back to Homer’s Odyssey and forward to the present: these themes include
spiritual wanderings, endless beginnings and endings, and the departures and
24 Interestingly, Joseph Brodsky also uses the first two lines of Virgil’s poem for his ‘Winter
Eclogue’, as discussed by Zara Torlone in this volume. For both poets the allusion to
Virgil becomes the inevitable signal of the genre that they are trying to rework.
25 Translations of the original Latin text are drawn from: Virgil (1916).
26 Skoie (2006: 96).
27 As Zara Torlone observes in her essay for this volume, the strict definition of pastoral is
clearly problematic and poets define its main characteristics differently from literary
critics. While Brodsky characterizes pastoral simply by three features, an exchange of
between two of more characters in a rural setting and love, Paul Alpers’ and Thomas
Rosenmeyer’s comprehensive discussions of what pastoral is and what it does are infinitely more complicated. See Rosenmeyer (1969), and Alpers (1996).
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A (POST)MODERN READING OF ANTIQUITY IN BULGARIAN POETRY
returns that fit the psychological (even psychoanalytic and Freudian) profile of the
post-modern individual so aptly. This relay between antiquity and modernity is
mediated through the peaceful and settled idyllic enclosures that draw on the
Renaissance and the humanistic insights of the ancient world’s past as an idyllic
golden age of harmony.
And yet, the subject matter of the new eclogues is not the rustic world, but rather
the fancy of mythology and the idea of the Golden Age illustrated by means of
bucolic colouring. In Merjanski’s book there are few idealized enchanted landscape
settings. As programmed by Virgil’s second epigraph, the landscape consists of
countryside, sky, and sea scapes mixed with urban elements. This vista is supplemented by the device of an always extended meditative visualization that goes
beyond the protagonists’ (and the readers’) immediate gaze. Thus the prologue to
the eclogues directs and transfers the plot of the poems to the deck of a ship and to a
seashore which symbolizes the point of departure and return:
For eyelids squinted against the sun
the journey is not a way to get somewhere.28
The idea of the journey not ending and not getting anywhere is interlinked with the
serene and calm harmony that exists between humans and nature on the shore. The
leisure scene (cf. Tityrus’ leisure in shade in Virgil’s Eclogue 1.4 — lentus in umbra)
has been further interrupted by a sudden shout ‘Look! Shark!’, thus introducing the
image of the shark that will play a pivotal role in the narrative of the poems.
Merjanski’s multiple perspectives on his poetic topic are consistent with the
considerable variety of content and the unifying role played by the concept of
the Golden Age. Here it is instructive to recall Mathilde Skoie’s reminder that
the specific meaning of the term ‘eclogue’ places emphasis on a selection from
various sources as well as signalling the diversity of an eclectic pastoral that draws
from various spheres.29 In keeping with this particular ‘process of eclectic reception’,30 every eclogue of the poet’s selection inserts numerous motifs. And yet, every
eclogue forms and retains particular thematic unity. Bucolic fragments are framed
by bucolic monologic narratives (and occasionally by dialogues) involving issues of
everyday life and the world’s circumrotation (Ecl. 1), love (Ecl. 2), departure (Ecl. 3),
Odysseus’ obscure destiny encoded in Polyphemus’ secret files (Ecl.4), Odysseus’
ontological essence (Ecl. 5), the reduction and the enlarging of the world in the eyes
of the characters (Ecl. 8), return (Ecl. 10), and death (Ecl. 9), which presents a reprise
of the pastoral motif of lament for a herdsman’s death, for example, in Virgil’s fifth
eclogue. The various thematic concerns of the poet form a unity in his seventh
28 Translations of Merjanski’s eclogues from Bulgarian are made by Holly Feldman
Karapetkova (not published).
29 Skoie (2006: 94).
30 Ibid.
311
YOANA SIRAKOVA
eclogue which strongly suggests Virgil’s Eclogue 4 celebrating the advent of the
Virgo, Saturnia regna and nova progenies.
In the Selected Epitaphs and in the confused thoughts of the characters mentioned
above, the markers of parody represent distant ancient motifs by means of recent
contemporary strata, sometimes via hints and shades of pop art. Thus, Odysseus’s
fate is ultimately concealed in Polyphemus’s secret files tellingly encoded ‘nobody’
(Ecl. 4), and a letter to Odysseus, which he never received, was written on two
cigarette papers of the trade mark Gitanes and put in a miniature bottle of
Underberg, the notes being signed in a promiscuous mixture of ancient and
modern languages ‘nemo, oudeis, Hukmo, personne, nobody’ (Ecl. 10) and clearly recalling and parodying to burlesque excess Odysseus’ answer to Polyphemus’ question in book 9 of the Odyssey.
Throughout the poems, the sense of an ending has alternated repeatedly with the
sense of beginning that alludes to the infinite world’s circle. In Merjanski’s pastoral
poetics the dynamic of closure and continuation, so characteristic of Virgil,31 is
embedded in the perpetual expectation of a Golden Age, which is, in turn, symbolized by the perpetual rotation of the earth. The protagonists experience a number of
risings and springs, which entail a powerful sense of beginning. In the first eclogue
Tityrus sings that Meliboeus, ‘sitting on the shore, reads his unclear future in the flight
of a herring gull soaring over the ocean’.
calmly I will wait for the fall,
and for the winter, and the spring.
For everything to start again.
Tityrus’ song begins in a state of reflective longing for peace and harmony from
which beginnings and ends are expelled, but ultimately strives towards a new opening, the continuous tension between the opposite views going through the seasons’
course. Parallel perceptions are revealed in the third eclogue where Tityrus’ words
‘and again it is spring’ visibly correspond with his wish ‘to be reborn with the dawn’. In
Meliboeus’ augury a more complex pattern emerges for, at first, ‘the ritual praxis of
predicting the future from the examination of the flight of birds’ presents a transparent allusion to ‘a prominent feature of the Greco-Roman lore and the mythographic traditions’ by its turning ‘attention to winged creatures as celestial agents of
communication’.32
The idea of freedom, weightlessness, and solitude represents a recurrent discursive emotive dimension in the intratextual structure of the new eclogues: in
Amaryllis’s love story in the second eclogue, her hands are depicted as ‘free and
weightless’, in the eighth eclogue Meliboeus longs to be reborn ‘free and alone’,
31 Theodorakopoulos (1997: 163).
32 Davis (2008: 407).
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A (POST)MODERN READING OF ANTIQUITY IN BULGARIAN POETRY
‘freedom is not even a conception’ for the shark as Odysseus narrates in eclogue nine,
and Odysseus himself dreams about being ‘alone’ in The departure of Odysseus from
lotus-eaters’ lands in the seventh eclogue. But the poem which is primarily concerned
with freedom is The departure of Odysseus from the third eclogue.
Freedom is not slabs of cheese
stacked against the walls of the king’s cellar.
Freedom is not a tin of Camembert,
much less a slice of processed Swiss, wrapped in plastic.
Freedom doesn’t have a taste.
It is like the air, like the water it does not make you nauseous.
If you give a loaf of bread and a knife
to a starving man, he will eat and kill.
Freedom is neither bread
nor knife.
Significantly, the concept of freedom is closely related to the ineluctable impulse to
depart, while the idea of homecoming will be associated with death in the tenth
eclogue. The two poles of departure and arrival that characterize the wanderer are
metaphorically related to the twin coordinates of autumn and spring, and night and
day that define the herdsmen’s lives. Although it has been remodelled in a conspicuously modern idiom foregrounded by the metaphors of the tin of Camembert and
the slice of processed Swiss, the poem makes quite an unusual inter-textual reference to Virgil’s textus receptus.33 In the first Virgilian bucolic (Ecl. 1. 27–35) Tityrus
replies to Meliboeus’ question ‘Et quae tanta fuit Romam tibi causa videndi?’ [And
what was the great occasion of your seeing Rome?]:
Libertas, quae sera tamen respexit inertem,
candidior postquam tondenti barba cadebat,
respexit tamen et longo post tempore venit,
postquam nos Amaryllis habet, Galatea reliquit.
namque – fatebor enim – dum me Galatea tenebat,
nec spes libertatis erat nec cura peculi.
quamvis multa meis exiret victima saeptis
pinguis et ingratae premeretur caseus urbi,
non umquam gravis aere domum mihi dextra redibat.
[Freedom, who, though late, yet cast her eyes upon me in my sloth, when my beard began to
whiten as it fell beneath the scissors. Yet she did cast her eyes on me, and came after a long
33 We should also note here the reference to Polyphemus’ cave from the Odyssey (9.219–
220): ‘So we explored his den, gazing wide-eyed at it all, the large flat racks loaded with
drying cheese, the folds crowded with young lambs and kids’ . . . (Homer, The Odyssey.
Translated by Robert Fagles, New York: Penguin Classics, 1997: 218).
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YOANA SIRAKOVA
time – after Amaryllis began her sway and Galatea left me. For – yes, I must confess – while
Galatea ruled me, I had neither hope of freedom nor thought of savings. Though many a
victim left my stalls, and many a rich cheese was pressed for the thankless town, never would
my hand come home money-laden.]
Libertas and caseus are not juxtaposed in the original passage, where freedom
is closely associated with Tityrus’ love for Amaryllis and Galatea. However, in
the broader context of the shepherds’ oppression in their country it might address
the idea of land confiscations, their effects on the Italian countryside and the
loss of pastoral innocence. This particular separation of life in town (ingrata urbs)
and countryside is transformed in the Bulgarian remake. Merjanski takes Tityrus at
his word and develops the opposition and disconnect between freedom (including
self-sufficiency and prosperity) and cheese — a staple component of bucolic life.
Departure, a symbol of freedom, becomes explicitly antithetical to the stable and
calm richness of the shepherds’ lifestyle through strong and repetitive negations.
Cheese and bread, the food which symbolizes the herdsmen’s rooted connection to
land, but also the human pursuit for material goods in modern times, is opposed to
the sense of freedom — a staple component of modern life.
As we have already observed, at the end of the Myth of Odysseus in the New Bucolic
Poetry the return of Odysseus is associated with his death in opposition to the motif
of departure as freedom. The last poetic piece from the final tenth eclogue entitled
‘The death of Odysseus’ describes Odysseus’ death as seen by the shepherds. The
poem revolves almost entirely around pastoral pictures and images but nevertheless
implies ambivalent emotions:
We only have to load the wine
and at dawn, with open sails,
to set off for the luminous horizon
of our peasant bliss . . .
The perception of death is connotative both of return (Odysseus’ homecoming) and,
somewhat surprisingly, of departure (the herdsmen’s departure after Odysseus’
death); the idea of departure is further intensified by the aggressive prompting
‘But let’s go! There’s no time to waste.’ In the closural stanza the peace of the pastoral
setting is restored with yet another feeling of ending symbolized by the night’s
falling down:
To the sheep the growing stink
of our mortal bodies is fatal . . .
Above the shepherd, shouldering his crook
and driving the flock before him,
look – a star, distant and pale
rises again through the shroud of dusk.
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A (POST)MODERN READING OF ANTIQUITY IN BULGARIAN POETRY
This description clearly reworks the Virgilian ending of Eclogue 10 (75–77):
Surgamus: solet esse grauis cantantibus umbra,
iuniperi grauis umbra; nocent et frugibus umbrae.
Ite domum saturae, uenit Hesperus, ite, capellae.
[Let us arise. The shade is oft perilous to the singer – perilous the juniper’s shade, hurtful the
shade even to the crops. Get home, my full-fed goats, get home – the Evening Star draws on.]
Readers may discern two close parallels between the texts: Virgilian drawing on of
Hesperus is retained in the rising of the distant and pale star, and the shepherd
driving the flock before him aligns with the Latin original ‘ite domum . . . ite capellae’.
Though points of divergence also appear with the replacing of Virgil’s umbrae, the
word considered as an emblematic ‘bucolic marker’34 and ‘a figure of bucolic writing’,35 by the growing stink of herdsmen’s mortal bodies. The singers (cantantes) and
the crops (fruges) altogether commute into a flock of sheep.
The final message of Merjanski’s new bucolic poetry is assigned to the eclogues’
epilogue, representing a prophetic vision of the impossible coming of the Golden
Age and reintroducing the image of the shark in a rather abrupt manner:
The shark is a messenger.
For the eyelids strained against the sun
she appears unexpectedly.
Arises like some giant maw
from the murky depths of the soul . . .
The setting makes explicit references to the prologue where the shark passes by,
leaving no traces in humans’ minds, ‘No sense of horror from what we’ve seen’. The
Virgilian virgo Astraea who must return as a symbol and messenger of the new
Golden Age has been identified with and turns into a shark, a messenger of the
endless end. The last verses of the epilogue — ‘there is no end, there is no end’ —
running as a refrain through the poems’ texture (Eclogue 1, 5, 7, 8), refer to the final
words of the prologue ‘the beginning and the end/always go unnoticed’, and both close
the infinite circle and leave it open at the same time. The end is constantly and
continually deferred by the perpetual revolution of the earth with no awareness of a
new opening.
Although associated with a new beginning (or the start of a new reign) throughout classical literature, in Merjanski the optimistic implications of the Golden Age
34 Martindale (1997: 109).
35 Martindale (2005: 146).
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YOANA SIRAKOVA
imagery in eclogue 4 have been ironically reversed and replaced by pessimistic
visions. The subversion of the idealized pastoral and (or rather because of) its conflation with endless spiritual wandering, turns out to be a mark of Merjanski’s new
bucolic poetry, which in a sense follows Virgil’s identification of the countryside as a
place of devastation or shattered and damaged harmony.36 Through his narrative,
the poet inverts the Virgilian concept of prophecy and renewal as expressed in his
fourth eclogue — the idea of disharmony has replaced the idea of harmony, the
notion of the circuit has been presented in its extreme. It no longer epitomizes the
regeneration of nature and life, but rather represents a vicious circle from which
there is no escape, the Golden Age becoming reachable only if the circumrotation is
broken up.
The human pursuit (and attaining) of harmony with the cosmos as visualized in
Virgil’s Eclogue 4 has been doomed to failure. A good example of Merjanski’s
reframing of Virgil is his first eclogue, where Odysseus attempts unsuccessfully to
invert the world’s circumrotation by inverting, perverting, and finally subverting
and confusing his everyday life and daily activities. So Meliboeus (in ‘the enlarging of
the world in Meliboeus’ dreams’ in Eclogue 8) also dreams about turning back the arch
of heaven in order to reverse the place of birth and death, of worm and azure, and ‘to
be born again – free and alone’.
Merjanski’s eclogues could be appropriately construed as a post-modern version
of pastoral which involves ‘the psychological chaos and spiritual impoverishment’
seen ‘as the city’s legacy and the corollary of technological growth’ in A. J. Boyle’s
words.37 Explicit reference to this specific ‘corollary of technical growth’ with lucid
modern connotations occurs in Merjanski’s seventh eclogue, which anticipates the
arrival of a new age arrival: humankind will assume its ‘algorithmic appearance’ in a
place where death will be powerless on the verge of ‘the face with its digital
counterpart’.
In the reinvented bucolic world of The Myth of Odysseus in the New Bucolic Poetry
a vast place is dedicated to a peculiar ‘spiritual landscape’ (in Bruno Snell’s account
of Virgil’s Eclogues).38 The world of Virgil’s Eclogues which dramatizes herdsmen’s
lives, love and exile has been transformed into a landscape par excellence of the postmodern mind and millennial anxieties. Merjanski takes up Virgil’s use of pastoral as
a framework for dealing with the everlasting world’s circuit and the idea of the
Golden Age, which are recast as quasi-post-modern concerns. His new bucolic
poetry bears little (if any) relation to social reality and is rather overlaid with a
haze of utopia, unreality, and phantasm, with no horizon for better times. And
36 Richard Thomas aptly captured the pessimistic interpretations of Virgilian work in his
Virgil and the Augustan Reception ( Thomas 2001).
37 Boyle (1986: 15).
38 Martindale (1997: 110).
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A (POST)MODERN READING OF ANTIQUITY IN BULGARIAN POETRY
that is a particular point that distinguishes this specific Bulgarian (and arguably
Eastern-European?) adaptation from Western European receptions of the Virgilian
Eclogues with their tendency to political and ethical readings.39
The widespread appeal of pastoral in the West is still alive, as is evident
in Stephen Harrison’s recent treatment of Robert Frost’s and Seamus Heaney’s
appropriations of Virgil’s Eclogues.40 It is also instructive to compare Merjanski’s
and Heaney’s use of eclogue poetics. Merjanski’s The New Bucolic Poetry and
Heaney’s Bann Valley Eclogue resemble each other in their loose reworking of
Virgil’s eclogues41 and in their (both common and different) millenarian feelings
and echoes, regardless of the fact that Heaney’s eclogue is ‘a self-consciously millennial work’,42 which was read live on the Irish television channel RTE 1 on 31
December 2000. With its transposition of Virgil’s fourth eclogue onto ‘the political
situation of the North of Ireland’43 and its hopeful millennial appeal, as well as its
suggestion of ‘the old interpretation of Eclogue 4 as a prophecy of the coming
birth of Christ’,44 Bann Valley Eclogue stands firmly in a Western tradition of
receiving Virgilian pastoral reception. Although Merjanski’s new pastoral poetry
is not remarkable for its explicit or implicit political associations, it may still be
seen as representative, and to some extent reflective of, the instability and moral
chaos that characterized Bulgarian society in the 1990s after the recent collapse of
the communist regime. It is in reference to Bulgarian society that we should seek
further explanation for the peculiar pessimistic visions in Merjanski’s remake of
pastoral.
This reframing of pastoral offers us a dynamic model for classical receptions. This
analogy has been suggested by Mathilde Skoie, in her introductory account of
Jacoppo Sannazaro’s pastoral romance Arcadia. In her discussion of the process of
invention and innovation in the genre of pastoral,45 Skoie provides us with a brilliant
description of the process of pastoral reception:
Thus Sannazaro describes the writing of pastoral as a matter of piping on the pastoral
instruments of your forerunners. New pastoral poetry is presented as the result of a meeting
between the ancient and the modern poet. The new poet literally gives life to the old form by
breathing into the old instrument. This description of the writing of pastoral might be
figured as a model of the process of reception.
39 Martindale (2005: 140).
40 Harrison (2008: 117); the discussion of Frost and Heaney is under the sub-heading
‘Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries: Virgil’s Eclogues, Culture and Politics’.
41 See Twiddy 2006, especially pp. 54–7.
42 Harrison (2008: 122).
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid., p. 123.
45 Skoie (2006: 92).
317
YOANA SIRAKOVA
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