Ivan Bogorov – man of Renaissance and enlightener

published on 11/1/12 11:09 AM

Photo: ivoso.blog.bg

It looks like the biography of one of the great Bulgarian Renaissance men has compiled the enormous energy of Bulgaria’s national enlightenment, curiosity towards the world around, knowledge and progress. Ivan Bogorov’s destiny was to become a pioneer in different spheres. He compiled the first corpus with Bulgarian folklore and wrote the first grammar in a simple language, used in the streets. The first itinerary ever published in Bulgaria was also his creation and was named Several Days of Walking around Bulgaria. Furthermore: Bogorov was the first to translate in Bulgarian Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, he prepared the first French – Bulgarian and Bulgarian – French dictionary…
As far as foreign languages were concerned, he was a true polyglot – he spoke Russian, Serbian, Romanian, Greek and Romaic, Turkish, German and French. Ivan used to study with famous Raino Popovich in his hometown of Karlovo and later on he continued with his studies in Constantinople and Odessa. In Leipzig he studied chemistry, while in Paris he graduated from a medical university.
Bogorov used to live at different places and had various occupations: a teacher, a doctor, a publisher, a linguist. He established the first Bulgarian newspaper – Bulgarian Eagle /1846/, which was published in Leipzig during his studies. The first issue of the newspaper wrote: “All the peoples around us raised their heads and saw what’s going on around the world and what should they do… Shouldn’t we utter at least one word in the kingdoms of peoples? We should also start feeling like a nation, a Bulgarian nation that has the same rights as the other European ones!” The newspaper’s themes varied from policy and economy to geography, natural disasters, ethnography, folklore and language rules… It was issued only three times, due to hard distribution and lack of money.
In 1848 Bogorov established another edition – Tsarigrad Newspaper and was its editor-in-chief till 1850. The edition was released for 14 years and was one of the most serious Bulgarian ones back then. The Magazine for Science, Crafts and Trade was another edition of Bogorov. In an article, named The World is Changing from the first issue in 1862 he wrote things that sound sensible even today: “Everybody makes a profit out of others’ prosperity… A trader can sell the most wherever he is surrounded by people, who produce a lot… A man, who wants to produce should take care about the others that also should produce… Because nobody can acquire anything if he is surrounded by people, who don’t have anything.” According to Bogorov the world is constantly changing and one shouldn’t lose his courage, despite the failures…
This pioneer was also famous with his long-year stubborn struggle for purity of Bulgarian language and against the penetration of foreign words. He was even funny sometimes, with the variations of popular words that he proposed with the purpose of preserving the Bulgarian language. Some of the suggestions could be translated in English like that: matches – scratch-light-toggle, post – shuttle, snooker – jostle-knock etc. Despite all these comic details his efforts were awarded: we all should be aware of the fact that he created the Bulgarian equivalents of words such as: note, waiting-room, watch, manners, expert, messenger, activity and many others.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev

По публикацията работи: Veneta Pavlova

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Ivan Bogorov – man of Renaissance and enlightener

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