Ivan Vazov is commonly labeled as the Patriarch of Bulgarian Literature, or lovingly called Grandpa Vazov. Both labels are in fact quite inadequate, as well as the fact that we know the great writer and patriot’s face mostly from photographs in which he is past 60. By the way, he was a very handsome man, and women were constantly after him.
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© Photo: archive

Vazov's native home in the town of Sopot

Ivan Vazov was born in 1850 and died in 1921, a period of colossal transformation in Bulgarian society. As a young man he experienced the last decades of Ottoman rule in Bulgaria, or the Yoke, a word he used in the title of his celebrated novel. As a mature man, he saw the rise of a young modern state and as an old man suffered its tragedy in the wake of several wars. He was lucky to be born in a well-to-do merchant family in a quite prosperous town, Sopot in the central Balkan Range, and had to inherit his father’s trade. Fail! All that the young guy wanted was to write poetry. The future poet, novelist and playwright traveled widely, and got in touch with a bunch of Bulgarian emigrants in Romania who gave him insights about the Bulgarian revolutionary movement in exile.
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© Photo: archive

Though he wrote poetry in the early 1870s, Ivan Vazov’s spectacular career began to blossom shortly after Bulgaria’s liberation from the Turkish Yoke in 1878. Though he was not foreign to political affairs, and even served a controversial term as Minister of Public Education, Vazov was in fact the first professional writer in modern Bulgaria. During the National Revival, writing was never seen as an autonomous job, but rather as a supplementary activity supporting the political efforts of the writer. This situation produced the greatest genius in Bulgarian poetry so far, Hristo Botev, who had no time left for more than just 26 poems.
In contrast, Ivan Vazov was a writer in the first place, and he openly acknowledged his mission. His schooling was not very good, and as writer he was mostly self-taught learning from French romantic novelist Victor Hugo and from Russian literature. In his creative work he was a romantic who identified and summarized the set of values fostered by the Bulgarian National Revival. A talented and shrewd observer of Bulgaria’s modern life, he went further, by drawing parallels between the great ideals of the Revival and the harsh social and political reality after the Liberation that produced dwarfs, not heroes. In his entire work, Ivan Vazov was an outstanding patriot who brilliantly defined his love for his country.

Where is Bulgaria
If men ask me where the sunrise
Warmed me first when I was small,
If men ask me where the land is
That I cherish most of all

This will be my answer:
Where the mighty Danube flows,
Where the Black Sea brightly dances
In the East, and stormy grows;

Where the Balkan raises nobly
To the sky its mountain chain,
Where the broad Maritsa slowly
Wanders through the Thracian plain;

Where the people suffer anguish
And in bondage pine today,
Who in one and the same language
Voice their sorrow, weep and pray.

I was born there! There my forebears
Now repose in holy ground,
There in times of peace and warfare
Did their thunderous fame resound.

And the country they ruled over
Touched Carpathia’s rocky heights,
Even made Constantinople’s
Ramparts quake before its might,

Dear Bulgaria, land I cherish,
Land that brims with kindliness
Land where I from birth was nourished,
My obeisance accept!

It’s to you that all my thoughts and
All my feelings ever fly.
I was in your bosom born and
There in freedom wish to die!
1872
(excerpt, translation by Peter Tempest)

Bulgaria Above All: Ivan Vazov took up this slogan and wrote novels about its recent history and present day, a cycle of poems featuring the greatest heroes of the National Revival, wonderful travel notes revealing the breathtaking beauty of the country, very good short stories and novelettes and sophisticated love poetry. He also wrote for theater, both romantic drama and satire. Consistent, talented and full of purpose, this extraordinary man and patriot completed a giant’s task all on his own: he created a comprehensive genre structure for modern Bulgarian literature, starting almost from scratch. And, there is another important point: Vazov is an example where large quantity does in no way mean lesser quality. His work has intransient literary value. His novel Under the Yoke that focused on eve of the tragic April Uprising of 1876, is one of the best Bulgarian novels of all time, and has been translated into 50 languages. Back in 1952 it was the first Bulgarian book to get published in China. British poet and critic Sir Edmund Gosse enthusiastically praised Vazov’s work and compared it to Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott.

Ivan Vazov is one of the greatest masters of the Bulgarian language. He is unsurpassed in the wealth of vocabulary, as linguists have registered him using as many as 60,000 words as vocabulary units. In fact, he even wrote a few poems extolling the great beauty and flexibility of the Bulgarian language.

The Bulgarian Tongue
Tongue of my ancestors who trod this earth,
Tongue of great woes and age-old lamentation,
Tongue that the woman spoke who gave us birth
To know not joy but bitter tribulation.

Who is there has not heaped abuse on you,
Fair tongue, or not refrained from wicked slanders?
Has anyone yet listened closely to
The melody of your sweet resonances?

Has anyone yet sensed what charm, what might
Lies in your speech, so supple and refreshing,
What scope in your rich tones, what splendor bright,
What swift and lively power of expression?

No, in the general view you were deplored,
Reviled, maligned with language of the gutter:
Our own and foreign folk with one accord
Renounced you, tongue accustomed long to suffer!

Oh, I shall take your blackened shame away
And it shall truly be my inspiration,
And you in glorious sounds I shall convey
To the new rising lively generation;

Oh, I shall cleanse you of the mud and mire,
And shall reveal your brilliance with a flourish
And with the startling beauty they’ll admire
Your thoughtless denigrators I shall punish.
1883
(excerpt, translation by Peter Tempest)

Now let us turn to some of Ivan Vazov’s own denigrators. In a twist of irony, the great trendsetter, the founder of founders, the prolific talent, all too soon came under fire from a new generation of brain-workers. Even during his lifetime he was criticized bitterly for being old-fashioned, an embodiment of the mainstream in literature and the author of naïve and unskillful writings. He had two very influential contenders, founders of the Misal (Concept) Circle, Dr. Krastyo Krastev and poet Pencho Slaveykov. Both had been educated in German universities, and were great admirers of Nietzsche. They rose against the “anachronistic”, “romantic” Vazov in search of greater philosophical and psychological depths in Bulgarian literature. They were right in their quests, but failed to admit that had it not been for Ivan Vazov and his giant body of work, they would have lacked any solid ground for their rebellion!

Ivan Vazov was Bulgaria’s first celebrity writer. Everybody knew him, but he led a sort of solitary life. It seems that his mother was a very dominant type, and so, his marriage crashed and burned all too quickly. Despite his numerous affairs with women, he did not produce any known children. What a destiny for someone universally accepted as the Father of the Nation! After the tragic end of the First World War, Bulgarian soldiers gathered for a sad march in Sofia. “Let us go to Vazov”, one of them yelled, and they soon reached Vazov’s house, opposite the Council of Ministers. The PM and some cabinet ministers looked through the windows to see the crowd that shouted at them, “We have not come to you, sirs, we have come to the poet of the nation!” Ivan Vazov was at that time having lunch in a nearby tavern, and the crowd moved on to meet him. He went out and delivered a spontaneous speech that was long remembered after that.