Vasil Levski bid farewell to life with a song

"Don't sing, nightingale, I don't have much time left..."

published on 2/19/25 10:35 AM

Portrait of Vasil Levski, artist Dionisiy Donchev

Photo: militarymuseum.bg

"It's bitter cold, wood and stone are cracking, we've been with no food for two or three days, yet he sings and is always cheerful! In the evening - before we go to bed - he sings; in the morning, as soon as he opens his eyes, he sings again" - this is how Bulgarian poet and revolutionary Hristo Botev describes his close friend Vasil Levski, whom he described as an "unheard-of character" - "When we are in the most critical situation, he is just as cheerful then, as when we are in the best of situations".

According to other contemporaries of the Apostle of Bulgarian Freedom as Vasil Levski is lovingly called, even when he was traveling on his committee business, Levski constantly sang and adapted lyrics and songs to melodies already familiar to him.

One of the priceless relics that have reached us from this charismatic personality, who laid the foundations of the organized revolutionary movement to liberate Bulgaria from the Ottoman domination and champion of free Bulgaria, is the personal notebook, where the Apostle recorded important moments of his daily life, including some songs.

Vasil Levski's personal notebook

Levski's notebook is a whole universe revealing many faces of the Apostle of Freedom

The songs that we find written down in Vasil Levski's notebook were part of the then sound environment, characteristic of the National Revival Period in Bulgaria, explains folklorist Daniel Spassov. Among them, right from the first pages, is the troparion of the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius. We know that Levski was also a church singer. He sang beautifully both the Orthodox chant "Dostojo est" and the troparion to the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius.

"Other songs are also found in this notebook. This is "Na proshtavane" (At bidding farewell) (an extremely intimate poem by Hristo Botev, first published in 1871 - ed.)". However, not all of Botev's text was written. "It is a well-known melody that has been passed down from generation to generation, and that is how ethnomusicologist Acad. Nikolay Kaufman recorded it as part of his research work.

"Another song, at least for me, with moving and emotional lyrics, is "I keep thinking about you all the time, mother," says Spassov, who is himself a performer of folk songs.

"Personally, I have always thought that Levski's notebook is part of his spiritual heritage. We can find many things there. But it was a real surprise to me, many years ago, that the lyrics of popular songs of that time were written there. Songs that were sung, songs that he used to sing, and this is truly part of his inner spiritual world," Spassov commented.

"Don't Sing, Nightingale" - the song that is associated with Levski's last moments

"There is a legend recorded in the villages in Lozen Mountain near Sofia by the great Bulgarian folklorist Raina Katsarova (who created the musical festivals in Koprivshtitsa) that before he was hanged, Levski sang, he had this courage and spirituality:, says Daniel Spassov. "It was natural, in front of the Turks present, for Levski to sing in Turkish, not Bulgarian, in order to be understood. The Bulgarian woman who preserved the memory of this dramatic episode was a servant in the home of a Turkish bey in Sofia and was raising his children. Her master obliged her to attend the execution."

The Hanging of Vasil Levski, artist Boris Angelushev, 1942

"The elderly woman who tells the story of Raina Katsarova is called Grandma Petkana Hashova. She sang this song in Turkish. After that, Raina Katsarova recorded it in the Bulgarian National Radio as a keepsake, and in fact, when we were making the big film of the Bulgarian National Television entitled "The Songs of the Apostle, we translated this song into Bulgarian. It has a very strange, dramatic text - "Don't sing, nightingale, I have time, I am not in a hurry. I have neither a mother nor a father, don't sing, don't hurry, nightingale...". This is the message, really quite sad, sacred at times. But it's really strange, if you listen to it in the original, it sounds like a typical old Turkish folk song, in the whole style of a Turkish folk song. When the colleagues from the Turkish editorial office of the Bulgarian National Television translated it and we recorded it with accompaniment, it became Bulgarian. Because these songs here, in the Balkans, have a lot in common, but they also have a lot of differences.

I don't know if this story is true or not, but it is very moving, very human with all the suffering of this act on the part of Levski himself, who had to depart from this world very young, without completing his mission, and on the part of those who are crying. "I don't know if there was an audience (at his hanging), but the old woman narrated that there were spectators who attended this execution and who cried. This is like a symbolism of the suffering of our entire people," Daniel Spassov concludes his story.

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