Dimitur Boyadzhiev and Marseilles

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  1. Dimitur Boyadzhiev and Marseilles

    May 14, 2012 by Christopher Buxton

    Just one of those coincidences! I completed my sixth novel a week ago.  Part of the action is set in 1920’s Marseilles where  a Bulgarian ex-POW becomes so immersed in the exotic criminal hurdy-gurdy world of the notorious red-light district, that he does not want to return home to his small town nestling in the Balkan foothills.. Before starting the book, I recalled from Borsalino  that Marseilles was the Chicago of Europe.  I hadn’t yet realised its significance in Bulgarian history.  Not only was it a staging post for emigrants to America, but a dancer from Burgas made her name on its principal stage alongside Josephine Baker and in its main street the VMRO activist Chernozemski gunned down the king of Yugoslavia in 1934.

    I am indebted to my friends and fellow writers, Doicho Ivanov and Ivan Burzakov for introducing me to the poetry of Dimitur Boyadzhiev, who worked in the Marseilles consulate towards the end of his short life.  Boyadzhiev stands alongside Yavarov and Debelyanov.  They are the three giants of 20th century Bulgarian poetry, writers in the tradition of Baudelaire and Rimbaud.

    Boyadzhiev is sadly one of the many Bulgarian poets who took their own lives, while still in the bloom of creativity. I have put in a link to my rather liberal translation of his poem: Marseilles. It shows a rather different attitude to the city than my hero experiences.

    And here’s an extract from another poem:

    “So many folk

    I saw through, understood

    and today I am choked

    not by wisdom but dread…”

  2. Kalin Terziiski

    May 10, 2012 by Christopher Buxton

    A few months ago I unwisely entered into a Bulgarian fratricidal internet debate following the award of a literary prize to Kalin Terziisky. I was duly patronised for my pains.  How dare I – an Englishman – pretend to know something about Bulgarian literature?

    Kalin is rightly a very popular and successful writer and this has inevitably attracted anger from pretentious critics who have sought lazily to attach the fatal label of chalga to his writing shoulder. There will come a time when the use of the word chalga will undergo serious review.

    I had then only read Alcohol.  I was excited by the freshness of vision Now I have read Madness and find that Kalin has the startling genius required of all great art.

    Click here for a translation of one of the chapters

  3. Job Swap 5

    April 28, 2012 by Christopher Buxton

    (The story so far: As part of a European work-sharing initiative, the GLB  Greatest Living Bulgarian Boyko Borisov and Posh-boy David Cameron have swapped jobs.  Batty Boyko is now in Downing Street and firing on all cylinders, in spite of the double dip recession and the Levinson Inquiry.

    David Cameron is a little more comfortable in his Boyanna Residence, away from the UK April rain)

    GLB: Ey what a week! I phoned my Agriculture Minister – next time there’s a drought in Bulgaria, don’t send for the priests; just announce a hose pipe ban.  I got drenched on my morning run past Buckingham Palace.  Just getting ready to wave to Baba Lizzie and the heavens opened. Everyone here is talking about a doddery old Australian, called Murdoch. I phoned up Yulian Vuichkov.  Who is this guy? Only turns out to own all the media in the western world. He owns so much, he didn’t even know he owned BTV.  When he found out about Slavi and Aziz, he sold it. I’ve not been getting too good headliners in the Sun – not since I had a photo of me with Balotelli.  It was only because my advisor told me I was being snapped with too many white footballers.  Then the next day the story about the prostitute broke. Thank God she wasn’t Bulgarian. I phoned up Roman to congratulate him on his victory in Barcelona and booked a photo session with John Terry. Anyway this Murdoch guy is suggesting that he had a back-passage relationship with the Culture secretary and all the newspapers are shouting that I should give him the boot. There is just too much back-passage stuff going on and I have to be careful pronouncing this guy’s name. Jeremy Hunt, Hunt, Hunt!  I don’t see what’s the problem, but the BBC takes a deep breath very time they say it.  Our Culture minister’s Turkish.  We don’t have problems with his name – at least as long as Volen isn’t around. Well I did have a laugh yesterday. I’d just been bollocking George Osborne for the double dip recession and the fact I’d caught him feeding caviar to the Downing Street cat. No wonder he can’t catch any mice. What is this double dip anyway? It sounds like that water slide in Sunny Beach. Just after that I get the news that one of Dave’s MPs has called us rich posh boys that don’t know the price of milk. I haven’t laughed so much in years.  Me posh? My country all thinks I’m a thick peasant.  I phoned up Yulian again. He knows everything. I ask him what’s a pint. He says I’ve missed the point.

     

    Posh Boy Dave:  It’s really rather pleasant here.  The weather’s bucked up and I’m playing a lot of tennis. Bit of a scare the other day. Volen turned up red in the face.  He’d read some story that the Macedonian Secret service had stolen the relics of John the Baptist from a church in Sliven. He wanted me to declare war and get them back before they could prove Jesus Christ was really Macedonian. I told him to “calm down dear!” I just love it that you can be politically incorrect here.  As I thought the story turned out to be a spoof – just like that supposed interview where I rubbish Bulgaria. But just to calm him down I promised I’d get a briefing on Macedonia and all problems relating to it.  I checked on the map – it’s closer than the Falklands and we won’t need aircraft carriers. We just need to get our heads round the language.  They speak some kind of Glasgow dialect Bulgarian and Albanian. Meanwhile I’m getting a law out to confiscate property that was bought illegally in the last fifteen years. I asked the Vice President how we would find out which stuff was bought illegally.  She laughed and said we should just rely on the neighbours. She muttered something about it not mattering how badly off you were as long as someone called Vutie was worse off. It looks like there’ll be lots of Vuties. Meanwhile I must have a chat with Rashidov – just to check whether Murdoch owns anything here.

     

  4. Review of Mona Choban’s “Dosta”

    April 25, 2012 by Christopher Buxton

    I shall be introducing the writer Mona Choban at the Bulgarian Cultural Institute on May 8th.

    Over and over again in English bookshops I am reminded of how much readers are missing in the new timorous publishing climate, where so few foreign writers are published in translation and, for those that are, a kind of lottery system operates – one year South American, the next year Turkish, last year Scandinavian.

    I feel this injustice in reverse of this every time I enter a Bulgarian bookshop. New globalizing practice dictates the books on most prominent display are popular works translated into Bulgarian. Rarely does a Bulgarian writer make it on to the first display stand that greets the customer. And yet on the shelves devoted to Bulgarian writers a stack of treasure awaits the reader who can read Bulgarian.

    Mona Choban is an exciting talented versatile writer whose liquid clear prose disguises a depth of moral passion and an urgent neo-feminist message for our time.  Her books are short but as with Jane Austen working on her “little bit of ivory”, their impact resonates long after they are returned to the bookshelf. Her versatility is evidenced by the way she moves through genres with ease – from her earliest so-called chick lit, to her dystopian science fiction and in her latest work, magic realism.

    In Dosta Mona Choban develops a theme already present in her previous writing – a subtle but strong critique of the modern Eurovision world and the fraudulent model for perfect life it offers. Her heroine, Katerina withdraws from her emigrant life in Paris to return not just to her homeland but to a mountain village at the back of beyond, inhabited like so many Bulgarian villages by an aged population, who have maintained through their isolation access to an older wisdom.

    Dosta evokes a pre-modernist village world where everyone knows each other’s business and newcomers are treated with proper caution. It is a woman’s world, a world in which remedies for ills are found in the inherited magical knowledge passed down the generations. But Katerina quickly adapts to this arcane world. But all is not entirely well.  As with Susan Hill’s “Woman in Black”, a restless spirit from the past haunts the village and speaks through the village educated idiot, Pabob. This adds a page turning element of suspense.

    Dosta is a wonderful untranslatable title – at once the obscure antique Bulgarian name, a name perhaps given to the last child in a large family and a word meaning much or even too much. Dosta is what Pabob shouts when he is upset.  But its sinister second meaning only becomes apparent as the women of the village set about laying the troubled spirit to rest. Shame and horror lurk in the past.

    Mona’s fellow Bulgarian writer, Kalin Terziski, describes her as a shining light. Great literature illuminates.  And for another male reader (me) she has made me see the world in a new light.

  5. Job Swap 4

    March 31, 2012 by Christopher Buxton

    The story so far: As part of a European work-sharing initiative, the GLB  Greatest Living Bulgarian Boyko Borisov and Posh-boy David Cameron have swapped jobs.  Batty Boyko is now in Downing Street and firing on all cylinders. David Cameron is somewhat less comfortable in his Boyanna Residence)

    Previous episodes can be found in earlier posts

    BB:

    E-e-ekh these spoilt English! I talk plain down-to-earth common sense to them and they lose their glass balls. Sometimes I feel homesick for my patient countrymen who know how to handle a crisis because they meet one every five minutes.  And they like queuing!  It gives them a chance to catch up on the gossip and complain about the black market.

    Don’t talk to me about shortages. In my house we always had fifty plastic 5 gallon containers full of water, so we could flush the toilet when the tap water stopped; my mother had five hundred candles and matches for the electricity black outs and we always had twenty Turkey cans full of petrol in the cellar. You call them Jerry after your enemies.  I’ve decided to call them Turkey.  My word is a new dictionary entry. I’ll tell Volen.

    So grow up English! All I said was you could use Turkey cans and learn to queue.

    What’s all this about pasties? I got a phone call from Chancellor George. He put a tax on hot food.  And now all hell broke loose.  I asked George – what’s a pasty? He hasn’t got a clue. Then I get Prince Charles on the phone because they’re Cornish. Turns out they’re some kind of meat banitza. I called a press conference so I could be seen eating one. Mmmmm! (eukh!) I get a very strong taste of turnip, but I manage to smile.  I’m not posh – not like my ministers. It takes me five hours to get the taste out of my mouth.

    Not been a good week. Some sneak photographer snapped me with Abramovich before the Chelsea game. It seems I have to steer clear of rich people for the time being – especially after Chancellor George cut the higher rate of tax. Then some clown in the Toff’s party was caught on camera saying that ₤250,000 would buy a lunch with me. Actually I’m a lot cheaper, especially now I’m eating pasties. I had to fire his bottom and then go find a pub which wasn’t full of bankers and let working folk buy me beer and bend my ear for ₤2.50.

     

    DC:

    I keep asking my ministers about Romania.  It’s Bulgaria’s neighbour but no-one seems to know anything about it. Not like Greece, Serbia and Turkey.  My ministers seem to know a lot about these countries.  There are even jokes.

    Don’t worry about Romania, David! they say.  Only gypsies live there. Well, these gypsies want to own Bulgaria’s Black Sea oil. Or was it gas?  It’s like the Falklands all over again, only closer.  I phoned up Basildon Council for advice. We don’t want caravans on our nice new oil rigs.

    There’s a pretty grim island in the Danube where they’ve wanted to build an Atomic plant.  Gosh! the size of the fish there is already jaw-dropping. Once the generator gets going, I’ll be able to sign up Bruce Willis for Sturgeon Jaws 1,2,3 and 4. Perhaps I can get Hugh Grant to play me.

    I phoned Boyko the other day about my health reforms.  When I told him all the Bulgarian doctors were leaving to come to the UK, he just laughed. Then he asked me if I was going to put a tax on hot banitza.

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