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Modern Bulgarian Society and Culture through the Mirror of Bai Ganio

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Roumen Daskalov
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Abstract

This article deals with the fictional character Bai Ganio, who was created by the Bulgarian writer Aleko Konstantinov at the end of the nineteenth century and who has become a sort of national symbol in Bulgarian society and culture. Daskalov presents the various interpretations of Bai Ganio, explores their assumptions and implicit meanings, and then employs the character to illuminate some of the major problems and concerns within Bulgarian society. Metaphorically one might say that the various interpretations of Bai Ganio serve as a mirror for a modernizing Bulgaria or, even better, that Bai Ganio and Bulgaria mutually reflect each other. Yet although the mirror retains the trace of the mirrored object, it obfuscates and distorts it.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , Fall 2001 , pp. 530 - 549
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2001

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References

This article is the byproduct of research on modern Bulgarian society and culture made possible by an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship. Earlier versions of the article were presented at the seminar led by Holm Sundhaussen at the Freie Universitat Berlin and at the Center for Slavic and East European Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. I am grateful for important comments and suggestions made during these presentations and by the editor and the anonymous referees for Slavic Review.

1. One may derive these values and attitudes from the interpretations themselves, but a more rigorous and less circular approach would require corroboration from an “independent“ source—from other historical documents or personal experience, for example. In this case I can evoke the authority of my experience participating in that culture, enhanced by my reading.

2. Igov, Svetlozar, “Za zhanrovata sŭshtnost na Bai Ganio,” in Igov, Svetlozar, Bulgarskished'ovri (Sofia, 1992), 94–112.Google Scholar

3. The famous Bulgarian painter and caricaturist Iliia Beshkov, who made a series of sketches of Bai Ganio, went even further in asserting that Bai Ganio is so difficult to pin down because he is both the murderer and the prosecutor, both in power and in opposition. See Beshkov, Iliia, “Bai Ganio ubi Aleko,” in List Aleko Konstantinov: Petdeset godini otsmurtta mu (Sofia, 1947), 7 Google Scholar. Aleko is the only Bulgarian author to be accorded the special privilege of being addressed by his first name by a loving public.

4. Krŭstev, Krŭstiu, Aleko Konstantinov: Literaturen Siluet (Tutrakan, 1907), 25, 35–36, 66-67.Google Scholar

5. Shishmanov, Ivan, “Aleko Konstantinov ot edno novo gledishte,” Uchilishten pregled 26, no. 8 (1927): 1218, 1237Google Scholar; Angelov, Bozhan, “Aleko Konstantinov: Literaturni kharakteristiki“ (1919), in Tikhov, Tikhomir, ed., Aleko Konstantinov i bŭlgarskata literaturna kritika (Sofia, 1970), 118, 119Google Scholar; Vladimir Vasilev, “Aleko Konstantinov i ideiata za ‘rodnoto,'” Zlatorog 19, no. 9 (1938): 384. The idea was widely shared among the critics.

6. Krŭstev, Aleko Konstantinov, 38; Nikolov, Malcho, “Aleko Konstantinov,” Uchilishtenpregled 28, no. 8 (1929): 1071–72Google Scholar; Arnaudov, Mikhail, “Aleko Konstantinov, 1863-1897,“ Bŭlgarska misŭl’ 2, no. 5 (1927): 335–36Google Scholar; Penev, Boian, “Prevrashteniiata na Bai Gania,” in Penev, Boian, Izkustvoto e nashatapamet (Varna, 1978), 173–76, initially published in Zlatorog 4, no. 1, (1923): 22-33Google Scholar. See also Konstantin Petkanov's contribution to the debate “Bai Ganio i kharakterologiiata na bŭlgarina,“Filosofskipregled 3, no. 3 (1931): 355-56. In refuting the idea that Bai Ganio stands for the Bulgarian, most of the authors point to the literary character's “heterogeneity,” while Petkanov assumes the existence of some authentic Bulgarian “national soul,” of which Bai Ganio is at best a surface representation.

7. Stefanov, Nikola, “Bai Ganio kato kulturno-istoricheski tip,” Novo vreme 17, no. 10 (1914): 308–15Google Scholar, and 17, no. 11 (1914): 348-58. For Stefanov—a socialist—Bai Ganio is at the same time the embodiment of the negative traits of the Bulgarian bourgeois of the 1880s and 1890s.

8. Zhechev, Toncho, “Shtastlivetsai Bai Ganio,” in Zhechev, Toncho, Vŭvedenievizuchavanetona novata bŭlgarska literatura (Sofia, 1992), 154–74Google Scholar. The piece was written in 1981.

9. Gerhard Gesemann, “Der problematische Bulgare: Zur Charakterologie der Slaven,“ Slavische Rundschau, 1931, no. 6. The article was immediately translated into Bulgarian by Kiril Hristov in Uchilishten pregled 30, no. 6 (1931): 925-31. Gesemann's work provoked the reaction of several Bulgarian authors (with several contributions) under the title: “Bai Ganio i kharakterologiiata na bŭlgarina,” Filosofski pregled 3, no. 3 (1931): 349- 63. See the perceptive analysis of the various Bulgarian contributions in the debate by Kiossev, Alexandŭr, “The Debate about the Problematic Bulgarian: A View on the Pluralism of the National Ideologies in Bulgaria in the Interwar Period,” in Banac, Ivo and Verdery, Katherine, eds., National Character and National Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe (New Haven, 1995), 195–217 Google Scholar.

10. Konstantin Petkanov and other contributors to the already mentioned debate “Bai Ganio i kharakterologiiata,” 355.

11. Milko Ralchev, Istinskiiat Bai Ganio (Sofia, 1942), 12, 18, 21-27, 49-55, 61-62, 78-79.

12. Penev, “Prevrashteniiata,” 182-83.

13. A couple of anecdotes concerning Bai Ganio can be found under the characteristic rubric “Competition between Nations,” in Tatiana Tsankova, ed., Vitsŭt (Gabrovo, 1992), 183. Others are scattered in humorous Bulgarian publications such as Vitsove, VitsParadshou, and Lud trud that have appeared in the last few years.

14. Through this article, “culture” and “civilization” are used interchangeably to denote a state of refinement reached (through a process of “civilization“).

15. Two authors have recently interpreted the work in primarily cultural terms in a reflective and nonevaluative manner: Georgiev, Nikola, Imeto na rozata i na tiutiuna (Sofia, 1992), 26–27, 34-35Google Scholar; Valeri Stefanov, “Prenosvachŭt na granitsi: Etiudi vurkhu ‘Bai Ganio’ i chuzhdostta,” Literaturen vestnik, 17, 24, and 31 January 1992. Georgiev looks for cultural oppositions in the semiotic material of the work, while Stefanov presents a neutral description of the meeting between cultures—Balkan-Oriental and European, center and periphery—and reveals the strategies Bai Ganio employs in coping with “otherness.“

16. Maria Todorova insists that the higher standard is not set from the outside (“Europe“) but by a group of people from within, consequently the opposition between high and low culture is not one of center versus periphery but is located within Bulgarian society itself. Thus persons like Aleko are not “Europeanized Bulgarians” but “Bulgarian Europeans“; they share a common supranational culture even though they may not have studied in “Europe.” See Todorova, Maria, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford, 1997), 39–42 Google Scholar. This may be, but this view does not invalidate the interpretation in terms of the opposition “center” (Europe)—“periphery” (Bulgaria) and the concomitant devaluation of the periphery. It is not “the truth” that matters most but the use (which may contradict the truth) to which it is put and the readers´ reception of the work. In this case, powerful attitudes on the part of the readers invite associations of “high culture” with the “center.“

17. I recall the staging of Bai Ganio several years ago in which the Europeans´ civilized manner seemed formal and superficial whereas Bai Ganio (played by the Bulgarian actor Georgi Kaloianchev) created a more relaxed, natural impression. As Nikola Georgiev has pointed out, Bai Ganio is the most proxemic hero in Bulgarian literature, and for that reason he evokes the universal, truly anthropological opposition between nature and culture. A defense strategy often employed by “weaker cultures” involves inverting the plus-minus signs in favor of “nature.” Georgiev Imeto na rozata, 26-27.

18. For one of the first works of this tradition, see Voinikov, Dobri, Krivorazbranata tsivilizatsiia (Bucharest, 1871)Google Scholar.

19. The famous “awakening” words of a monk—Paisii of Hilendarin his “Istoriia Slavianobolgarskaia“ (1762), read: “Why are you ashamed of naming yourself a Bulgarian?“ Father Paisii then defends the national honor with the glorious past. Those words are emblematic of the patriotic literary tradition, which came to fruition later and of which the “national writer” Ivan Vazov is the exemplary figure. The importance of shame, and of its rejection, in the origins of the new Bulgarian literature and culture has been rightly stressed by Alexandŭr Kiossev. As this author points out, Aleko brings shame back into the Bulgarian cultural arena via Bai Ganio and by deploying national emblems in profane situations. See Alexandŭr Kiossev, “Chuzhdiiat Bai Ganio i natsionalnite identifikatsionni simvoli” (unpublished manuscript, cited with the kind permission of the author). Some of Kiossev's ideas are summarized in “The Debate,” 201-5.

20. In regional (Balkan) terms, the interpretation is lent additional plausibility by the fact that Bai Ganio appears as “Bai Ganio Balkanski” (Bai Ganio of the Balkans) in the original publication. The critic who seems to have made the most of this interpretation is Igov, Svetlozar, “Shtastlivetsŭt Aleko Konstantinov, 1863-1897,” in Igov, Svedozar, Istoriiana bŭlgarskata literatura, 1878-1944 (Sofia, 1990), 110–11Google Scholar. In another article the author argues for the existence of Balkan cultural commonalities. See Igov, Svetlozar, “Homo Balkanicus: Krvistoputniiat chovek,” in Dimov, Georgi and Kirova, Liliia, eds., Literaturno esteticheskiprotsesina Balkanite (Sofia, 1994), 46–57 Google Scholar.

21. Penev, “Prevrashteniiata,” 177-78, 181.

22. Angelov, Bozhan, Bŭlgarska literatura, vol. 2, Istoricheski ocherk na novata bŭlgarskaliteratura ot Paisiia do dnes (Sofia, 1924), 339.Google Scholar

23. Vladimir Vasilev, “Aleko Konstantinov i ideiata.“

24. Iliiev, Atanas, “Bai Ganiu kato obshtestven tip,” Prosveta 7, no. 3 (1941): 268–76.Google Scholar

25. For more detail, see my article, Daskalov, Roumen, “Transformations of the East European Intelligentsia: Reflections on the Bulgarian Case,” East European Politics and Societies 10, no. 1 (1996): 46–84 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26. Paradoxically, the official form of “high” culture became stabilized only under the populist communist regime through the imposition of normative standards and the effective suppression of what did not conform with these standards, including the popular culture of the time.

27. Konstantinov, Aleko, “Po povod na edna knizhka,” and “Neveroiatno, naistina, no fakt: 300 dushi na Cherniia vriikh,” both in Suchineniia na Aleko Konstantinov (Sofia, 1901), 1:77–78,1:94.Google Scholar

28. Hardly anybody asked the question: which groups belong to the “people“? Since Bai Ganio is a small trader with origins, in all probability, in the artisanal class (esnafi), it would be logical to exclude the petite bourgeoisie from the “people,” although doing so would negate its important role in the national revival. The peasants are certainly a possibility, and they are perceived as victims and idealized. But they are never mentioned, probably because the peasant is the epitome of backwardness for both the urban intelligentsia and the Marxist critics. For a positive image from “below,” socialists had to wait for workers, but this group was not available at the time Bai Ganio originated. “The people” thus remain undefined.

29. The socialists, who divided society along other lines, found it easy to attribute vulgarity to the bourgeoisie, petite or bigger.

30. Kiril Hristov affirmed that Aleko deliberately depicted Bai Ganio as a trader of rose oil in order to spare the intelligentsia, although in creating this character he had in mind precisely the Bulgarian ruling semi-intelligentsia and pseudo-intelligentsia, including diplomats and cabinet ministers. See Kiril Hristov, “Za potomtsite na Irechekovtsi, za gostuvaneto na bai Gania u bulgarskiia istorik i za svoeto zavrushtane” (an interview with Hristov from 1935), in Tikhov, ed., Aleko Konstantinov i bŭlgarskata, 66. A similar opinion, that Aleko actually wanted to criticize the “deficiencies of those who manage our state,” is expressed by Konstantinov, Georgi, “Aleko Konstantinov,” in Konstantinov, Georgi, Novabŭlgarska literatura (Sofia, 1943), 2:143–44Google Scholar. On one occasion, Aleko himself applied Bai Ganio to the intelligentsia. See Konstantinov, “Po povod na edna knizhka,” 79.

31. Stefanov, “Bai Ganio kato kulturno-istoricheski tip,” 353-54, 356-58. But the same author also interprets the creation of Bai Ganio as resulting from the conflict between a Europeanized intelligentsia and an uncouth Bulgarian bourgeoisie (348).

32. Blagoev, Dimitur, “Bai Ganio—predvestnik na oformenite dnes heroi na kapitalizma“ (1897), in Tikhov, , ed., Aleko Konstantinov i bŭlgarskata, 25.Google Scholar

33. Stefanov, “Bai Ganio kato kulturno-istoricheski tip,” 309-10, 349-52, 354-56. Unlike Gesemann, Stefanov points to Bai Ganio's more glorious origins in the progressive times of Bulgarian national formation, the so-called national revival of the nineteentii century, which was sponsored by a few patriotic merchants and a “bourgeoisie” of artisans and shopkeepers. But he points to the abrupt change of ethos after liberation.

34. Bakalov, Georgi, Aleko Konstantinov i Bai Ganiu (Sofia, 1934), 5, 6.Google Scholar

35. Ibid., 85, 130-31.

36. Meshekov, Ivan, Aleko Konstantinov, realist i grazhdanin: Literaturno kriticheska studiia (1937; reprint, Sofia, 1947), 10, 12, 14, 61, 64, 129, 147.Google Scholar

37. Pavlov, Todor, “Chetiri vuzgleda vurkhu tvorchesrvoto na Aleko Konstantinov“ (1939), in Pavlov, Todor, Izbraniproizvedeniia (Sofia, 1964), 7: 67–73 Google Scholar. Dimitiir Blagoev was the first to suggest that, had Aleko lived longer, his honest uncompromising nature would have led him to the socialist ideal. See Blagoev, Dimitiir, “Ubiistvoto na Aleko,” Novo vreme l ,no. 5 (1897): 547–51Google Scholar.

38. Stoianov, Liudmil, “Aleko Konstantinov: Suvest, koiato bode” (1947), in Tikhov, , ed., Aleko Konstantinov i bŭlgarskata, 367–68Google Scholar; Stefana Ivanova, Bai Ganio: Literaturen razbor (Sofia, 1961), 42, 46, 86, 88, 91.

39. Tsanev, Georgi, “Aleko Konstantinov,” in Bozhkov, Stoiko, ed., Istoriia na bŭlgarskataliteratura (Sofia, 1970), 3:347, 350–51Google Scholar; Pantelei Zarev, “Aleko Konstantinov,” in Pantelei Zarev, Panorama na bŭlgarskata literatura (1960; reprint, Sofia, 1977), 1:559-61; Pondev, Petur, Aleko Konstantinov: Literaturno-kriticheski ocherk (Sofia, 1959), 36–37, 41 Google Scholar; Alexandŭr Nichev, Aleko Konstantinov, 1863-1897 (Sofia, 1964), 113-14, 153; Nichev, Boian, “Aleko Konstantinov i ‘Bai Ganio,'” in Nichev, Boian, Literaturni portreti i problemi (Sofia, 1972), 104–5Google Scholar; Igov, “Shtastlivetsut Aleko,” 110-12.

40. According to Ivanova, Bai Ganio, 95-95, 103.

41. Pondev, Petur, “Otnovo za Bai Ganio i suvremennite ‘prevrashteniia’ na baiganiovshtinata,“in Konstantinov, Aleko, Suchineniia v dva toma (Sofia, 1989) ,1:6, 13–17.Google Scholar

42. See Emil Manov, Vnutsite: Pisma do Aleko (Sofia, 1977). The various deeds have in common the pursuit of personal benefit at the expense of the "common good" in its socialist concept. Most of the stories end with the culprit being punished, but the author ventures a statement to the effect that even though Bai Ganio's children and grandchildren are under attack by the Communist Party, the people, and the writers, they still have a place among us because of human weakness and because "Ganio's seed is within us" (21).

43. The term identification mechanism appears in Nedelchev, Mikhail, “Dvumodelnostta na ‘Bai Ganio,'” in Nedelchev, Mikhail, Sotsialni stilove: Kriticheski siuzheti (Sofia, 1987), 54–55, 58-59Google Scholar. For an earlier formulation, see Arnaudov, “Aleko Konstantinov,“ 336, and Meshekov, Aleko Konstantinov, realist i grazhdanin, 148-49.

44. As Kiossev points out, it is precisely because Bai Ganio is a negative national symbol who evokes a “shameful” identification that he developed such a great symbolic efficacy. See Kiossev, “The Debate,” 204, 206-8. One may speculate why a major national symbol should be a negative one. But a number of positive national symbols exist as well (the Balkan mountains among others).

45. Meshekov, Aleko Konstantinov, realist i grazhdanin, 146-47, 149-50, 152. The author believed in the purifying and curative power of laughing at oneself, which is present in Aleko's artistic play with his hero and is imitated by the reader. Meshekov evoked the image of the entire Bulgarian people laughing at themselves. For the cathartic effect based more on the psychoanalytical model of searching for, and discussing, the Bai Ganio in oneself, see also Nedelchev, “Dvumodelnostta na ‘Bai Ganio,'” 54, 58-59.

46. One may cite here the literary theorist Nikola Georgiev, who rejects the search for a single meaning of the book and the character. Instead he believes that there is a “broad semiotic foundation” of shifting and flowing meanings, with the result that the literary work Bai Ganio has played an active and independent role in Bulgarian intellectual life. See Georgiev, Imeto na rozata, 34-35, 39.

47. A colleague of mine, the historian Doxis Doxiadis, drew my attention to the fact that the Greeks have a similar well-liked figure of anecdotes, sayings, and popular theater— Karagioz (Black-eyed)—with multiple meanings, including a national one. In fact, Karagioz was well-known in Bulgaria, too, as an amusing character in popular plays, but he remained confined to the Ottoman period and the time around liberation in 1878 and to popular entertainment. One more of Bai Ganio's “predecessors” is worth mentioning: the “Bulgarian” Hitur Petur (Petur the Sly), who appears in popular tales most often in opposition to the Turk Nastradin Hodja. But again, this character did not continue to capture the public's imagination in postliberation times.

48. In fact, this is the one true way in which Bai Ganio acquires a national meaning and becomes a national symbol participating in the construction of a national identity: not by embodying some Bulgarian essence but by having been chosen by the Bulgarians themselves as a sort of national reference, mostly to express self-criticism, self-reproach, selfdenigration, even self-rejection or self-pity, or just for the sake of making fun of themselves. As Boian Penev once remarked, when broadly conceived so as to be synonymous with “Bulgarian,” the name Bai Ganio is pronounced the same as the name Bulgarian in a variety of modalities. Penev, “Prevrashteniiata,” 181-82.

49. In fact, Bai Ganio's new faces in the postcommunist period (such as former sportsmen and secret police agents who have become “businessmen,” populist politicians, millionaires who made money by crooked means, fraudulent Bulgarians abroad, and so on) have already been depicted in stories by Iordan Popov, Krustiu Kriistev, Mikhail Veshim, Bai Ganio sezavrushta: 101 godini po-kusno (Sofia, 1996).

50. Postcommunist fashions surface in a recent interpretation by Panko Anchev, according to whom Aleko was an “Americanophile” and an admirer of the “American way of life,” even though his “Balkan limitations” made him afraid of the new. See Anchev, Panko, ed., Stranitsi za Aleko Konstantinov (Varna, 1991), 187–90Google Scholar. This is also a sign that directly ideological interpretations may coexist with more neutral ones.

51. With the demise of the notion of socialism as a “second” (instead of a “third“) world, postcommunism ironically increased the vulnerability of Bulgaria's national selfesteem. Thus Bai Ganio has regained some of his symbolic effectiveness and serves again (as he did before communism) to express a feeling of backwardness.

52. For an elaboration of the idea that the hero “steps out” of the book into real life, thus acquiring new traits and characteristics, see Penev, “Prevrashteniiata,” 181; Ralchev, Istinskiiat Bai Ganio, 66-72, 86-91; Elevterov, Stefan, “Lichnostta na povestvuvatelia v tvorchestvoto na Aleko Konstantinov,” in Konstantinov, Aleko, Izbrani tvorbi (Sofia, 1984), 14 Google Scholar.