Acta Nova Humanistica: A Journal of Humanities Published by New Bulgarian University

Tzvetan Stoyanov: an Untamed Creative Spirit

Momchil Metodiev — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Unfinished Educational Project of Tzvetan Stoyanov and his “Chinese Chronicle”

Toni Nikolov — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The article explores the unfinished educational and modernization project by the writer and thinker Tzvetan Stoyanov (1930–1971), who in the most difficult decades of communist Bulgaria managed to create his own large corpus of translations and texts, written in a relatively short period. A project that brought to the fore the concept of “Weltliteratur”, which he borrowed from Goethe to contrast it with the isolationism of “vale thinking”, as well as his fundamental research on the topic of alienation in contemporary culture. The article also attempts to reinterpret the essay “Chinese Chronicle” (1963) – an emblematic example of his “second” or philosophical prose, containing entire cycles of themes: “Dionysus”, “Orpheus”, “Karavelov and Botev”, “Lao Tzu and Confucius”, all the way to the “hippie subculture” and, of course, Dostoevsky – with “Genius and His Mentor”, which was intended to grow into a book about “death and resurrection”.

Tzvetan Stoyanov and the Utopia of World Literature

Kamelia Spassova — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article explores Tzvetan Stoyanov’s intellectual utopia of world literature as a counterpoint to the vale literature (kotlovinna literatura) debate of the 1960s. While contemporaries such as Toncho Zhechev and Krastyo Kuyumdzhiev defended the rootedness of national identity, Stoyanov envisioned Bulgarian literature as a participant in a “concert of nations”. Drawing on Goethe’s Weltliteratur ideal, he criticized three threats ‒ global homogenization, cultural isolationism and market-driven exoticization ‒ while practicing resistance through translations, critical and philosophical essays to bridge Bulgarian literature with the world literature canons. By reading the novel The Extraordinary Biography of Budi Budev (1969) as a parodic Bildungsroman, the paper reveals how Stoyanov transforms the Enlightenment ideal of education into a self-ironic allegory of intellectual resistance.

Is It Easy to Write about Bulgarian Literature?

Maya Gorcheva — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Is it easy to write about Bulgarian literature? The suggested essay ensues from the well-known debate in Bulgarian culture concerning the concepts of “the ours” and “the foreign”. It examines some examples from the critical and fictional texts of Tzvetan Stoyanov, which show both ruptures and linking “threads” between specifically native and non-Bulgarian culture and literature in the 1960s. Bulgarian culture, as a counterpoint to alienation, is characterized by the category of orality and preserves the harmonious relation between author and community. Therefore, the critic insists that it should be taken out of the “museum vitrine” and become a critical benchmark for the present. Secondly, we examine the manifold correlations between Bulgarian and non-Bulgarian in Tzvetan Stoyanov’s writings: the non-Bulgarian as a way of overcoming deficiencies; as mutual reflection and self-understanding; the interweaving of Bulgarian and non-Bulgarian images in an ever more uniform modern culture that standardizes cultural models despite ideological divisions. In conclude, the image of the threads is developed as a metaphor for the quest to preserve communion, and the asymmetry between authors labeled as “pro-Western” and their works on Bulgarian themes is displayed.

Tzvetan Stoyanov on the Pain and Pleasure of Alienation

Stiliyan Yotov — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The article is dedicated to a central theme in the work of Tzvetan Stoyanov (1930–1971) – alienation. It reconstructs Stoyanov’s general attitude towards culture as a field of communication and dialogue, rather than ideological conflict, and his contributions – through translations and commentaries – to the enrichment of this environment of pluralism and exchange. Against this background, it compares Stoyanov’s contributions with those of György Lukács (1885–1971) in relation to the role of the novel in the culture of modernity, as well as postmodernism, their attitude towards the peculiarities of the artistic hero and heroism, as well as towards existentialism. Existentialism is seen as Stoyanov’s approach to the problems of alienation, to which he devotes his main theoretical studies and conceives as a gigantic framework for research. The article offers a critical assessment of this project in the context of similar scientific experiments from the era of Stoyanov and the philosophical rediscovery of alienation with its dialectically ambivalent essence.

Outsiders and Runaways by Tzvetan Stoyanov as an “Apophatic” Critique

Maya Angelova — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The article examines how Tzvetan Stoyanov’s essay “Outsiders and Runaways” situates itself within the intellectual context of the 1960s in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, reading it as a point of intersection between ideological constraint and the gradual opening towards Western ideas. The analysis highlights the ways in which Stoyanov conceptualises the phenomenon of the outsider through dialogue with the philosophical and literary paradigms of the postwar West. These intertextual resonances are treated as intellectual mediations through which a specific regime of cultural translation emerges – one that filters Western concepts through the language of socialist criticism. In this sense, Stoyanov appears as a figure whose position as an Anglicist affords him access to proscribed books and theories, while his writing translates the notions of freedom, autonomy, and alienation into forms acceptable within the critical discourse of the period. Thus, Outsiders and Runaways becomes an act of intellectual emancipation within the boundaries of the possible – a Bulgarian reading of a theme proscribed by socialist realism: human solitude, moral dissent, and inner freedom. In contrast to socialist culture, which demanded that the outsider be rejuvenated, simplified, and secondarily infantilised, Stoyanov conceives of him as a morally autonomous subject capable of independent thought in unfree times.

Tzvetan Stoyanov and the Bulgarian Reception of Walt Whitman: Translation and Reception Series

Joanna Patula-Krasteva — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The article examines the Bulgarian reception of Walt Whitman by focusing on the translation and critical work of Tzvetan Stoyanov. The theoretical framework is based on Marta Skwara’s concepts of “translation series,” “reception series,” and “textualization,” which allow us to trace the dynamics of Whitman’s texts in the national context. The emphasis falls on Stoyanov’s translations of “Leaves of Grass” (1965), which combine humanistic and philosophical pathos with the ideological requirements of the socialist era. A comparison with Vladimir Svintila’s later translations reveals parallel translation series – canonizing (Stoyanov) and transgressive (Svintila). The analysis shows how translations function not only as linguistic transformations, but also as cultural and critical gestures that influence the poetic explorations of the 1960s and later literary debates in Bulgaria. In this way, the article reflects on the role of the translator as a cultural mediator and strategist of the national reception of world literature.

Three in the Game, the Fourth Forgotten

Mitko Novkov — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The focus of the article “Three in the Game, the Fourth Forgotten” is the incomplete research of the notable Bulgarian literary critic, translator and essayist Tzvetan Stoyanov’s The Genius and His Mentor (1978). Tzvetan Stoyanov’s book examines the relationship between the great Russian writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky and the Chief Prosecutor of the Russian Holy Synod Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev, the tutor of Emperor Alexander III, considered one of the most retrograde and reactionary thinkers and public figures in general in all of Russian history. The questions that the article asks are: 1) why did Konstantin Pobedonostsev turn specifically to Fyodor Dostoevsky with the desire to turn him into a spokesman for the conservative wing of Russian humanitarian thought in the 19th century, even though there were other significant figures of that time who could have fulfilled the same role?; 2) why does Tzvetan Stoyanov emphasize Dostoevsky’s ties with Pobedonostsev without taking into account the above-mentioned fact?; 3) did Dostoevsky really protect himself from Pobedonostsev’s influence and not allow him to fulfill his intentions towards him? The conclusion drawn by the article is that Dostoevsky and Pobedonostsev were not such antagonists as Tzvetan Stoyanov presents them, but rather like-minded people, and only death prevented Dostoevsky from finally transferring to Pobedonostsev’s camp.

The Water of Aquarius

Tzvetan Stoyanov — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A sample of Tzvetan Stoyanov’s late philosophical and essayistic prose, confessionally directed towards nature, alienation, madness and old age, even though the author had barely turned 39. At the center of this philosophical essay is the concept of peace, key to Tzvetan Stoyanov’s mindset (cf. his story “Peace Over Your Home” (1967), where the title is a quote from a poem by Nikolay Liliev). The text dates from 1969 and is incomplete, despite the existence of numerous manuscript versions. Typescript from Tzvetan Todorov’s private archive kept by © Toni Nikolov. Published for the first time.

Водата на Водолея

Цветан Стоянов — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Образец на късната философска и есеистична проза на Цветан Стоянов, изповедално насочен към природата, отчуждението, лудостта и старостта, независимо че авторът едва е навършил 39 години. В центъра на това философско есе е понятието спокойствие, ключово за Цветан-Стояновата мисловна нагласа (срв. неговата повест „Над твоя дом спокойствие“ (1967), където заглавието е цитат от стихотворение на Николай Лилиев). Текстът е от 1969 г. и не е завършен, въпреки съществуващите множество ръкописни варианти. Машинопис от архива на Цветан Стоянов, собственост на ©Тони Николов. Публикува се за първи път.

The End of Myths. A fantastic Story in Sixteen Scenes

Tzvetan Stoyanov — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ironic prose from 1959–1960. First part of two scenes written by Tzvetan Stoyanov about the “sunset of the ancient gods under socialism”, where the “Olympians” have to be forcibly incorporated into a labor-production cooperative (LPC). An allusion to the fate of “foreign people” under “people’s power”, preceding the essay “Orpheus. Fooling around with mythology” (1963). Typescript from Tzvetan Todorov’s private archive kept by © Toni Nikolov. Published for the first time.

Краят на митовете. Фантастична история в шестнадесет сцени

Цветан Стоянов — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Иронична проза от 1959–1960 г. Първа част от написаните от Цветан Стоянов две сцени за „залеза на античните богове при социализма“, където на „олимпийците“ се налага да бъдат приобщени със сила в трудово-производителна кооперация (ТПК). Алюзия за съдбата на „чуждите хора“ при „народната власт“, предхождаща есето „Орфей. Бълнуване с митология“(1963). Машинопис от архива на Цветан Стоянов, собственост на ©Тони Николов. Публикува се за първи път.

Tzvetan Stoyanov: Life in Dates

Editorial Board — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Czech Monograph on Bulgarian Unofficial Literature

Mihaela Ilieva — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Review of the book by Jakub Mikulecký Между дисидентството, ъндърграунда и сивата зона. Неофициалната българска литература в периода 1944-1989 г (Between dissidence, the underground and the gray zone. Unofficial Bulgarian literature in the period 1944-1989). Plovdiv University Publishing House. Plovdiv, 2025 (trans. Georgeta Cholakova). (Mezi disentem, undergroundem a šedou zónou. Neoficiální bulharská literatura 1944–1989. Prague: Academia /Slovanský ústav AV ČR, 2021, 511 pp.)

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Editorial Board — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000