Hristo Botev, Bulgarian Revival and National Liberation: Playing the Victim

What is it about?

Botev is the greatest Bulgarian poet ever. He was also a revolutionary. He devoted his poetry and life to the idea and the agenda of national liberation. Yet he was also obsessed by the social and individual liberation, i.e. he was an advanced modern man. Yet he was very critical towards the elites engaged in the national liberation process and after Levski's death, almost entirely gave up poetry and embraced revolutionary activities. He contributed to the success of April Uprising of 1876 by bringing to perfection the strategy of Playing the Victim and thus of pushing the right buttons of the World Public Opinion that enabled the Russian-Turkish War and in effect Bulgarian national liberation. His self-sacrifice was noticed globally. That was his last masterpiece.

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Why is it important?

The paper discusses the Romantic myth of the National poet and the way it was established in Bulgaria. Instead of the expected monolithic heroic image of a non-costorvercial public figure the Bulgarian myth managed to preserve Botev's contradictions and to sublate them through the embraced self-victimization, a humbler version of the traditional heroic self-sacrifice. My attempt was to demonstrate that the myth is actually a better reader of Botev's poetry and deed than the state sponsored institutions of school, academia and literary history.

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