Blaga Dimitrova

Blaga Nikolova Dimitrova (Bulgarian: Блага Димитрова; 2 January 1922 – 2 May 2003) was a Bulgarian poet and the vice president of Bulgaria from 1992 until 1993.

Early life and education Dimitrova was born on 2 January 1922 in Byala Slatina, Bulgaria. She graduated high school in Sofia in 1941. During the same year in autumn, she enrolled in the Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, where she studied Slavic philology until graduation in 1945. She continued her studies at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow, as she defended a dissertation on "Mayakovsky and Bulgarian poetry" in 1951. On her return to Bulgaria, she joined the editorial staff of the monthly magazine of the Bulgarian Writers' Association. In 1962 she joined the editorial staff of the association's publishing house, where she tried to publish the works of young authors who had fallen out of favour with the censors.

Intellectual career In 1963, after the tirade against the country's intellectuals by the Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party, Todor Zhivkov, the publishing house suspended publications and Blaga left her job in protest and moved to another publishing firm. In 1965 she published her first book, Journey to Oneself. During the Vietnam War she visited that country several times, adopted a young Vietnamese orphan and then published several works resulting from her observations. For many years she worked as an editor in various newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses. Dimitrova was engaged in translation and social work, and compiled anthologies. In February 1989 Blaga Dimitrova was one of 102 Bulgarian intellectuals to sign an appeal in defence of Václav Havel. On 5 May 1989, her husband was arrested because he was the chief editor of the journal Democracy, an organ of the Association of Democratic Forces. On 20 January 1989, she was invited, together with a group of intellectuals, to a meeting known as the “breakfast” with French President François Mitterrand. The event was later referenced by the Social Democratic Union (SDS) as a symbolic moment in its formation. Dimitrova subsequently participated in organized public rallies during the period of democratic…Citește mai mult

Vice President In the presidential elections held on 19 January 1992, Dimitrova was elected vice-president and Zhelyu Zhelev was elected president of the Republic of Bulgaria. She worked in this position for no more than a year and a half. Disappointed and oppressed by the way the presidency and the government work, on 6 July 1993 she left the vice-presidential post with an open letter. In an interview with a capital newspaper, she said: "The post of vice president gave me the opportunity to face people's characters, to understand what power is. You cannot imagine how a person changes in a certain environment. Even at home, I noticed such a change with horror." Dimitrova kept a long silence on political topics after her message.

Poetry Dimitrova published her first poems in the magazine Bulgarian Speech as a student in 1938, at only 16 years old. As the only child of parents: a lawyer and a teacher from Veliko Tarnovo moved to the capital so that their child could develop the intellectual capabilities that her father and mother believed in. Later, as a high school student at the First Girls' High School in the capital, under the skilled and caring guidance of her Bulgarian language and literature teacher Manya Miletich, Blaga Dimitrova began to publish in various newspapers and magazines. She would publish her first book, called ''Journey to Oneself'' in 1961. After the suicide in Prague of Jan Palach and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, she wrote her poem Jan Palach, which she managed to smuggle to the dissidents in Prague. The Seventies marked the peak of her poetic production, with the publication of a number of books that re-awakened the Bulgarians' conscience. Along with her husband, the literary critic Jordan Vasiliev, in 1975 she published Bagrian's youth and Black days and white days, a sort of biography of the great Bulgarian poet Elisaveta Bagryana. Since the text mentions authors banned by the propaganda, the…Citește mai mult

Works Because the sea is black: poems of Blaga Dimitrova. Translated by Niko Boris; Heather McHugh. Wesleyan University Press. 1989. Because the sea is black. Translated by Ludmilla G. Popova-Wightman; Elizabeth A. Socolow. Ivy Press Princeton. June 2003. ISBN 1-930214-06-5. The last rock eagle: selected poems of Blaga Dimitrova. Translated by Brenda Walker; Vladimir Levchev; Belin Tonchev. Forest Books. 1992. ISBN 978-1-85610-009-0. Forbidden sea: a poem. Ivy Press. 2000. ISBN 978-1-930214-01-9.

Anthologies Vasa D. Mihailovich, ed. (1977). "The Old Man and the World". White stones and fir trees: an anthology of contemporary Slavic literature. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 978-0-8386-1194-4. Walter M. Cummins, ed. (1993). "Almost a Prophecy; Night-light -- A Night-bird's Eye; The Great Wall; Amnesia in Reverse; Bee Lesson; The Shadow of the Trees; Overstepping One's Rights; Frost". Shifting borders: East European poetries of the eighties. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 978-0-8386-3497-4.