Geo Milew

Geo Milew

Geo Milew ( Bulgarian Гео Милев , full name Георги Мильов Касабов , Georgi Miljow Kassabow ; born January 15, 1895 in Radnewo , near Stara Sagora , Bulgaria , † May 1925 near Sofia ) was a Bulgarian literary critic and expressionist poet. In the 1910s and 1920s he was a central figure in Bulgarian literary life, especially as a mediator of modern cultural currents. Milew was murdered in 1925 in the course of anti-communist violence by forces close to the government after the bomb attack on the Sveta Nedelja Cathedral .

Life

Self-portrait 1917

Milew was the firstborn of six children and came from a family of teachers. The family moved to Stara Sagora at an early age when his father Miljo Kassabow gave up the teaching profession and started a bookstore with a small affiliated publisher.

In 1900, at the age of five, he began his school career. As a child he showed artistic and linguistic skills and developed an early interest in literature: in 1907 a poem by the then twelve-year-old appeared for the first time in the children's magazine Slawejtsche , and between 1909 and 1914 he published annually handwritten anthologies with his own as well as translated poems.

At the age of 16 he began studying Slavic Studies in Sofia in 1911 . From 1912 to 1914 he studied philosophy and theater studies in Leipzig , from which time he had a special bond with modern German literature.

Letter from Geo Milew

From July to October 1914 he lived in London, where he made the acquaintance of the Belgian poet Émile Verhaeren . Verhaeren made a big impression on him and became a formative influence on him. When he returned to Germany, however, he was arrested in Hamburg on suspicion of espionage for Great Britain. Due to a lack of evidence, he was released and then traveled back to Bulgaria.

Here Milew took up his work as a mediator of modern European literature, founded a theater company and published small literary portraits of key authors of symbolism such as Stéphane Mallarmé , Richard Dehmel , Paul Verlaine , Emile Verhaeren and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche - each accompanied by their own translations Works. Each of the writings was dedicated to a different Bulgarian symbolist such as Nikolai Liliew , Dimtscho Debeljanow , Teodor Trajanow or Nikolai Rainow . His father's bookstore, for which he was responsible, as his father had already been drafted into the military during the First World War, served him as a platform .

His engagement was temporarily terminated when he entered the reserve officer school Knjashevo in March 1916 and was stationed near Doiran from September . There he was seriously wounded in a battle against British and Italian troops on April 27, 1917, lost his right eye and sustained serious head injuries. In March 1918 he was sent to Germany for treatment, where he had to undergo a series of complicated operations. However, after some time he broke off the treatment in order to devote himself more intensively to the cultural life of Berlin, where he lived until March 1919 and was part of the journal Die Aktion published by Franz Pfemfert .

On his return to Sofia, he married Mila Keranova, an actress who had recently finished her linguistic studies at the Sorbonne in Paris , and had two daughters. The family lived in a single room in the center of town in tight financial conditions. Here he founded the magazine "Wesni" ( Eng . "The Scales"), which was active from 1919 to 1922 , and is a central medium of modern Bulgarian art, especially Bulgarian symbolism. Between 1920 and 1923 he had the opportunity to stage several pieces at the Sofia National Theater, among others, but only August Strindberg's “Dance of Death” and Ernst Toller's “ Masse Mensch ” were performed, and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's “Elektra” was staged before the premiere Deposed in 1923 by the management of the National Theater.

Since 1922 at the latest, a shift towards a politicized understanding of literature has been recognizable in his work, and in the same year he also applied for admission to the Bulgarian Communist Party . From January 1924 he published a new magazine called Plamak ( Eng . "Flame"), which was strongly influenced by the political approach. His long poem "September", published here, which is his best known poem, which dealt with the events of the communist uprising in Bulgaria on September 23, 1923 and criticized its bloody crackdown by the government, led to his being targeted by law enforcement agencies. The edition was confiscated, "Plamak" had to cease its publication in January 1925 and Milew was indicted under the "Law for the Protection of the State". Against the advice of his friends, Milew did not leave the country, on May 14th he was sentenced by the district court in Sofia to one year imprisonment and a fine of 20,000 leva . In the grounds of the verdict, the court warned: “A poet sings about pure art, [...] from a high throne, standing above the petty squabbles of life ”, thus citing an attitude as exemplary, which Milew himself had taken in his symbolist times. In the course of the anti-communist violence by the government and troops close to the government after the bombing of the Sweta Nedelja Cathedral on April 16, 1925, he was picked up by the security police on May 15 for “a brief questioning”, from which he never returned. It was only around thirty years later that it was discovered that he had presumably been strangled and then buried in a mass grave near Ilijanzi near Sofia along with hundreds of other victims, including numerous important intellectuals in the country.

His daughter Leda Milewa also became an internationally known poet.

First edition of "September"

effect

Milew is considered the most important expressionist author in Bulgaria and influenced Bulgarian literature especially in the 1920s through his versatile work as a literary critic , publicist, editor and theater scholar.

For the twenties he is considered to be the most important mediator of modernism , especially symbolist and expressionist poets from Western Europe, he presented for the first time in Bulgaria. His translation work was of particularly long-lasting importance, including among others Sophocles , Shakespeare , Omar Chayyām , Lord Byron , Rainer Maria Rilke , Paul Verlaine , Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin , Alexander Alexandrowitsch Blok and Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky .

An edition of collected works appeared in 3 volumes in Bulgaria from 1976 to 1977, and a selection from his work in German appeared in Berlin in 1975 under the title “Tag des Zorns”.

The Milev Rocks have been named after him since 2010 , cliffs in the archipelago of the South Shetland Islands in Antarctica.

literature

• Blagovest Zlatanov: Geo Milev's theory of modern poetry in the context of some German modern theories. In: Angelika Lauhus (ed.): Bulgaria between Byzantium and the West. Contributions to culture, history and language. Symposium January 23, 2007. Kirsch-Verlag, Nümbrecht 2008, pp. 119-131

proof

Most of the information in this article has been taken from the literature cited here.

• Anonymous: The most important dates from the life of Geo Milew . In: Geo Milew: Day of Wrath . Volk und Welt, Berlin 1975, pp. 93–95
• Wesselin Andreew: Bold and strong . In: Geo Milew: Tag des Zorns Volk und Welt, Berlin 1975, pp. 97–111
• Toncho Zhechev: Geo Milev - One of the Most Prominent Figures in Bulgarian Literature. In: Geo Milev: The Road To Freedom . 1988, ISBN 0-948259-45-0 .
• Leda Milewa: Footsteps on the Stairs. In: Geo Milev: The Road To Freedom . 1988, ISBN 0-948259-45-0 .
• Rozalia Hristova: Road Scholars . In: The Sofia Echo, July 5, 2001, online

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wesselin Andreew: Bold and strong . In: Geo Milew: Day of Wrath . Volk und Welt, Berlin 1975, p. 102

Web links

Commons : Geo Milew  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Geo Milew in the catalog of the German National Library