Емил Димитров

The article presents for the first time the thesis that the so-called "Epilogue" of Pencho Slaveykov's "Bloody Song" is a literary mystification. Based on the author's historical and documentary research in recent years, it has been concluded that the real author of the text is Mara Belcheva, and the literary mystification was carried out by Boyan Penev. A series of arguments in defense of the thesis are formulated, and both the original manuscript of M. Belcheva and a facsimile of the mystification of B. Penev are published for the first time as appendix.

The article, part of a larger study, provides the first accurate reconstruction of the funeral of Pencho Slaveykov, which was held on June 1/14, 1912, in Brunate (Italy). The text, based on rich archival and documentary material (memoirs, press articles, archival sources), aims to theoretically substantiate the heuristic of the scientific approach to such “marginal” micro-plots. It demonstrates that the funeral of Pencho Slaveykov in Italy was conceived as a fulfillment of the poet’s unspoken will and a merging with the “solemn psalm of the entire universe” (“Psalm of the poet”). At the same time, the article shows how the burial of the renowned author could be interpreted as a supreme expression of mercy and a manifestation of Bulgarian-Italian reciprocal understanding and friendship.