Пенка Данова

In the author's opinion the debate about the presence of Orientalism and/or Occidentalism in the Bulgarian tradition "will not happen". Not only because our culture remains neutral regarding the globalizing "ism's". During the Romanticism some European intellectuals were insensitive to the Modernity, to its dictates and fashions. Such is the case of Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1827), an original Romanticist spirit who tried to place the eternal spiritual values above those of his contemporaries. "Nocturnal Song of a Wandering Shepherd in Asia" is a poetic work about the Moon, the life, the loneliness and pain. The wandering shepherd is not the "good savage", but the philosopher who calmly and resignedly contemplates the life caravan, understood as mankind's destiny. Asia is not the poet's refuge in which he would seek peace from the tiredness and lack of understanding of his contemporaries. It is rather an imaginary space, the boundlessness of which gives a hint of the insignificance of everyday vanity. In general, nature against artificiality. Enclosed is the Bulgarian translation of the poem.