Elin Pelin and Yordan Yovkov. Literary Relations and Influences

The name of one writer almost always points us to the name of the other - so much so that we feel connected in time and in the nature of their work. Elin Pelin and Yovkov are almost the same age: the former is three years older than the latter and lived twelve years after him. Both were born and raised in a village, but in different Bulgarian regions that are not similar. Elin Pelin is from Western Bulgaria, a child of a stubborn Shopian environment, among which he built his basic worldview and character, although after his twenty-third year (1900) he lived only in the capital, while Yovkov has longer and stronger roots in the village. The latter was nursed and spent his childhood in the wilderness of the Balkans - Zheravna; - and his adulthood - in flat Dobrudzha, near the border, where he taught until the Balkan War, so that he spent about thirty years of village life.