La Rochefoucauld in Bulgarian

The French moralists, to whom the late Gerard Boer dedicated a book of insightful essays a few years ago, are, compared to other French writers, little known in our country. In the past, perhaps the only one of our great writers, Stoyan Mihaylovsky, showed a constant and lively interest in the French moralists, with whose "Maxims and Reflections" he liked to embellish his original writings. But Mihaylovsky did not deal with translations, in order to give us "selected pages" at least from those authors in whom he found a rich source of creative inspiration. In our periodicals of the past, fragments of the work of the French moralists are occasionally found, among whom La Bruyere and François de La Rochefoucauld are the most famous. Joubert, Chamfort and Vovnard, who lived later than the first two, are comparatively much less known in our country. Even Mikhailovsky, who was more carried away by the "reflections" of a certain Madame Svechin and whom he often quoted in his own writings, did not seem to have shown any particular interest in Joubert and Vovnargh. The latter, who had a short life, as he died at only 32 years old (1715-1747), compared especially to La Bruyere and La Rochefoucauld, is the most optimistic: Vovnargh believed in the noble impulses of the human heart and in the purity of its passions. Last year, a young French essayist and critic, Henri Bonnier, published Vovnargh's works in two volumes at the Hachet publishing house in Paris. It is also interesting to note that Vovnargh in one of his texts criticized some of La Rochefoucauld's "maxims."