Georgi Danchev

Recently, a handwritten collection from the 1830s was discovered in Veliko Tarnovo and handed over to the library of the Higher Pedagogical Institute "Brothers Cyril and Methodius" in the city. Its content - over 20 different in nature and size compositions, placed on 406 pages, will be announced separately. Among the other works in the collection, two poems are also recorded, which, due to their New Bulgarian language and their ideological and artistic qualities, deserve special attention. For the most part, the collection is the work of Mihail Popovich, a writer from Sevlievo, who is probably also the author of the poems. The first of them, "Oh, my son," was recorded in 1835. This is confirmed by the author's note, left on one of the following sheets. The second poem, "Unfortunate Bulgaria," was probably written later. It is located at the end of the collection and due to the lack of close inscriptions around it, it is difficult to establish the year of its creation. The name of the writer Mihail Popovich is unknown to our literary history, because so far none of his literary works have become public knowledge. The collection is kept as a valuable family relic by the descendants of the writer and only at the beginning of 1964 did professors from the Higher Pedagogical Institute in Veliko Tarnovo follow its trail and discover it. Before the common binding, it consisted of several books written at different times. The works included in the books that make up the collection and a number of other issues related to the manuscript will be discussed in detail elsewhere. However, here we cannot fail to highlight the fact that we are faced with a well-established writer from the first half of the 19th century, who was systematically engaged in literary work. The entire collection has a distinctly New Bulgarian appearance. Along with works of a church-religious nature, it also includes works with clearly expressed patriotic-enlightenment tendencies.

Until a few years ago, the 17th and 18th centuries were considered among the least studied periods of our literary development. Ignorance of the true state of literary life during these centuries led to an underestimation of one of the most interesting phenomena in our literature during Turkish slavery - the Bulgarian damascenes. Appearing as translations of the collection "Treasure" by Damaskin Studite in the second half of the 16th century, they gradually occupied a central place in literary practice in our country in the 17th and especially in the 18th century. Their compilers, initially translators and compilers, began to show creative daring, most clearly expressed in Paisius' contemporary - the damascene maker Joseph Beardati. Damaskin1 Al. Burmov. Was there a central revolutionary Bulgarian committee in Bucharest in 1769-1872? Historical Review, 1961, vol. 3, pp. 34-47. * Donka Petkanova-Toteva, The Damaskins in Bulgarian Literature, BAS, Sofia, 1965. 52 The literature of the Damaskins played an important role in the spiritual life of our lands and helped to speed up the emergence of the Revival consciousness in the lowlands. On its pages, along with the first enlightenment appeal, a critical and denunciatory attitude towards a number of phenomena of slave life appeared. From collections with a moral and instructive direction in the spirit of Christian virtues, they turned into works that were directly or indirectly related to the problems of the then reality.