Full Description
Artistically and politically radical, Bulgarian poet, translator and activist Geo Milev (1895-1925) produced an astonishing array of work over the course of his short life and yet very little of it is readily available in English translation. Once there was Spring contains new translations of all his major poems and prose poems, from the early Symbolist cycle 'The Cruel Ring' and First World War prose sequence 'By Doiran Lakee'to his modernist reworking of Bulgarian folksongs 'The Icons are Sleeping' and his most famous work, the radical anarcho-communist epic 'September'.
Contents
Contents
Introduction 1 Translator's note 8
POEMS
1: The Cruel Ring 13
Parsifal 16 'Speak: so at once you disappear' 17 'And at this hour when in long-drawn-out despair' 18 'O rain, o rain abundant and drear' 19 Sentimentality 20 'In this hour of evening deceits' 21 Diary 23 'Until you avert your gaze in lonely disbelief' 24 Fabulous interlude:Voyage to China 25 Sensation 28 Ballad 29 'My head - a bloody lantern with broken glass' 30 'The moon, old snake' 31 'Strike the third watch!' 32 'The wrathful Earth opens' 33 Lohengrin 34
2: The Icons Are Sleeping 35 3: Requiem for the poet P.K. Yavorov 45
4: Hell and other poems 55
From the book 'As Dur' 57 Krastyo Sarafov 59 Nightmare 60 From 'Andante Amoroso' 61 Day of Wrath 63 Be ready! 66 March 67 Hell 68
5: September 77
PROSE POEMS
By Doiran Lake 99 Black Banners 106 Consider the birds of the air and the lilies in the field 111 Expressionist Calendar for 1921 113 Dream-book 120 The Mirror 122 Apocalypse 123 Ugly Prose 125 May 134 The Fire Serpent 136
CRITICAL WRITINGS
Modern poetry 143 Against realism 157 Appeal to a Bulgarian writer 164
