“Железният светилник” / “The Iron Lantern”
“>
Autor:
Dimitar Talev
Country:
Bulgaria (BG)
Book Theme:
Classic novels and Authors representing your country culture
Publisher:
Bulgarian writer
Publishing Year:
Dimitar Talev is a Bulgarian writer, journalist and intellectual, closely connected with the fate of the Bulgarians in Macedonia. He graduated in Slavic philology and became editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Macedonia”. His activities in the 1930s and 1940s put him in a bad position with the authorities and in 1944 he was expelled from the Union of Bulgarian Writers. He was twice sent to labor camps and exiled with his family from his hometown. After the publication of “The Iron Lantern”, he was finally recovered and recognized as a major figure in Bulgarian literature. He died in 1966.
National Award for Children’s and Young People’s
Abstract
“The Iron Lantern” is a historical novel and the first book in the famous tetralogy by Dimitar Talev. The novel was published in 1952. It reflects the Bulgarian struggles for political and ecclesiastical independence. Talev wrote the novel at a time when his family and he were exiled to Lukovit. The novel is based in the fictional town of Prespa ( but actually Talev’s hometown of Prilep) and follows the fate of a typical Bulgarian Renaissance family. Several plot lines and conflicts stand out in the work. In the first part of the work, the clash between Stoyan Glaushev, who came from the village of Granche, and the citizens of Prespa, who initially do not want to accept him into their community, stands out. Sultana, the last scion of the impoverished Hadji-Serafimov family, does not obey conservative public opinion and makes a fateful life choice, violating the established norms in the patriarchal world. Lazar, the son of Sultana and Stoyan, enters into another type of conflict – not on a domestic level, but in the spheres of the national and social – with the Greek bishop’s deputy (the people’s leader against the people’s enemy, the “foreign intruder”) and with the soup cook Avram Nemtur. In the last part of the novel, the tragic conflict between Sultana – the guardian of patriarchal morality and traditional order – and the characters who embody the individual beginning – her daughter Katerina and the master carver Rafael Klinche – is at the forefront. The work ends with the wedding of the characters, who are idealized by the narrator –
Lazar and Nia. In this way, the peculiar compositional framework of the work closes –
in the beginning, the emphasis is on the trials that Sultana and Stoyan go through to preserve the family,
and in the end, their efforts are crowned with the recognition and respect of all the citizens of Prespa.
