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DOI Artikel:Friedman, Victor A.: Beyond the borders: Bulgarian and Macedonian poetic cover art in the early and middle twentieth century
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51715#0044
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7. St. Boradfriev: Utrenna kitka [Morning Bouquet]. Veliká Tůmovo
: K. Boradfůev, 1905. Artistic design S. Velkov. Photo: The University
of Chicago Begenstein Ubrary.
2. St. Chilingirov: Ednaqh dasûmne [OnceLetItDam]'. Sofia :P. M.
Búqajtov, 1907. Photo: The University qf Chicago Begenstein Lábrary.
visual représentation of varied transitions. His three
éléments of what he calls “the oral nature of the artistic
explosion on [book] cot>ers” — hand lettering, jolting
ephemerality, and new ways of historicizing culture
and identity - find interesting echoes in the Balkans
as represented by Bulgaria and Macedonia. Bulgarian
cover art follows the flows of modernism until World
War Two, while in the early post-War days of the
Republic of Macedonia, perhaps precisely because
the entity and the récognition of its language as of-
ficial were so new, the strictures of socialist realism
did not weigh as heavily.
The sources for this méditation on ephemeral Bal-
kan art will be two collections of poetry pamphlets,
i.e. precisely the type of cover art that, as Kreslins
observes, libraries routinely destroy in the process of
binding and préservation. The first of these collec-
tions comprises approximately one thousand poetry
5 Horace G. Lunt was the author of the first complété gram-
mar of modem Macedonian. - LUNT, H. G.: A Grammar
of the Macedonian Uterary Language. Skopje 1952. Most of his
collection of Macedonian books is now at the University of
pamphlets published in Bulgaria between 1895 and
1945 housed at the University of Chicago Regenstein
Library. We are indeed fortunate that the library chose
to bind these pamphlets in groups, thus preserving
them in their entirety. The second collection is of
Macedonian books acquired by Horace G. Lunt in
the 1940s and 1950s and given by him to Christina
E. Kramer of the University of Toronto.5 Although
Kreslins concentrâtes on Riga in the first decade of the
twentieth Century, the present article moves through
its first half owing to the nature of the material.
As in Riga, so, too in Bulgaria the first decade of
the twentieth Century saw an explosion of innovative
book cover design. Moreover, the innovation was
not limited to Sofia, the capital, as seen in S. Velkov’s
cover illustration [Fig. 1] from Veliko Tůmovo, itself
a town of considérable historical importance. The
framing is Jugendstil and the lettering would be
Toronto’s Robarts Library and Thomas Fisher Rare Book
Room, the remainder (including those reproduced here) is in
Prof. Kramer’s possession and will be donated to Toronto’s
library at a later date.
38
čísla pisané ceruzkou
vyretušovať?
7. St. Boradfriev: Utrenna kitka [Morning Bouquet]. Veliká Tůmovo
: K. Boradfůev, 1905. Artistic design S. Velkov. Photo: The University
of Chicago Begenstein Ubrary.
2. St. Chilingirov: Ednaqh dasûmne [OnceLetItDam]'. Sofia :P. M.
Búqajtov, 1907. Photo: The University qf Chicago Begenstein Lábrary.
visual représentation of varied transitions. His three
éléments of what he calls “the oral nature of the artistic
explosion on [book] cot>ers” — hand lettering, jolting
ephemerality, and new ways of historicizing culture
and identity - find interesting echoes in the Balkans
as represented by Bulgaria and Macedonia. Bulgarian
cover art follows the flows of modernism until World
War Two, while in the early post-War days of the
Republic of Macedonia, perhaps precisely because
the entity and the récognition of its language as of-
ficial were so new, the strictures of socialist realism
did not weigh as heavily.
The sources for this méditation on ephemeral Bal-
kan art will be two collections of poetry pamphlets,
i.e. precisely the type of cover art that, as Kreslins
observes, libraries routinely destroy in the process of
binding and préservation. The first of these collec-
tions comprises approximately one thousand poetry
5 Horace G. Lunt was the author of the first complété gram-
mar of modem Macedonian. - LUNT, H. G.: A Grammar
of the Macedonian Uterary Language. Skopje 1952. Most of his
collection of Macedonian books is now at the University of
pamphlets published in Bulgaria between 1895 and
1945 housed at the University of Chicago Regenstein
Library. We are indeed fortunate that the library chose
to bind these pamphlets in groups, thus preserving
them in their entirety. The second collection is of
Macedonian books acquired by Horace G. Lunt in
the 1940s and 1950s and given by him to Christina
E. Kramer of the University of Toronto.5 Although
Kreslins concentrâtes on Riga in the first decade of the
twentieth Century, the present article moves through
its first half owing to the nature of the material.
As in Riga, so, too in Bulgaria the first decade of
the twentieth Century saw an explosion of innovative
book cover design. Moreover, the innovation was
not limited to Sofia, the capital, as seen in S. Velkov’s
cover illustration [Fig. 1] from Veliko Tůmovo, itself
a town of considérable historical importance. The
framing is Jugendstil and the lettering would be
Toronto’s Robarts Library and Thomas Fisher Rare Book
Room, the remainder (including those reproduced here) is in
Prof. Kramer’s possession and will be donated to Toronto’s
library at a later date.
38