Ex-communist Europe

Bulgaria

Bulgaria's missing diaspora

Jun 18th 2010, 10:04

JULIA KRISTEVA in literary criticism, Christo in art, Dimitar Berbatov in football: all are Bulgarians. All have little to do with their homeland. This thoughtful and rather sad piece from Transitions Online asks why Bulgaria imports downmarket foreign "stars" while its brightest and best head abroad, often severing their connections with home.

When emotions run high, few notice small details – and sometimes they matter most. Yes, Christo does not want to speak Bulgarian, but his English is clumsy as well. He does not refer to Bulgaria often, yet he does not claim any other motherland, either. Rather, he does not have any motherland at all. He is a strange kind of person from an entirely different world. He refers to his late wife in the present tense, as if she were still alive. Being a real artist, he does not care about comfort and money. Such people can hardly be judged by ordinary standards.
Even if unavoidable, painful quests of identity will not solve the vital issues of Bulgarian art. If Bulgarians want to cover themselves in cultural glory, they have at least to build some cultural infrastructure and find ways to finance culture. But the financial crisis has hit hard, and the government faces the fact that there are too many operas and theaters here. Some of them may not survive.

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dragos27 Jun 18th 2010 15:28 GMT

Do all small nations have to go through this pathetic whining about their cultural stars not being patriotic enough?

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Eastern approaches deals with the economic, political, security and cultural aspects of the eastern half of the European continent. It incorporates the long-running "Europe.view" weekly column. The blog is named after the wartime memoirs of the British soldier Sir Fitzroy Maclean.

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