site.btaPoet Atanas Dalchev Born 120 Years Ago Today

Poet Atanas Dalchev (1904-1978) was born 120 years ago today. He is among the best known and most widely read Bulgarian poets and his works appeal even to people who shun poetry.

In addition to his original work, he also translated a large amount of fiction and poetry published between the 1950s and 1970s.

Dalchev was born in Thessaloniki, then part of the Ottoman Empire. The family moved to Sofia in 1913, and Atanas finished one of Bulgaria's best educational establishments, Boys' Secondary School No. 1, in 1922. Five years later, he graduated in Pedagogy and Philosophy from Sofia University.

The young man developed a profound interest in history of art and history of culture. He spent years abroad: in Italy, France (Paris and Toulouse), London and Istanbul. He was fluent in several languages. His elder brother, Lyubomir (1902-2002), became a famous sculptor; his younger brother, Boris (1910-1987), became a famous architect.

Atanas Dalchev was among the leading Bulgarian poets of the 1920s and 1930s. After the Communist takeover in 1944, he was among the first writers to be attacked by the new establishment.

While he did not aggressively reject the social order under Communism, he was too detached from the world he was forced to live in. His aesthetic platform had little to do with Socialist Realism, an artistic concept that dominated Bulgarian art at that time. He found himself jobless, almost without means of livelihood, and was stigmatized for practising aesthetic formalism, engaging in art for art's sake, and writing "for a selected audience of snobs".

Dalchev responded by maintaining poetic silence for years.

Luckily, he was able to establish himself as a prominent translator of poetry and fiction from French, Spanish, English, German and Russian. 

His translating work did not go unnoticed abroad: he was awarded the German-Austrian Herder Prize in 1972 (for his overall literary work) and the Russian Znak Pocheta Order (or Order of the Badge of Honour) in 1967 (for popularizing Russian culture in Bulgaria).

Even though they frowned upon his poetry, his critics could not cross him out or consign him to oblivion. He had carved out a niche of his own, and even the establishment accepted that fact.

In 1978, an obituary signed by communist dictator Todor Zhivkov and other party and culture dignitaries eulogized Dalchev as "one of the greatest masters of the Bulgarian written word". 

It was the ever-troubled human soul that stood at the centre of Dalchev's poetry and that ensures him a readership for many years to come.