site.btaWriter Toncho Zhechev: Lifetime of Controversy for Person of Concord

Saturday marks the 95th birth anniversary of eminent Bulgarian writer, literary critic and humanitarian Toncho Zhechev, on July 6, 1929.

A native of Divdyadovo (now part of Shumen, Northeastern Bulgaria), Zhechev graduated in law from Sofia University in 1954 and started work as a research associate at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Literature in 1963. He was director of that Institute between 1974 and 1982. Zhechev earned a doctor's degree in philological sciences in 1977 and was a professor of history of modern Bulgarian literature in Shumen University from 1985 to 1990. In 1989, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences elected him its corresponding member.

He was member of the Board of the St Cyril and St Methodius International Foundation, of the Public Council of the Open Society Foundation, and of the National Council for Radio and Television.

Toncho Zhechev's 700-plus publications include literary criticism, essays, and studies  of folklore, ethnopsychology, philosophy and history. A number of his books have been translated into Russian, German and Polish. His most popular work, The Bulgarian Easter or the Passions of Bulgaria, appeared in 1975 and was reprinted six times until 1995. It tells about Bulgarians' struggle for an autocephalous church in the mid-19th century.

Another major book, The Myth of Odysseus (1985), is a bold reflection on God in souls and human morality and the impossibility of being an Odysseus in the iron grip of ideological dogmatics.

From believer and active proponent of communist ideals in his youth, Zhechev graduated to a healthy and open scepticism about processes in socialist societies.

"What is strange and paradoxical is that I, who consider myself a person of concord, of affection and harmony among people, spent my life amidst incessant controversies and animosities. Only God knows why this is so, but it is a fact," Zhechev said in an interview in 1986.

In 1994, he told the Denyat newspaper: "Our people may be exceedingly capable, but we lack proper behaviour as human beings. We are unable to teach our own children the songs and wisdom and culture which their parents and grandparents lived by. Culture is not about having learnt a lot and having read heaps of books. Culture is behaviour, it implies imposing restrictions on yourself so as not to bother anybody else."

Toncho Zhechev passed away in Sofia on February 23, 2000.