REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

BULGARIAN LABOUR CAMP LITERATURE
GENRE AND MEMORY
Vladimir DONEV 1
Abstract: In the article the author explores the genre peculiarities of prose written in encampment.
Dostoyevsky’s House of the Dead transforms the sense of Dante’s carmen horrendum as a genre,
giving it a new functionality: the descent into hell as a moral allegory; the exemplum and personal
trials in the narrator’s (diary) confessions and spiritual biography; the sinners’ portraits, full of
naturalism, emotion and details with their mix of irony and grotesqueness; the consciousness of
the metaphysical aspect of life. The specific character of the genre is analyzed in the book "Belene.
The Story of Concentration Camp Bulgaria" (2003), by Stefan Bochev, the most important
representative writer of this literature in Bulgaria.
In debates on literature of the recent past in Bulgaria were used phrases such as: of the
Nations Republic of Bulgaria literature, socialist realism, socialist realism canon,
official literature, alternative literature, illegal literature among others. In this paper
under antitotalitarian literature we do not mean the literature "near", "although", but
“against” official literature and the theory and poetics of socialist realism with all the
changes in its development during the socialist period 1946-1990. This is another
literature in its political orientation, values and ideological strain, distributed through
illegal channels, bearing the risk of direct repression and threat to the writer’s life.
Genres of antitotalitarian literature are the labour camp prose and poetry, prison
literature, emigration literature of the period to 10. XI. 1989, literature of the Bulgarian
Turks, written against the policy of renaming and expatriation of this minority in the last
years of socialism. Under the "alternative literature" are outlined the different degree and
form of deviations from the norms of official literature - behaviors, styles, poetics, ideas
and fictional achievements in the framework of the socialist realism, conflicts, debates on
aesthetic issues in the then literary process. The alternative literature is unfolded in a
broad field between the official and antitotalitarian literature. It is complementary to the
products of socialist realism.
In this text we will examine two aspects in the poetics of labour camp memoirs - the
status of the witness-narrator and the genre peculiarities from the perspective of literature
as it would highlight the artistic merit of some memoirs of communist regime in Bulgaria
and would look for their place in the prose tradition.
According Ivaylo Znepolski memories of experiences cannot be classified as literature,
although the autobiographical elements imply chronological narrative and intrigue. They
cannot be attributed to historical reading. The renowned researcher of communism in
Bulgaria compares them with various other genres such as oral history, socio-anthropological
inquiry, and autobiographical narrative diaries. In the spirit of the argument for the dissolution
of the big stories (Francois Lyotard), the author points out that small stories about the socialist
past also have their place in maintaining two basic narratives of socialism - progressive-
1 St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria.