Grigor Parlichev

Grigor Stavrev Parlichev was a Bulgarian writer, teacher and translator. In North Macedonia and Bulgaria, he is regarded as a pioneer of national awakening.

Life
Grigor Parlichev was born on 18 January 1830 in Ohrid, Ottoman Empire, as the fourth child of Maria Gyokova and Stavre Parlichev, a craftsman. Parlichev studied in a Greek school in Ohrid. He was taught by Dimitar Miladinov, a Bulgarian National Revival activist. In the 1850s he worked as a teacher of Greek in the towns of Tirana, Prilep and Ohrid. In 1858 Parlichev started studying medicine in Athens but transferred to the Faculty of Linguistics in 1860. Adopting the Hellenized form of his name - Grigorios Stavridis, in the same year he took part in the annual poetry competition in Athens, winning first prize for his poem "O Armatolos", written in Greek. Acclaimed as "second Homer", he was offered scholarships to the universities at Oxford and Berlin. However, Parlichev declined the offered scholarships. Literary critics and the public in Athens also emphasized his non-Greek origin. In 1862, he also wrote another poem called "Skenderbeg" in Greek, with which he participated in the poetry competition, but it was not awarded. After the death of his teacher Dimitar Miladinov in the same year, he returned to Ohrid.



Parlichev joined the struggle for independent Bulgarian church and schools, though he continued to teach Greek. After spending some time in Constantinople in 1868 acquainting himself with the Church Slavonic language, he returned to Ohrid where he advocated the substitution of Greek with Bulgarian in the town's schools and churches. In the same year, Parlichev was arrested and spent several months in an Ottoman jail in Debar after a complaint was sent by the Greek bishop of Ohrid. At that time he began to study Bulgarian (or as he called it himself - the Slavonic language).

From 1869 Parlichev taught Bulgarian in several towns across Ottoman Empire, including Struga, Gabrovo, Bitola, Ohrid and Thessaloniki. In this period, he got married and had five children: Konstantinka, Luisa, Kiril, Despina and Georgi. In 1870 Parlichev translated his award-winning poem "O Armatolos" into Bulgarian in an attempt to popularize his earlier works, which were written in Greek, among the Bulgarian audience. Parlichev was the first Bulgarian translator of Homer's Iliad in 1871. However, he was criticized by Bulgarian literary critics because they considered his knowledge of Bulgarian as poor. Parlichev used a specific mixture of Church Slavonic, Bulgarian, Russian and his native Ohrid dialect. In 1872, he published the poem called 1762 leto. In 1883 Parlichev moved to Thessaloniki where he taught at the Thessaloniki Bulgarian Male High School from 1883 to 1889. During his stay there he wrote his autobiography between 1884 and 1885. After his retirement in 1890, he returned to Ohrid, where he died in 25 January 1893.

Identification
Per historian Raymond Detrez, who received his PhD for his thesis on Parlichev, in his early life Parlichev was a member of the Romaic community, a multi-ethnic proto-nation, comprising all Orthodox Christians of the Ottoman Empire. It had been under way until the 1830s, with the rise of nationalism in the Balkans. In his youth, he had no well-defined sense of national identity and developed a Greek (Rum Millet) identity (in the sense of being an Orthodox Christian), but as an adult, he adopted a Greek and later a Bulgarian national identity. In the last decade of his life, he adhered to a form of vague local Macedonian patriotism, though continued to identify himself as a Bulgarian. Thus, in the context of discussions about the existence of the Macedonian nation, his national identity became disputed between Bulgarian and Macedonian (literary) historians.

Language
As a child, Parlichev learned to write excellent Greek and later wrote in his autobiography that he mastered literary Greek better than a native speaker. However, as an adult, despite his Bulgarian self-identification, Parlichev had poor knowledge of literary Bulgarian, which appeared to him as a "foreign language". He started learning to read and write in Bulgarian only after his return from Athens in 1862. In his autobiography, Parlichev wrote: "I was, and I am still weak with the Bulgarian language," and "In Greek I sang like a swan, now in Slavic I cannot even sing like a donkey." The then-emerging standard Bulgarian language was based on the easternmost Eastern South Slavic dialects, while his native dialect belongs to the western dialects. He used a mix of Church Slavonic, Russian and Bulgarian words and forms, as well as elements typical of his native dialect, calling it Common Slavic. He also wanted to enrich the emerging standard language with elements taken from the Russian language. Because of this, he was criticized for his translation of Homer's Iliad. Thus, according to Bulgarian historian Roumen Daskalov, Parlichev reacted against his Bulgarian literary critics by withdrawing into "an alternative Macedonian regional identity, a kind of Macedonian particularism." However, when he came to write his autobiography, Parlichev used the standard Bulgarian language with some influence of his native Ohrid dialect.

Legacy
His autobiography was published posthumously in Sofia in a Bulgarian periodical called Folklore and Ethnography Collection, produced by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education, in 1894. Parlichev's son Kiril Parlichev became a prominent member of the revolutionary movement in Macedonia and a Bulgarian public figure. After World War II, Macedonian historians started regarding him as an ethnic Macedonian author. Both North Macedonia and Bulgaria regard him as a pioneer of national awakening. The Parlichev Ridge in Antarctica is named after him. A digital monument honoring him was set up in the center of Ohrid in 2022.

Parlichev's Autobiography

 * Parlichev, Grigor. Автобиография. Сборник за народни умотворения, наука и книжнина, book IX, Sofia (1894).
 * Parlichev, Grigor. Автобиографија. Skopje, 1967 (scan).

Biographies

 * Parlichev, Kiril. Към характеристика на Григор С. Пърличев (Towards a Characteristic of Grigor S. Parlichev), Macedonian Review 4, book 2, p. 99 (1928).
 * Matov, Dimitar. Гр. С. Пърличев. Книжовно биографически чертици (Gr. S. Parlichev: A Literary and Biographical Outline), Balgarski Pregled, book 4-5 (1895).

Historical context

 * Shapkarev, Kuzman. Материали за възраждането на българщината в Македония от 1854 до 1884 г. Неиздадени записки и писма (Materials about the Bulgarian Revival in Macedonia from 1854 to 1884. Unpublished Notes and Letters). Balgarski Pisatel, Sofia (1984)
 * Sprostranov, Evtim. По възражданьето в град Охрид (On the Revival in the City of Ohrid), Сборникъ за Народни Умотворения, Наука и Книжнина, book XIII, Sofia, pp 621–681 (1896)