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Lubomir Guentchev was a Bulgarian translator, poet, playwright and essayist, born on 26 November 1907 in Pazardjik. He died on 28 August 1981 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. He wrote in both French and Bulgarian. Discovered in 1999, his work began to be published in France in 2003 and in Bulgaria in 2018.

I. His life

His origins:

Lubomir Guentchev is of modest origin. He was the fourth son of Georgi Guentchev (1878-1923), a civil servant at the Pazardjik City Hall, and Zoïka Mihaïlova Psaltova (1886-1952), of Greek origin. He came after three brothers: Nicolaï (1899-1923), Mihaïl (1900-19??), Vassili (1903-19??), and before his sister: Éléna (1910-2002). He was of a sickly constitution and, at a very early age, suffered from severe short-sightedness, which led to his being exempted from military service. Life did not spare him either. He lost his father, Georgi Guentchev, in 1922, which forced his family to leave Pazardjik and move to Plovdiv, in the city centre, at 15 Ivan Vazov Street. He also lost his elder brother, Nicolaï, in 1923.

Studies:

In 1922, Lubomir Guentchev had already obtained a scholarship from the French college "Saint-Augustin" of the Catholic Order of the Assumptionists, in Plovdiv. He studied there in French, according to the French curriculum, until he obtained his baccalaureate in 1928. The "Saint-Augustin" college then granted him a three-year scholarship to undertake higher studies in the field of education in Varna until 1931. He was offered another scholarship to study theology in France. He refused it. Thereafter, Lubomir Guentchev never had the opportunity to come to France.

Teaching: From 1930 to 1933, Lubomir Guentchev began teaching French in Varna, at the "Saint-Michel" college, which was also run by the Assumptionist Order. There he met the future Bulgarian symbolist poet Nikolai Liliev (1885-1960), whose main collections of poetry he would later translate into French. He then returned to Plovdiv as a French teacher at the "Saint-Augustin" college from 1933 to 1947. He remained there until the closure of the school in 1948 by the Bulgarian authorities. He then became a documentalist-interpreter with an administrative department of the municipality of Plovdiv.

The drama:

A tragedy occurred in Lubomir Guentchev's life on 22 June 1946 when a young girl he was passionately in love with, Valentina Dimitrova Guteva, born in 1926, died as a result of a surgical operation. He was deeply affected by this tragedy. His lyrical dramas, written between 1947 and 1957, Theurgy in particular, of which he left a transcription in French, transpose his pain and grief in the form of lyrical dramas that were never created. In 1972, he dedicated his first collection of sonnets written in French, Mémorial poétique, to the memory of Valentina. He remained faithful to her memory. He never married.

Trials: The political trials brought by the Bulgarian authorities against Catholic circles and against the Assumptionist Order in Plovdiv, during 1951-1952, provoked another rupture. Because he had been a pupil of the "Saint-Augusin" college and then one of its teachers, Lubomir Guentchev was involved in these trials. For these reasons, he was declared an "enemy of the people" in 1953 and, as a result, banned from publishing, deprived of his passport and his modest job as a librarian. From then on, he lived in great poverty, giving private lessons, doing translation work and earning a few fees as a musician in an orchestra in the city of Plovdiv. He retired in 1960, which allowed him to devote himself entirely to writing, translation and poetry.

Suspicion: As soon as the Red Army arrived in Bulgaria in the autumn of 1944, Lubomir Guentchev had become suspicious in the eyes of the new Bulgarian authorities because of his links with France. In 1962, he came to the attention of the Bulgarian security services because he had tried to send some of his poems written in French to the French Legation in Sofia. No action was taken.

Initiatives: In 1972, he took the initiative to send poems in French in homage to Kurt Waldheim, then Secretary General of the UN, and others to the Mozart Institute in Salzburg, as well as to various foreign, French and German organizations. He again attracted the attention of the Bulgarian authorities. By the end of the year, he was under surveillance. On 18 October 1973, following a report, his home was searched. All his manuscripts were confiscated. He was almost sentenced to a heavy prison term because it was discovered that he had composed poems that were very critical of the regime and also others on religious subjects, which had been strictly forbidden at that time, until 1989, in Bulgaria, by a law that had been imposed in 1947 by the Soviet authorities.

Rewriting: After bending before adversity, Lubomir Guentchev forced himself to reconstruct from memory, with desperate energy, the treasure of his lost manuscripts. Having become practically blind, he stopped writing in 1980. He died on 28 August 1981. All his original rewritten manuscripts were destroyed again at the request of the authorities. During the last ten years of his life, however, he had taken the precaution of copying his manuscripts in numerous copies, which he had dispersed among his nephews and nieces. It was in this way that a number of these copies were preserved and found in 1999.

'''II. The work'''

The manuscripts:

His work consists of manuscript files, sometimes in French, sometimes in Bulgarian, sometimes in both languages, found at almost every stage of development. Most of them are now kept by the National Library "Ivan Vazov" in Plovdiv. Materially, these manuscripts are in the form of scattered leaves, quotation records, documentary files, poetry albums and anthology projects. They also contain sketches of critical studies on poetry, the sonnet, French versification and theatre. He also planned essays on two great authors, one German, Wolfgang Goethe, whom he admired, and the other French, Alphonse de Lamartine, whose brief visit to Plovdiv in July 1833 on his way back from a trip to the Orient left important traces in that city.

Editorial projects: Lubomir Guentchev had conceived numerous editorial projects, of which he left drafts of plans. His translations, poetry collections, lyrical dramas and essays have been reconstructed in much the same way as he conceived them. These works have been published in France by Rafael de Surtis in a critical edition by Alain Vuillemin, with the help of many contributors, under the general title of Écrits inédits (Unpublished Writings), since their disclosure had been forbidden during Lubomir Guentchev's lifetime.  Translations into French : The translations that he left in French of many Bulgarian poets gave rise to the publication of several volumes in this collection of Unpublished Writings. The first three volumes correspond to an Anthology of Bulgarian poets of the 19th and 20th centuries, translated into French. The first volume, published in 2003, consists of two parts: selected sonnets by authors such as Ivan Vazov, Dimitar Polianov, Dimtcho Debelianovn, Christo Yasenov, Stoyan Mihailovsky and Kyril Christov and, above all, in the second part, 41 of the 44 sonnets of the Constantinople Sonnets by Constantin Velitchkov, the first author to have written sonnets in Bulgarian at the end of the 19th century. This is the only translation into French of Constantin Velitchkov that exists to date. The second volume of these Unpublished Writings was published in 2004 and included poems by Peyo Kr. Yavorov and poems by Nicolai Liliev, and as well as extracts from Russian poets Mihaï Lermontov, Fédor Tiouttchev, Sémion Nadson, Valérii Brioussov, translated from Bulgarian versions. The third volume, published in 2005, contains extensive excerpts from several collections of Theodore Traianov, a prominent figure of symbolism in Bulgaria together with Nicolai Liliev.

The intentions: Through these translations, most of which were still unpublished in France between 2003 and 2005, Lubomir Guentchev sought to make known the existence of poets who had contributed to introducing and illustrating the art of the sonnet in Bulgarian literature, a poetic form that was only introduced in Bulgaria at the end of the 19th century. This project was later clarified. He wanted to shed light on some of the greatest representatives of the symbolist movement, Peyo Yavorov, who was a precursor, Nicolai Liliev, whom he knew personally, and Theodor Traianov, whom he knew perhaps a little less well, but who was born in 1882 in the same town as him, Pazardjik, and who had disappeared in 1945. He obviously had a great admiration for him. It is in this way that we now know a little better in France, thanks to Lubomir Guentchev, the work of these three authors and the way in which the sonnet was practised, with varying degrees of success, by a number of Bulgarian poets at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Translations into Bulgarian: This translator also translated from French into Bulgarian, and from German into Bulgarian. He was mainly interested in French Romantic, Parnassian, Symbolist and post-Symbolist poets, focusing on texts that were still little known in Bulgaria in the middle of the 20th century. He proceeded in the same way, from German, with extracts from Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich von Mathisson, Gottfried Keller, Stefan George and Wilhelm von Scholz for the most recent. All of them, whether French or German, have in common that they are romantic or symbolist and post-symbolist authors of the 19th and 20th centuries. These translations were collected in a bilingual publication, Volume 8 of the Unpublished Writings, entitled Антология на френск и немски и поети - Anthology of French and German Poets, published in 2020. This choice shows that Lubomir Guentchev tried to introduce to the Bulgarian public most of the foreign authors, French or German, whom he considered in a way as precursors of his own creations, both in Bulgarian and in French.

Creations in French: Several collections of sonnets and other verse pieces, written directly in French, have been found in an almost completed state. The earliest, Mémorial poétique, is believed to have been completed in 1972. A second, Destiny, was completed in 1973, and a third, Bagatelles, in 1974. These three collections were published in 2006 in volume 6 of the Écrits inédits, entitled Poésies lyriques. Another volume, Panthéon, volume 7 of this collection, followed in 2007. It consists exclusively of meditations and evocations, also written directly in French, on philosophical or historical subjects, and on great emblematic figures: thinkers, philosophers, artists, writers, inventors, creators and musicians. Lubomir Guentchev is inspired by another Pantheon, that of Theodor Traïanov, published in Bulgaria in 1934, whose fifty poems he translated into French. The translations into French can be found in the third volume of his Anthology of Bulgarian poets in 2005 published by Rafael de Surtis.

The "estrambot" form: Lubomir Guentchev practised a very rare form of expression in French literature, the "estrambot" sonnet. This type of sonnet appeared at the same time as the regular sonnet in Sicily and Italy, at the beginning of the 13th century. Estrambot sonnets are very often found in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish literature. Lubomir Guentchev seems to have cultivated it in Bulgaria, in French as well as in Bulgarian, from 1973. His Pantheon contains nearly two hundred and fifty sonnets, all written in French, 60% of which are in a regular, classical or traditional form, based on two quatrains and two tercets, and about 40% in the irregular, eccentric or extravagant form known as "estrambot", which is composed of two quatrains and three, or even four or five tercets.

The Forbidden Sonnets: Volume 4 of the Unpublished Writings series, entitled Forbidden Sonnets and published in 2005, has a special history. It is a radical condemnation of totalitarian evil. It is a unique testimony concerning Bulgaria's experience of dictatorship from 1947 until 1990. This collection brings together two collections of sonnets, those confiscated on 18 October 1973, mostly written in French, and found in 2001 in the archives of the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior, and those discovered later, in 2004, which were written after 1973 and up to 1980, in both languages, at various stages of development. No one should have ever known about them. Their existence might have remained unsuspected. These last manuscripts made it possible to discover that Lubomir Guentchev very often composed his poems in French first, and then translated them into Bulgarian.

Dramatic writings: The author's dramatic writings were found in 2001 by his niece, Christinka Gucheva, in the form of four bound typescript volumes, which had been very carefully presented. They contained four plays that had been typed in Bulgarian, Теургия (Theurgy), Неразделни (Inseparables), Гласът на съдбата (Way of Destiny), Гласът на съдбата (Gift of Fate), and a French transcription of Theurgy made by Lubomir Guentchev from its original Bulgarian version. This is a rather rare example of self-translation, unique in the history of literary relations between France and Bulgaria in the 19th and 20th centuries. The plays that were in Bulgarian were translated into French. All of them were published in 2005 in volume 5 of the Écrits inédits: Théâtre lyrique. This volume was mirrored in Bulgarian in volume 10 of the collection, in 2020, under the title: Лирически драми - Неиздадени творби. In 2007, the critical edition of the first seven volumes that had then been published of Écrits Inédits was awarded a "Special Mention" of the Prix de l'Association des Écrivains de Langue Française (ADELF).

Poetic emotion: Lubomir Guentchev left essays on how, in his view, poetry should arouse a liberating "sacred emotion". These reflections, presented in a meandering form, proceed by associations of ideas. These views were inserted in 2020, in volume 9 of the collection, The Poetic Gift, - Поетичен дар, another bilingual publication. They are based as much on his personal experience as on his extensive reading. He also illustrates his point with a selection of his own poems, composed in both French and Bulgarian between 1929 and 1965. He justifies the elegiac nature of his inspiration. The 'poetic gift' would refer to a poet's ability to convey emotion through images, and through the harmony, rhythm and music of words. These ideas on dramatic creation were also set out in two brief summaries, Prologue to the Theatre and Perspective of the Theatre, completed in 1965 and published in 2005 in Volume 5 of Unpublished Writings: Lyric Theatre, and in 2020 in Bulgarian in Volume 10 of the collection, лирически драми. These essays summarize his aesthetic conceptions. Conclusion:

Lubomir Guentchev holds an important place in the Bulgarian-French relations, without really having wanted to. All his life he tried to be a kind of (perhaps clandestine) bridge between Bulgarian and French literature and vice versa, and also with German and Russian literature. He never managed to be published in his lifetime. He belonged to a generation that was in a way sacrificed in Bulgaria after the Second World War. He never had the opportunity to leave his country. He never visited France or any other French-speaking country and yet he writes in French in an absolutely remarkable way. He has not been able to enjoy the literary career he would have deserved. He is a singular witness of the historical ordeal that Bulgaria underwent between 1944 and 1989 (as far as he is concerned until 1981). He did not want to be completely silenced. Today, his voice is beginning to emerge from the silence and obscurity.

Lubomir Guentchev’s works - Произведения на Любомир Генчев - Anthologie de poètes bulgares. Écrits Inédits [Любомир Генчев, Антология на български поети, Неиздадени творби]. Cordes-sur-Ciel - Paris, Rafael de Surtis - Editinter, tome 1, 2003. - Anthologie de poètes bulgares. Écrits Inédits [Любомир Генчев, Антология на български поети, Неиздадени творби]. Cordes-sur-Ciel - Paris, Rafael de Surtis - Editinter, tome 2, 2004. - Anthologie de poètes bulgares. Écrits Inédits [Любомир Генчев, Антология на български поети, Неиздадени творби]. Cordes-sur-Ciel - Paris, Rafael de Surtis - Editinter, tome 3, 2005. - Sonnets Interdits. Écrits Inédits [Любомир Генчев, Забранени сонети, Неиздадени творби], Cordes-sur-Ciel - Paris, Rafael de Surtis - Editinter, tome 4, 2005. - Théâtre lyrique, Écrits Inédits [Любомир Генчев, Лирични драми, Неиздадени творби]. Cordes-sur-Ciel - Paris, Rafael de Surtis - Editinter, tome 5, 2006. - Poésies lyriques, Écrits Inédits [Любомир Генчев, лирични стихове, Неиздадени творби]. Cordes-sur-Ciel - Paris, Rafael de Surtis - Editinter, tome 6, 2006. - Panthéon. Écrits Inédits [Любомир Генчев, Пантеон, Неиздадени творби]. Cordes-sur-Ciel - Paris, Rafael de Surtis - Editinter, tome 7, 2007. - Антология на френск и немски и поети - Anthologie de poètes français et allemands, Cordes-sur-Ciel, Рафаел дьо Сюртис - Rafael de Surtis, том 8- tome 8, 2018. - Le don poétique, - Поетичен дар–Cordes-sur-Ciel, Rafael de Surtis, том 9- tome 9, 2020. - Лирически драми - Неиздадени творби, Cordes-sur-Ciel, Rafael de Surtis, том 10- tome 10, 2020. - Антология на френск и немски и поети, София [България], издателство „Потайниче“, 2020.

Critical studies: Vuillemin, Alain, Lubomir Guentchev, le poète interdit, Cordes-sur-Ciel - Paris, Rafael de Surtis - Editinter, 2006. Vuillemin, Alain, Lubomir Guentchev, le poète dissident, Cordes-sur-Ciel, Rafael de Surtis, 2014.  External links: Athanase Popov, « Bulgarie : Lubomir Guentchev, un auteur méconnu », in : Le Courrier des Balkans, 2019 : https://www.courrierdesbalkans.fr/Blog-o-Bulgarie-Lubomir-Guentchev-un-classique-meconnu Alain Vuillemin, « La pratique du sonnet « estrambot » chez Lubomir Guentchev », in : Degott Bertrand et Garrigue Pierre eds : Le Sonnet au risque du sonnet, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2006, https://www.editions-harmattan.fr/index.asp?navig=catalogue&obj=article&no=4910 Alain Vuillemin, « Bilinguisme et repli sur soi : les choix de Lubomir Guentchev, poète de langue française », in : revue Colloquia Comparativa Litterarum, Revue de Littérature Comparée et d’Études Balkaniques, Sofia, Bulgarie, Université « Saint Kliment-Odhiski » (2020) : https://ejournal.uni-sofia.bg/index.php/Colloquia/article/view/111