Aleko Konstantinov: an Intellectual Profile Petko Ivanov Connecticut College, [email protected]
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Connecticut College Digital Commons @ Connecticut College Slavic Studies Faculty Publications Slavic Studies Department 1994 Aleko Konstantinov: An Intellectual Profile Petko Ivanov Connecticut College, [email protected] Valentina Izmirlieva Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/slavicfacpub Part of the European History Commons, and the Slavic Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Ivanov, Petko and Izmirlieva, Valentina, "Aleko Konstantinov: An Intellectual Profile" (1994). Slavic Studies Faculty Publications. 10. http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/slavicfacpub/10 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Slavic Studies Department at Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Slavic Studies Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author. ALEKO KONSTANTINOV: AN INTELLECTUAL PROFILE Petko Ivanov & Valentina lzmirlieva ulgarian culture at the end of the fromthe sheltered territory of the native he for the nineteenth century was preoccupied with first time contested the variables of Bulgarian domestic issues determined by both identity and its ostensible clarity. historicalB circumstance and the prevailing rural mentality of the Bulgarians. The parameters of The culmination of his career in the art of traveling interpretative filter through which generations of cultural endeavors were fixed territorially on the was his visit to the World's Columbian Exposition Bulgarians have screened their anticipation and map of the newly liberated country and were at Chicago in 1893. This American experience impressions of the United States. confined to conceptualizing the native per se, the germinated the textual crystallization of Aleko 's horizons of the foreign world not reaching beyond views about traveling in a remarkable book, To The travelogue has an additional, more subtle the Balkans. Set against this background the entire Chicago and Back (1894) which to these days literary significance for there Aleko first introduces life and oeuvre of Aleko Konstantinov (1863 - remains the best Bulgarian travelogue. There he his most famous and most controversial creation - 1897) was a continuous pioneer effort to unclose traces chronologically his journey to the Exposition, the character Bai Ganiu which later became the this self-centered Bulgarian culture both spatially including en route a cameo description of the eponymous personage of his chef-d'oeuvre as well as intellectually. This man, who was Niagara Falls, which is often anthologized published in 1895. The book describes the remembered among his compatriots by his first separately as a masterpiece of its genre. The book "incredible" business trips of a Bulgarian rose oil name only as a sign of utmost intimacy, and who is built upon a series of counterpoints that peddler abroad and his political activity at home. dubbed himself semi-ironically "the Lucky One", synergistically amount to a triple juxtaposition of It is organized as a sequence of comical and satirical was the paradigmatic modern Bulgarian homo Bulgaria vs. Europe vs. America. The center of this stories told by different explicit narrators. There is viator. Graphic anecdotal details of his biography constellation is Chicago envisioned as a nexus of a strong documentary touch in the book since Aleko are his initiation of the first Bulgarian tourist club, utopias and anti-utopias of the New World and of processes in it his personal experience of a traveler, his confession that he loved best the fragrance of modern technological society as represented of an unsuccessfulpolitician ousted by Bai Ganiu's steamships and locomotives, or his trips to Russia spatially by two antipodal metaphors: the White prototypes, and of a hypertrophically honest lawyer where he read law, and to Paris, Prague and London City of the Exposition and Porkopolis of the harassed by a corrupt political system. Bai Ganiu, in defiance of his chronic lack of money. stockyards. Among the numerous foreign the somewhat biographical antipode of his author, Konstantinov was the first to replace the traditional travelogues apropos of the World's Columbian is a complex character with distinct local Balkan Bulgarian concept of pragmatic (business) traveling Exposition Aleko's work is the only one that had a color, which at the highest register of his personality with that of traveling as an intellectual quest, and significant resonance in a non-American culture. To has all the positive qualities of a successful by testing himself and his literary characters away Chicago and Back is this indispensable entrepreneur: vitality, adaptability, pragmatism, Lecture,concert to highlight dedication of Konstantinov bust A bust of tum-of-the University in Bulgaria,at centUry Bulgarianwriter 4:30 p.m., and a concert by Aleko Konstantinov will be Pbilippopolis, a chamber dedicated at the University on e'nsemble for old Bulgarian Tuesday, Nov. 1, with a and Sl!lvonicchants, at 5 p.m. ceremony, lecture, .. concert A reception will be held at and rec�ption. 6:30 p.rn. in Swift Commons. Konstantinov, who created For more information,call Bulgaria's most popular 702-8803. satiric literary figure, Bai Gan' o, wrote the book Do Chikago i nazad (To Chicago and Back) in 1894, describing his travels to the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. The book remains a literary classic ijnd has made Chicago a household name in Bulgaria. The dedication ceremon}' also marks the centennial of the book's firsted ition. The dedication, which will be attended by Snezhana Botusharova, Bulgaria's ambassador to the United States, will be held at 4 p.m. in Regenstein Library. 'Jlhe eventswill continue in Bond Ch!lpelwith a lecture by Thisbust of Bulgarianwriter Aleko Nikola Georgiev, professor of Konstantinov Wifl be dedicated on Slavic and general poetics at Tuesday, Nov. 1, in Regenstein Saint Climent Sofia Library. OCT. 27, 1 994 / THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO E;HRONICLE & 3 .