Toncho Zhechev(1929-2000)

Toncho Zhechev was born in Divdyadovo near Shumen on July 6 1929. He was literary historian, critic, and writer. Zhechev worked at the Institute for Literature of Bulgarian Academy of Science. He received his Ph. D. in literature in 1977. As a literary critic he represented the so-called impressionistic school, which opposed to a dogmatic Marxist approach to literature. His main field of research, however, was the literature of Bulgarian National Awakening. Zhechev gained fame with the book "Bulgarian Easter or Bulgarian Passions" (1975), in which he paints a penetrating picture of the Bulgarian community in Istanbul during the Church struggle in the middle of the 19th century. In the essay "The Bulgarian Ulysses and the Truth about his Homecoming" (1985), he developed a controversial view of the Bulgarian national character based on the famous poem "The Spring of the White-Footed Girl" by Petko Slaveykov. Zhechev makes a remarkable novelistic debut with the book "The History and Theories of a Pygmalion" (1983). From 1991 onward, he was an editor-in-chief of the literary journal "Annals". Zhechev died in Sofia on February 22, 2000.