Nikola Vaptsarov
Nikola Vaptsarov Nikola Vapcarov Никола Вапцаров | |
|---|---|
 Vaptsarov during his time in the Varna Naval Machinery School | |
| Born | December 7, 1909 |
| Died | July 23, 1942 (aged 32) |
| Cause of death | Firing squad |
Nikola Vaptsarov (Bulgarian and Macedonian: Никола Вапцаров) was a Bulgarian poet and communist activist from the city of Bansko, today Bulgaria. After his death, in 1952, he won the International Peace Award.
Vaptsarov only managed to make one collection of poems before his execution in 1942 by the Bulgarian goverment, it was titled Motorni Pesni (Bulgarian: Моторни Песни, lit. 'Motor Songs') which only contained 20 poems and was published in 1940. During World War II, he organized communist activities against the Bulgarian goverment. As a result, in 1942, he was captured, sentenced and killed by firing squad in Sofia.
Biography[change | change source]
He was born in Bansko (today in Bulgaria).[1][2][3] Trained as a machine engineer at the Naval Machinery School in Varna, which was later named after him.[4] His first service was on the famous Drazki torpedo boat. In this period, he embraced Marxism and spread the communist ideology during the 1930s.[5] In April and May 1932, Vaptsarov visited Istanbul, Famagusta, Alexandria, Beirut, Port Said, and Haifa as a crew member of the Burgas vessel. In 1934, he joined the Bulgarian Communist Party.[6]
Later, he went to work in a factory in the village of Kocherinovo – at first as a stoker and eventually as a mechanic. He was elected Chairman of the Association, protecting the rights of workers in the factory. Vaptsarov was devoted to his talent and spent his free time writing and organizing amateur theater pieces. He got fired after a technical failure in 1936. This forced him to move to Sofia, where he worked for the state railway service and the municipal incinerating furnace.[7] He continued writing, and a number of newspapers published poems of his. The poem Romantika (Bulgarian: Романтика) won him a poetry contest.
In the late 1930s, he co-founded the Macedonian literary circle, which promoted the idea of a separate Macedonian nation.[6] In 1940, he participated in the so-called "Sobolev action," gathering signatures for a pact of friendship between Bulgaria and the USSR. The illegal activity earned him an arrest and an internment in the village of Godech. After his release in September 1940, Vaptsarov got involved with the Central Military Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party. His task was to organize the supply of guns and documents for the communist resistance. He was arrested in March 1942. On 23 July 1942, he was sentenced to death and shot the same evening along with eleven other men.
Motor Songs[change | change source]
His only published poetry collection is Motor Songs (1940).[8][9] Consisting of 20 poems and divided into four sections:
- Section 1 - The section is titled "Songs for the Human" and contains 8 poems. The most known poems from this section are "Memoir", "Songs" and "Songs for the Human"
- Section 2 - The section is titled "Songs for the Fatherland" and contains 6 poems, the most notable ones being "Fatherland", "Ilinden", "King Marko" and "Mother"
- Section 3 - The section is titled "Songs" and contains only 2 poems
- Section 4 - The section is titled "Songs for one side" and contains 4 poems
Legacy[change | change source]
Post-war People's Republic of Bulgaria celebrated him as an activist and revolutionary poet, while his poetry collection was seen as an example of "proletarian" literature.[6] Soviet-bloc countries also widely published his work. In 1949, the Bulgarian Naval Academy renamed itself Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy. On 1953, he received the International Peace Award posthumously.[10] Lawrence & Wishart published his Selected Poems in London in the 1950s, translated into English by British poet Peter Tempest. He was one of the most frequently translated Bulgarian poets.[2] Vaptsarov Peak in eastern Livingston Island, Antarctica, is named after him. Today, his childhood home in Bansko and residence in Sofia are both museums. North Macedonia and the Macedonians in Bulgaria also honor him.[11]
References[change | change source]
- ↑ "The History of Bulgaria", The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations Series, Frederick B. Chary, ABC-CLIO, 2011, ISBN 0313384460, pp. 143–144.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 France, Peter (2000). The Oxford guide to literature in English translation. Oxford University Press. p. 194. ISBN 978-0198183594.
- ↑ The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Stephen Cushman et al., Princeton University Press, 2012, ISBN 1400841429, p. 169.
- ↑ "The Nikola Vaptsarov Museum in Bansko". 21 December 2014. Retrieved 6 May 2020.
- ↑ R. J. Crampton (1987). A Short History of Modern Bulgaria. CUP Archive. p. 135.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Wojciech Roszkowski; Jan Kofman (2016). Biographical Dictionary of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century. Routledge. pp. 1080–1081
- ↑ "БДЖ организира пътуване с парния локомотив Баба Меца". 9 May 2019. Retrieved 6 May 2020.
- ↑ "Bulgarian literature". Encyclopædia Britannica. 20 July 1998. Retrieved 6 May 2020.
- ↑ Charles A. Moser (2019). A History of Bulgarian Literature 865–1944. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. p. 227. ISBN 9783110810608.
- ↑ "Bulgaria commemorates poet Nikola Vaptsarov". BGNES. 23 July 2022. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
- ↑ Dimitar Bechev (2019). Historical Dictionary of North Macedonia (2nd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. p. 188. ISBN 978-1538119624.