Recently, on some occasion, I rummaged in my bookcase, and from there accidentally dropped the book “Chronicle of the Troubled Time” by Vera Mutafchieva. I had read it several years ago. I set about reading it again. And I couldn't tear myself away from it. Let me say first about the characters in the book – reasonable, strong, solid, vivid, fascinating, picturesque, genuine. And all kinds – starting from the most underprivileged Rayah (both Turkish and Bulgarian), you go through various peasants, outlaws, robbers, thugs, pashas, ayans, janissaries, nizami, priests, imams, awakeners and revivalists, to reach Sultan Abdul Hamid, Sultan Selim the Third, and their harems. Personally, I was especially fascinated by the image of the famous robber Kara Feyzi (his company reached 5,000 people, with whom he conquered a number of cities, reached Edirne and even besieged Constantinople).
And I think to myself „That's not fair at all”.
Well, all this is much more valuable than the hollow, childish-adolescent, disembodied, boring, forced and stuffed in simple molds images of Tolkien and Terry Pratchett.
And I think to myself:
How much the genuine, exciting, cruel, surprising, unpredictable and colorful world of Vera Mutafchieva is more fascinating than the artificial and ghostly worlds of Tolkien and Terry Pratchett with their repetitive and predictable fabrications.
Well, Vera Mutafchieva is several levels, I don't know exactly how many – five or six, above those two.
Let's leave Tolkien and Pratchett. For all I know, that's another ball game. Let's look for a more appropriate comparison – between the works of Vera Mutafchieva and those of Umberto Eco. They both have degrees in medieval history, both are professors, both have been teachers, and both have written books about past times, one for the early Western Middle (Eco), the other (Vera) for the late Ottoman Ages.
With all the conventionality and relativity of such a comparison, Umberto Eco loses to Vera Mutafchieva. Undoubtedly losing (I don't care about the opinion of literary critics and Eco fans).
Vera’s Ottoman Middle Ages are many times, many times (I deliberately repeat) more exciting, more fascinating, more picturesque and more genuine than the pretentious, cooked, made up, pad out (as a narrative), and sometimes boring Middle Ages of Eco.
Vera Mutafchieva’s art is several levels above Umberto’s.
And the language – the Bulgarian language of Vera – absorbed powerfully and carelessly all kinds of Turkisms and Russisms, all kinds of centuries-old and modern words, with the taste and contribution of various local dialects, with the abundance of verb tenses, with the possibility of linguistic creativity, with its freedom and linguistic turns, but turns without excruciating writhing, coquettish snorts and putting on lugs, and with many more underestimated and underused virtues, begins to seem to you the most powerful, richest, most flexible and most expressive language in the world.
Well, Umberto Eco is better known, it's inevitable, he's a Westerner. But why is he better known even in Bulgaria, why do those young Bulgarian people who read prefer his boring novels to “Chronicle of Troubled Times”? Is it because Eco is foreign and therefore “something extra special”, or just today's generation has not heard of Vera's novels? Or do they not want to hear? Or does no one tell them that there is such a writer, so they have not heard?
It is the same as with Charles Bukowski and Konstantin Pavlov. The same poetic fields are plowed, they carve their works with the same tools, but the work of Konstantin Pavlov is many times more valuable than that of Bukowski. (Probably his fans would have a different opinion. And probably because they have not read Konstantin Pavlov.)
The world knows Charles Bukowski, but not Konstantin Pavlov. Again, understandable –the English language has billions of readers, the Bulgarian – a few thousand, if not hundreds only.
But why is Bukowski better known in Bulgaria than Konstantin Pavlov? Weirdness? Deviation? it some kind of perversion in our way?
Bulgaria is a poor country in terms of gifted people, plainly a pauper, they are scarce and yet it does not appreciate them. When it gropes for them (it would not recognizes them through her mind), she insults, harasses, humiliates and ruins them. When it doesn't, it kills them and makes them commit suicide. Because quite often that is exactly what it does. At best, it forgets them. As it happens with Vera Mutafchieva.
Her creative wealth is dusting in attics, maturing in the old boxes of street vendors with prices for two or three, up to five leva a booklet.
There's more.
The book Chronicle of Troubled Times is just crying out for filming. In fact, “crying out” is a hackneyed expression. Rather something else. This is a book that demands, insists, obliges to be remade as a feature film or a TV series.
Something big could come out of this book. Very big. In any case, much more worthwhile than the mediocre films and TV series about Levski, Botev, Zahari Stoyanov, Petko Voyvoda and other similar series. As long, of course, as Vera's book doesn't end up in the hands of some poor director, like the one who ejaculated the claptrap Asparuh from the novel Predestined by Pagane.
And more. A film based on the Chronicle of Troubled Times could be a Bulgarian-Turkish co-production – there are no insults there for either Bulgarians or Turks. Great artists know how to do that – to be patriotic without insulting or stigmatizing the foreign. The most compelling characters of the undoubted patriot Yordan Yovkov are of Turks and Gypsies. (Shibil, Sali Yashar, he doesn't remember.)
A great Bulgarian-Turkish film or TV series would come out of Vera's book. Wealthy Turkey could have put money into a screen adaptation of this very book, instead of spending it on harem-locker serials like The Magnificent Century, where Suleiman the Magnificent's extraordinary and heartwarming love for the Ukrainian Roxelana was reduced to tear-jerking soapy-kitchen affections.
Let's go even further with wishes and dreams – why not. A new direction in world cinema could come from the screen adaptation of this book. There are a whole bunch of films about the Wild West, a whole bunch of films about the fighting grips of the East, why not films about the scenic Balkans (whatever you want to call the new direction). But without the current Serbian-Macedonian-Bulgarian bombast, and with Vera's book being filmed. But these are not even dreams anymore, but daydreams.
Let us now from the heights of these daydreams and non-wonders plunge straight into the not so harsh as mediocre and dull native reality.
And we'll run into diving again. A retreat from already conquered spaces. Going back. Rolling down from levels already reached. A lowering.
It's like artists painting as if there never was Rembrandt. To paint swans and castles so they can trade it at village fairs and fairs. It's like playwrights writing plays like there never was Shakespeare. Of the sufferings of the much-suffering Genoveva, for example. So as to attract sensitive wives as spectators. It's like composers writing sonatas as if there had never been Beethoven. Sonatas for accordion in seven/eighth measure. So that the wannabees can jerk a ruchenitsa round-dance. It's as if sculptors were to return to human primitiveness and modeltitty-pussy breeding Venuses as if there had never been Phidias or Rodin. So as to urge the population to breed.
Maybe our latest generation of writers believes too much themself. Especially when it comes to historical novels. Maybe because it has judged that it is new and unburdened, unlike old birds like Mutafchieva. It makes exciting discoveries. It discovered hot water, for example. Never mind that it's not so much hot as lukewarm. He discovered the wheel, for example. Never mind that it's a bit edgy and wobbles when it rolls.
Hey, kids, enough.
Source: http://www.transmedia.bg/2017/11/27/%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B7%D1%8F%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B5/ - 27 Novemvber 2017
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