In the XIX c. the lessons of British democracy were still being written and had the ring of novelty for native and foreign ear alike. Some of the representative names or texts reached the Bulgarian national culture in due time, yet not within a system of direct British influences or organised Bulgarian choices. The main problem was that the British and the Bulgarians had no way of communicating on equal terms. The former belonged to a colonial empire and enjoyed a secure place in the political and cultural limelight, while the latter formed a small and heterogeneous community on the territory of another colonial empire and shared a degree of general invisibility.

Until the 1840s there was no Bulgarian national culture. It was the ethnic culture of a minority group - or rather the ethnic denominator of a set of minority groups. The situation was such that in the Ottoman empire Bulgarians, qua Bulgarians, could not take part in the Muslim-centred administrative paradigm, nor in the Greek-centred paradigm of Christian shared knowledge: getting some systematic secular education meant gravitating towards a Greek identity. Therefore

From the early 1860s on, a number of more or less shortlived Bulgarian periodicals (Pravo, Otechestvo, Vek, Chitalishte) took the cue from their predecessors and amplified the resonance of British presence in the Bulgarian mind. One of the important changes in this respect, especially since the late 1860s, was the accelerating appearance of larger articles on British political, social or cultural matters, usually taken from the Russian or French press, or re-translated from Russian or French translations. Characteristic instances of what I have in mind are articles like "The British Parliament" , "An Illustrious Englishman's Notes on Education" , "The Jurisdiction of England" , "English Politics and Europe" , "The English Bank System" .

Reception, it seems, not only within a powerful nation but even within a weak ethnic community, is always a system of volitional choices, of centrifugal acts, rather than chance acceptances of the inevitable. The Bulgarian literary milieu very often transformed totally the material from abroad according to its current uses. This material had to fill in at least one of three textual gestures: a patriarchal, a patriotic or an anecdotal one. Thus it was made comprehensible and usable.

Thus, picking up "Robinson Crusoe" among the whole lot of possible choices at the time hardly seems a product of sheer chance. Functionally speaking, there was much in common between this English novel and the popular Bulgarian religious or moralistic tract of the period. They shared a territory of factual relevance: i.e. facts were facts and sometimes took the shape of extreme circumstances verging on wonders. It does look like a paradox, but in the early history of contemporary Bulgarian literature fiction seems to have been the functional link between the religious tract and the secular nonfiction. The latter appeared firstly through periodicals, but in the 1850s the book form was already a not too uncommon phenomenon. And the British connection in this delicate cultural point is obvious enough.

The gesture chosen had often nothing to do with the original character of the material. John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle, for instance, cut anecdotal appearances in the period discussed. Carlyle appeared twice on the Bulgarian literary scene, both times as a point of reference . The first time he was quoted criticising Britain's support for the Ottoman empire and not for Russia (and was referred to as "a man of learning and a writer of eminence"), and a second time attacking Darwin's theory. So, he was not shown from all s

Some topics in this essay:
Robinson Crusoe, Thomas Carlyle, Bulgarians Muslim-centred, Samuel Smiles, Bank System, Crusoe Bulgarian, Turk Briton, British Bulgarians, Lord Derby, RECEPTION XIX, robinson crusoe, true wonderful, bulgarian national culture, wonderful foreigner, colonial empire, religious tract, bulgarian periodicals, samuel smiles, period discussed, articles british, bulgarian national,