Link to main version

5

January 2, 1922: Anniversary of the birth of Blaga Dimitrova

Let's remember her with valuable quotes from her work

Снимка: БГНЕС

Blaga Dimitrova was born on January 2, 1922 in Byala Slatina. She graduated from the Classical High School in Sofia (1941) and Slavic Philology at Sofia University (1945).

At the Literary Institute "M. Gorky" in Moscow, she defended a dissertation on the topic "Mayakovsky and Bulgarian Poetry" (1951). For many years she worked as an editor in various newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses. She is engaged in translation and public activities, compiles anthologies, writes liternet.bg.

One of the founders of the Committee for the Protection of Ruse (03/08/1988) and the Club for Glasnost and Democracy (11/3/1988); participates in the leadership of the Federation of Democracy Clubs - UDF, of the "Open Society" Foundation; Chairman of the Free Poetry Society; Member of Parliament in the XXXVI National Assembly; Vice President of the Republic of Bulgaria (1992-1993). Award from the Polish PEN Club for translations of A. Mickiewicz (1977), "Lundqvist" Award for translations of Swedish poetry, Herder Award (1991). Published since 1938 in various newspapers and magazines. He writes poetry, prose, travelogues, a series of books of various genres about Vietnam, critical and biographical studies about Bagryana (co-authored with Y. Vassilev).

More important books: Until Tomorrow. Poems. 1959; The World in a Hand. Poems. 1962; Back in Time. Poems. 1965; Journey to Yourself. Novel. 1965 (1972, 1985); Condemned to Love. Poems. 1967; Deviation. Novel. 1967 (1973, 1976); Moments. Poetry. 1968; Avalanche. Novel. 1971 (1977); How. Poems. 1974; The Youth of Bagryana and Her Companions (co-authored with Y. Vassilev). 1975; Black and White Days. El. Bagryana - observations and conversations (co-authored with Y. Vassilev), 1975; Gong. Selected poetry. 1976; Spaces. Poems. 1980; Face. Novel. 1981 (1990); Labyrinth. Poems. 1987; Between. Poems. 1990; Night diary. Poems. 1992; From here and beyond. Silhouettes of friends. 1992; Signs in the snow. 1992.

Translates ancient authors, writers from Scandinavia, Poland, Russia. Her works have been filmed, dramatized, and translated into many languages.

She died on 02.05.2003.

Let's remember her with valuable quotes from her work:

***

"If a woman experiences love most strongly in sharing it with a friend, then a man experiences it most deeply in silence. What secret, dense delight lies hidden in this silence, every man knows for himself. Maybe this is the jealous feeling of an owner who does not allow him to share his beloved with another? Maybe this is an expression of protection and tenderness towards the woman? Maybe this is the embarrassment that was pushed out by passion in the moment of love, only to invade with greater force later? And maybe this is the male instinct to win a woman forever: because only a silent, discreet man is a real man in a woman's eyes.

***

"If you have become necessary to the other, if you have become an indispensable part of the air around him, of his thoughts, NO ONE can tear you out of his life."

***

"In the evening the electricity goes out. A beneficent darkness envelops me. It's as if I'm alone. No one sees me. I can even cry. What bliss! To cry without being asked why you're crying, without being comforted. But such happiness requires training: to cry without making a sound, and to be ready to answer a sudden question in the most innocent voice: "The brush is on the shelf!"

***

"After all, what more terrible punishment than the imaginary experience of something that could have been and was not?"

***

“A person needs what he does not need!”

***

“We perish, saved from the greatest loneliness of earthly beings - to die alone.”

***

“The most difficult, almost impossible thing for a person: to hold on to a peak once conquered and continue upwards. How many of them do you know?”

***

"To live means to feel how quickly, how breathlessly time flows through you, how it flies away with your hot, accelerated breathing, how it drips with sweat through the pores of your skin, how it drains away with the burning shivers of fatigue in the evening... how it beats with your accelerated pulse."

***

“The more you look for the one, the more numerous your men become. Without realizing it, from being very faithful to the one, you become unfaithful to many. From being constant in your dream, you become inconstant in life.”

***

“You must learn to defend yourself from the steep! You look: a cliff, blocked in front of you, and you stop. And you don't know that the rock is also a path. And the most direct and the most generous - it will reward you for your effort with the most beautiful view, unseen by anyone!”

***

“Suddenly his presence fills nothingness and turns it into everything.”

***

“Not doing anything in love is the most expressive action for the one who understands.”

***

"The enthusiastic often fail things."

***

"A woman's smile has a powerful impact, especially if it is accompanied by flattery…"

***

"Men fall in love not with us, but with their own image, which they discover in our eyes. Maybe that's why the new acquaintance is more interesting to them. They can amaze her, introduce themselves to others, renew themselves. Then, as soon as she gets to know them, they become uninteresting and run to someone else. In fact, they run away from themselves."

***

"The man is absorbed in the moment, and the woman seeks the continuation. But when the two come together, perhaps the real time, the complete one, is achieved: the man makes me feel the moment, and I make him merge into the continuation of the moment. Only two, a man and a woman who love each other, can feel time in its immediacy and duration."

***

"There is no more deforming burden on earth than a woman's fate, when a woman is forced to do with an unloved man what she longs to do with a loved one. She becomes completely crippled!"

***

"The fear of a rival is like the fear of death. The only way to overcome this fear is to accept both as inevitable. To look straight into the other's eyes and know that those eyes can take away your gaze forever. It's like having the strength to look death in the eye."

***

"A person is whole, what has become his essence cannot be torn away from him."

***

“Do not be afraid that you will be trampled - the trampled grass becomes a path.”

***

"Do not be afraid of risk, be afraid of security!"

***

"…Beloved girl, beloved mother, beloved home, beloved specialty, beloved comrades – all this is a miracle and most people in their long lives never get to even one of these essential things…"

***

"You can't get experience ready-made. Even if they put it in your hand, you will turn it this way and that, without understanding what it is for, and you will scatter it through your fingers."

***

“Prudence is a scourge for its bearer.”

***

“Perhaps only the cold can give birth to such a fire and bring two together forever on this cursed planet.”

***

“It is better to suffer yourself than to be the cause of another's suffering.”

***

“The poet perhaps knows love from the only side that truly reveals and illuminates it: unfulfillment.

***
The poet walks in a daze. Perhaps one of the forms of shared love is poetry.”

***

"I come alone and I will go alone."

***

"For my immature parents, my love, flying freely, would have fallen like a heavy blow. How can I re-educate them?"

***

"I don't understand a woman's attachment to that man who supports and protects them. It's like loving a tree you can lean on."

***

"Love is freer than birds, because it obeys no one, not even itself."

***

"I will never forgive myself for killing a day!"

***

"Why do we always have to be serious, infallible and boring like road signs?"

***

"Young friends from all over the world! Let's free the freedom of the world – love!"

***

"There is no happiness, ready-made like cherry jam on a plate!"

***

"I will not let them catch my exuberance in dams and dams. I will not let myself be drunk on dry land. Life needs freshness."

***

"Strong is not the one who can climb to a great height, but the one who does not allow himself to sink lower than what he has once achieved."

***

"Do not be afraid that they will trample you – the trampled grass becomes a path."

***

“In the short and infinitely long moments, while we are fighting desperately for breath, each of us experiences and reevaluates the most important episodes of our lives, missed opportunities, mistakes, the irreparable.
In this oversaturated duration of the last minute and a half is the most intense inner life of a person doomed to death.
Memory suddenly turns into imagination.
With compact speed we want to catch up with everything that was ahead of us and was taken away from us.”

***

“Ideals are stars — not attainable, but guiding.”