Background

Dimitér Talev was born on September 1, 1898, in Prilep, Macedonia. His mother, Donka Petrova-Palislamova, was from Prilep but had married Tale Palislamov, a newcomer to the town, a peasant who was a blacksmith by trade.

Education

Dimitér Talev Studied medicine at the University of Zagreb in 1920. Then he studied philosophy at the University of Vienna in 1921. After that, he moved to the University of Sofia to be trained in Slavic philology.

Career

Dimitér Talev's first short story was published in a newspaper in Skopje, the Macedonian capital, in 1917. After the education in Sofia in Bulgaria, he stayed in the capital city for the rest of his life. Talev wrote many short stories and essays during this period and published his first book, Sélzite na mama. By 1927 he was working for the newspaper Makedonia. He rose from an editor to editorial board member to editor-in-chief in a few years.

In 1928, part I of Dimitér Talev's first novel for adults, Usilni godini, appeared. This first installment, V drezgavinata na utroto, begins with the end of the resolution of the Russo-Turkish War in the Balkans in 1878. The next two parts, Podem and Ilinden, carry the story through the next crucial three decades.

In the early 1930s, Dimitér Talev quit the staff of Makedonia to live in Paris. There, he wrote his 1932 drama, Pod mrachno nebe, about ethnic tensions between Serbs and Bulgarians. He returned to Sofia to be managing editor of Makedonia, but Tsar Boris III established a Bulgarian dictatorship in 1934, and authorities shut the paper down. Talev continued to write and found acceptance in other pro-Macedonian publications such as Makedonska Tribuna and Zora, which published many of his stories. Some of those stories were collected in five volumes published in Sofia between 1935 and 1943. These collections included Zlatniyat klyuch, Velikiyat tsar, Starata késhta, Igra, and Zavréshtane. The works center on life in the countryside and the recent epoch of Macedonian-Bulgarian relations.

Dimitér Talev's second novel, Na zavoy, is set in Bulgaria during a bleak 1920s era of human-rights abuses. Its hero, Krum Kosherov, begins adult life as a communist, but events steer him to political apathy. His marriage to a well-off young woman establishes his mindset in the middle class.

In the early 1940s, Bulgaria had joined an alliance with Nazi Germany, Boris III died mysteriously after a visit with German chancellor Adolf Hitler in Berlin, and Soviet troops occupied Bulgaria and established a one-party communist state. Dimitér Talev's literary career continued, and he wrote two significant nonfiction works: a biography of a martyred Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization leader, Gotse Delchev, and an account of Macedonian nationalism as centered in his hometown with the essay Grad Prilep. Borbi za rod i svoboda. During this time, he also wrote more short stories, and two psychological novellas, Posledno pétuvane, in which an aged woman abandoned by her thoughtless sons, and Dva miliona, the tale of a well-to-do pharmacist on his death bed and his family's eager anticipation of the inheritance.

When World War II ended for Bulgaria in 1944, Dimitér Talev was arrested by the communist authorities and sent to the Sofia Central Prison and later to the labor camps. Another crackdown on those considered potential dissidents occurred in 1947, and he was sentenced to forced labor at another mine with equally atrocious living conditions. After his statement in the newspaper, Pirinsko Delo, in 1951, Talev and his family were allowed to return to Sofia. In the early 1960s, Dimitér Talev was completely rehabilitated. He devoted himself to the writing and became a member of parliament in the 31st Narodno Sobranie (National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria) in 1966.

Dimitér Talev finished Zhelezniyat svetilnik in 1946, and its 1952 publication marked a return to a quieter period for him as well as to his status as a leading Macedonian writer. The work belongs to a quartet of novels during this period, Prespanskite kambani, Ilinden, and Glasovete vi chuvam, which strive to re-create the saga of contemporary Macedonian history through the ambitions and tragedies in one family, the Glaushevs.

Zhelezniyat svetilnik begins in the 1830s in Prespa, the literary name for Prilep, the town of Talev's birth, after the end of a devastating plague. The area is under harsh Turkish rule. A young woman, Sultana, belongs to one of the town's oldest families; she shocks many when she marries Stojan Glaushev, a newcomer peasant. Talev based much of the Sultana character's independence and will upon his own mother. She first endures accusations of immoral behavior for her decision to marry the outsider peasant but helps him rise to affluence through his blacksmith business. Their son, Lazar, grows up to lead a local insurgency movement. But a daughter, Katerina, is involved in a tragic love story with Rafe Klintche, a woodcarver from another region. Talev also had a sister who died in 1935, and the description of the psychological drama of Sultana, who, torn between maternal love and moral norms, causes the death of her daughter, Katerina, is among the masterpieces of Bulgarian literature.

In Zhelezniyat svetilnik and its sequels, several different plot lines for each main character enhance Talev's credible individuals. Their conflicts even affect their sons' and daughters' lives. Prespanskite kambani, which succeeded Zhelezniyat svetilnik, takes up where the first book ended, at Lazar's marriage. It chronicles the Glaushev family from the 1860s to the 1880s, and in particular, concentrates on Lazar's beleaguered wife, Niya, who endures Sultana's disapproval until she finally produces a grandchild.

The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 is significant to the novel as well. Macedonia comes under Turkish rule, and Macedonian rebels led by Lazar and a local teacher foment an uprising in Prespa. Like nearly every fictional portrayal of actual demonstrations of Macedonian nationalism, this also concludes tragically. The teacher is executed, and Lazar goes to jail for three years. Prespanskite kambani ends with the death of Lazar's parents, Stojan and Sultana.

Ilinden, the third novel in Talev's collected opus, was actually published before Prespanskite kambani, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1903 uprising of that name. Ilinden, a reworking of Book III of Usilni Godini, chronicles the events leading to this fateful day and portrays how Macedonia became a battleground for differing ethnic groups and their ambitions, the Bulgarians, Serbs, and Greeks, regardless of the Macedonians themselves. Lazar and Niya's now-grown son, Boris, lead the uprising, which brutally suppressed.

In the fourth novel of this cycle, Glasovete vi chuvam, Talev, through protagonist Boris, sketches the nine years of strife between the Ilinden uprising and the Balkan War onset. A Greek girl's love for Boris symbolizes hopelessness; since any union between the two nationalities is impossible, she commits suicide. Talev exposes the double-edged sword of patriotism through one character's query: "Isn't the love of your people hatred of the other one?" The doomed Angelika continues a long line of female heroines in Talev's cycle, and in his other works as well, created as female Christ-like figures who transform the lives of embittered, hurt, or lost men.

In between the four novels of his Glaushev family saga, Talev wrote many other shorter works. These included Ilindentsi, a children's version of the events in Ilinden. Another significant politically themed work for younger readers came in a trio of books with the collective title Samuil. Its three parts are Shtitove kamenni, Pepelyashka i tsarskiyat sin, and Pogibel. Samuil was an eleventh-century Bulgarian tsar who battled with a Byzantine empire to predictably tragic results. The more powerful emperor ordered Samuil's 15,000 soldiers to blinded for their part in the uprising, and when Samuil saw their return, he broke down and died.

Collections of Talev's fiction were published in Razkazi i povesti. 1927-1960, and the eleven-volume Séchineniya. Ruskov termed him "one of the most significant Bulgarian novelists in the years after World War II," and "a writer who provided a profound and many-sided portrait of the Macedonian people by evoking their complex and tragic history, their way of life, and their moral and spiritual values."

Achievements

• Dimitér Talev was widely known as a writer. He was also a holder of several awards. In 1959, Talev received a Dimitrov Prize, and in 1966 he was named People's Cultural Worker of Bulgaria by the government of Bulgaria. Besides, Zhivkov's government awarded Talev with three awards in the field of literation in 1959, 1963, and 1966.
  
  Also, Talev Glacier in Antarctica is named after Dimitar Talev.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Zhelezniyat svetilnik 1952
  • Ilinden 1953
  • Prespanskite kambani 1954
  • Hilendarskij monah 1962
  • Glasovete vi chuvam 1966

Politics

Two of Dimitér Talev's older brothers were politically active in the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, and through them, Talev became involved in the underground resistance movement as a teen. World War II had ended for Bulgaria in September 1944 when Soviet troops entered, and Dimitér Talev's life changed dramatically. His youthful work in the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, his editorship of Makedonia, and his fictional themes contributed to Bulgarian Communist authorities viewing him suspiciously. That October, he was jailed for six months, though not charged with any crime, and then released to a labor camp in Bulgaria's mining region for four months. In 1947 Dimitér Talev was sentenced again to forced labor at another mine. Five days before Christmas, a coal avalanche completely buried him, and his fellow inmates were lucky to find him. In Sofia, colleagues and longtime friends of Talev's petitioned the government for his freedom. He walked free in February 1948, but later that year, his entire family was exiled to Lukovit. In early 1951, the newspaper Pirinsko Delo published an unusual statement from Dimitér Talev that denounced both the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and some Yugoslavian leaders.

Views

Quotations: "You used to always look for causes and the good and worst outside of you, and they are inside us."

"One should not and cannot live only for himself."

"Whoever has tasted once the spiritual nourishment and experienced its sweetness, he will forever yearn for it and looking for it."

Membership

• Union of Bulgarian Writers , Bulgaria

Connections

Dimitér Talev married Irina Taleva in 1966. They had two children, Bratislav and Vladimir Talev.

Father:

Tale Palislamov

Mother:

Donka Petrova-Palislamova

Wife:

Irina Taleva

Son:

Bratislav Talev

Son:

Vladimir Talev

Brother:

Georgi Talev

Brother:

Alexander Talev