The poet who dared to go with Don Quixote

“Today I met Don Quixote.

He rode in slow motion
on your old crane,
The old Rosinant crane.

I said to him: – Good afternoon! –
He said to me: Come with me!
Nothing that we are two or three
fun, out of fashion,
it’s still good to have us
even in nature!

I hesitated a little
but I said to myself: – Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid! …
I put on the armor, I rode my horse,
I went down to catch up.

And now in that life
I rode with Don Quixote.

Nothing that we are two or three
fun, out of fashion,
it’s still good to have us
even in nature!“

This poem is something like a symbolic belief of Valery Petrov. The genius, the great, is simple and clear, he has no vanity or pretense. Valeri Petrov’s life and poetry are proof of this. Because everything he wrote (plays, movie scripts, children’s stories or simple poems) was making poetry, as he himself says about his work, the great Bulgarian poet, whose birth today, April 22, marks the change of century.

September 6, 2006 (Photo: Ivan Grigorov)

Valery Petrov as a person is also a genius and a lack of vanity: a humble, silent and hateful false sage who writes incomprehensibly and accuses readers of not reaching the height to understand them.

And yet he is with the exuberance of a graceful aristocrat who possesses the Power of the Word.

He meets poetry early, but in front of his venerable writer, where his father takes him, he says that he likes writing, but responds: “We don’t print foreigners!” By the name it bears: Mevorah, from the beginning, in her youth, experiences a frontal confrontation with hatred of souls and different and superficial minds. He is amazed, unable to understand what they are saying: why a foreigner?

Valerie Petrov (Photo: BulFoto)

Valery Petrov was born on April 22, 1920 in the family of Maria Petrova, a French teacher and Dr. Nissim Mevorah, a professor of legal sciences, a specialist in family law, a prominent lawyer, a diplomat. He was ambassador to the United States, Bulgaria’s representative to the UN, author of a book on Yavorov. Valery Petrov’s mother was born in Varna and he spent many of his holidays there, on Slavyanska Street.

Valery Petrov studied in the Italian school, the so-called Italian Lyceum in Sofia, which he graduated in 1939. There he met his future wife, Dominica Boboshevska, with whom they remained until the end.

2010 With the poet Leda Mileva at the celebration of the National Palace of Culture to celebrate her 90th anniversary (Photo: BulFoto)

Her father, Professor Nissim Mevorah, and her mother, Maria Petrova, accept the protest at the Evangelical Church of Thessaloniki and decide on the name of Valeri Nissim Mevorah to become Valeri Nissimov Petrov.

And maybe there was something else, another reason, says Big Valerie in an interview. He does not explain, but it can be “foreigners”, which is why he is “affectionately” welcome even at a very tender age.

At the age of 15, Valeri Petrov published his first independent book: the poem “Birds to the North”, poems in 1936 in the magazine “Student’s Lift”, and in 1938 his first book “Birds to the North” was published. Assen Rakovski.

September 6, 2006 (Photo: Ivan Grigorov)

However, his surprising appearance on the literary scene was the publication of the cycle “Poems on the mountain” in the magazine Art and Criticism (1940, vol. 1).

Later, he wrote the poems Palechko (1943), On the Road (1943), Juvenes do Sumus (1943), The End of the Blue Sea (1941-47), The Athenian Remembrance and the poem The Tenderness. .

In 1938, his first book, Birds to the North, was published.

Photo: BulFoto

In 1944 he graduated in medicine from the University of Sofia, working for a time as a doctor. In the autumn and winter of 1944 he worked at Radio Sofía. He then participated in the second phase of the war against Nazi Germany as a military writer on the editorial board of the Frontak newspaper.

From the front he returns with … love poems. This generates a lot of criticism, well, how is that possible?

After the war, he was one of the founders and deputy chief editor of the Hornets newspaper (1945 – 1962). He serves as a doctor in a military hospital and in the Rila Monastery.

From 1947 to 1950 he worked at the Bulgarian Legation in Rome as an attaché for the press and culture. During these years he traveled to America, Switzerland, France as a delegate in various forums.

Later, upon returning to Bulgaria, he was an editor at Boyana Feature Films Studios, editor of the Bulgarian Writers Editorial and a member of Parliament at the Seventh Institute of Higher Education (1990-1991).

September 17, 2010 Valery Petrov receives the special award from the Municipality of Sofia for his general creativity (Photo: BulFoto)

Receive congratulations from fans on May 1 at The Boris Garden (Photo: BulFoto)

He shares communist ideas from an early age, but later becomes a critic of “developed socialist society”, and sympathizes with those young people who gave their lives for something that turned out to be a mirage. In January 1971, Valery Petrov was expelled from the Bulgarian Communist Party along with several other writers after voting with “abstention” over a statement by the Union of Bulgarian Writers against the Nobel Prize for Literature by the great Russian dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Life is made of sadness and happiness, of zigzags, but it is good to have some line, says the poet with irony.

The beloved Bulgarian writer brings to life works of various genres and scope, from children’s stories to brilliant translations.

He begins with translations during a difficult financial period of his life with Kipling’s Tales, with the poems of Gianni Rodari, with whom he is friends.

And Valery Petrov’s translation talent is developed with incredible strength. We owe it to Shakespeare’s exceptional translations. Thanks to its poetic language, Goethe’s most famous work, Faust, reaches us. The doctor’s love for words made him put on a pedestal both the baby horse and the tragic figure of King Lear.

2010 In Needle to Thread Mother dedicated to the poet’s 90th anniversary (Photo: BulFoto)

2010 In Needle to Thread Mother dedicated to the poet’s 90th anniversary (Photo: BulFoto)

Valery Petrov has been an academic at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences since 2003 and is on the honorary list of the International Children’s Book Council for his Five Tales.

One of Valery Petrov’s themes is the eternal question: when should the artist retire. Whether it’s a time when you feel like you’re no longer on your own level, you shouldn’t be saying to yourself: don’t get exposed, stop, can’t get the tones right, people will feel despite the routine, but the other voice Flame often prevails: dance, don’t stop, if you stop, it means dying before you die, you’re a man, dancing to the end, it means you’re still alive.

February 12, 2009 The poet at home (Photo: Ivan Grigorov)

At the end of his life, he calls the world unjust, inhuman. Irony of humanity’s self-confidence that it has conquered space, that it has made great advances in technology. The poet has wisely realized that the most important thing for man is humility. In fact, he always knew …

On August 27, 2014, after nearly a month of illness and two strokes, Valery Petrov left this world at the age of 94 at the Military Medical Academy (MMA) in Sofia.

The Bulgarians did not stop for four hours to say goodbye to him in worship at the Ivan Vazov National Theater. The great Bulgarian poet, playwright and translator was cremated and the urn was placed on the grave of his wife Dominica.

What didn’t you say

I am a man of hope

In itself you have to enter armed to the teeth.

I dreamed of having a watch. Now I have a watch, but I have no dreams.

In itself you have to enter armed to the teeth.

Collage: Petya Alexandrova / Dir.bg

I often ask myself:

“Who the hell act did it!”

And I answer myself:

– With this one, yours, with which you are about to commit new nonsense. No matter how wise you think of life, you are still a child to a great extent.

They all look at the breed, look for racial traits, and there are incredible wonders in nature. Because as with humans, my friend, our hearts are more important to us.

The old man always has the feeling that he can advise young people, teach them something, but perhaps that feeling is deceptive because they live in another new world, in which he is a foreigner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FXfvpDoYc