Literary Friendship!

A brief account of Bulgarian-Irish literary relations in the past decade by Sinéad Mac Aodha, Director, Ireland Literature Exchange.

Ireland Literature Exchange (ILE) has the proud function of promoting Irish literature abroad. It achieves this aim by awarding translation grants to literary publishers, hosting literary translators and by organising author tours abroad. The organisation, which is state-funded, has been in existence for fourteen years now, and has supported over 1000 titles in 34 languages and 43 countries. Its relationship with the Bulgarian publishing sector is an incredibly rich one, with over fifty works of Irish literature in all genres having been published in Bulgaria since 1997.

The very first Bulgarian title in our archive is a collection of short stories by Mary Lavin. The translator, Iglika Vassilieva, came across her work by accident in a library, became very interested in the writer and her work and later published her own selection for Bulgarian readers with the publishing house Zlatorog. Iglika’s relationship with Ireland, which had been forged by chance, was to prove a very fruitful one as she went on to complete a Bulgarian translation of Ireland’s most famous book of the twentieth century, James Joyce’s Ulysses, published by Fama in 2004.

She has since completed translations of some of Ireland’s leading contemporary writers including Neil Jordan and John Banville.  We were delighted to host Iglika in Ireland in 2006 when she was the very first literary translator from Bulgaria to receive a bursary from ILE for literary translation. While she was here she worked on a translation of a John Banville novel, the Booker prize-winner The Sea. During her stay in Ireland, Iglika worked in the National Library, attended literary events and went to see some Irish theatre in Dublin. She also travelled to Wexford where The Sea  is set and met a number of our writers, including one of our most famous living short-story writers, Claire Keegan. We look forward to many, many more of Iglika’s intelligent and sensitive translations, as she is a true friend of Irish literature.

In 2006 the Irish Ambassador to Bulgaria, H.E. Geoffrey Keating invited me to visit Sofia, as he wanted to organise an event to mark the great contribution that Iglika Vassilieva has made to Irish literature. The occasion was a moving one, held in a busy downtown Sofia bookshop, the Helicon, with a large and interested Bulgarian audience in attendance.

The following day, Iglika accompanied me to the Sofia Book Fair where we met with a large number of Bulgarian publishers and I had the opportunity to meet up with old friends in the business such as Elena Kostintinova. New friends were made both at the fair and over dinner in the lovely clock tower restaurant down the road from the fair. I also got to sample some wonderful Bulgarian cuisine in the Pri Yafata restaurant.

While in Sofia I learnt of the Irishman, James D Bourchier, a great activist for the cause of Bulgarian freedom and a political journalist and unofficial diplomat who became a son of the Bulgarian nation. On his death, after lying in state at the Alexander Nevski Cathedral, he was buried at Rila monastery, an exceptional honour for a foreigner. Before coming to Bulgaria I had had no idea of this great historic bond between our two countries.

Another memorable moment during that first visit to Sofia was the unveiling by the Mayor of Sofia and the Irish Ambassador of a beautiful granite stone in the entrance to the Sofia Shopping Mall. It  bore a poem by the great Irish language poet, Máirtín Ó Direáin, Ionracas  (“Honesty”) inscribed tri-lingually in Bulgarian, Irish and  English. A great poem by  a poet who wrote in a minority language on the very edge of Europe, it is a tribute to all concerned that the Bulgarian authorities facilitated its presentation to the Bulgarian public in such a fitting and ambitious fashion.

In the field of drama, another exciting contemporary Irish literature translation project supported by ILE was a Collection of Contemporary Irish Plays published by the Epsilon Publishing  House in 2006. A group of Bulgarian translators and editors, Amelia Vesselinova Licheva, Andrey N. Jichev, Ida Daniel and others made an excellent selection of the finest of contemporary drama including works by Brian Friel, Tom Murphy, Marina Carr, Conor Mc Pherson, Frank McGuinness and Enda Walsh.

One intriguing aspect of the range of Irish works selected and published by Bulgarian publishers is the taste and discernment displayed by the commissioning editors. Whether  it’s a selection of classical works, e.g. Sheridan Le Fanu’s In a glass darkly, Jonathan Swift’s A Tale of A Tub, Lady Gregory’s Cuchulain of Murthemne , Oscar Wilde’s The Picture Of Dorian Gray  or the latest novel by contemporary Irish authors such as John Banville, William Trevor or Joseph O’ Connor, Bulgarian editors and translators show an unerring capacity to choose the very best of  Irish literature.

The relationship between the translators and the publishers in Bulgaria does seem to be one of mutual respect with many excellent projects having been brought to fruition by publishers such as Delakort, Epsilon, Fama, Riva,Vessela Lutskanova, Hemus, Zlatorog and Focus to name but a just a few. A new and interesting contact for ILE has been that of Mirela Hristova of  the newly-founded Amat-Ah publishing house who came to Ireland in January, 2007 on an ILE literary translation bursary. While Mirela was in Ireland she translated Sebastian Barry’s novel, A long, long way. We arranged a meeting for her with the novelist, an opportunity which she found very helpful in helping her achieve a deeper understanding of particular words, lines and nuances in the book. Back in the ILE offices, we helped her identify photographs from the National Library Photographic Archive that might be suitable for the cover of the book. She also met and read several other novelists’ work and has since acquired the rights to Deirdre Madden’s novel, Authenticity. We wish her every success with her new publishing venture and in particular, of course, with her relationship with Irish literature!

ILE’s relationship with Bulgarian publishers and translators is as strong as ever. Our most recent visitor was the translator Pravda Miteva who came to Ireland to translate Hugo Hamilton’s memoir, The Speckled People.  Geoffrey Keating organised for her to meet Hugo for dinner and the writer very kindly agreed to walk around Dun Laoghaire (a beautiful coastal town just outside Dublin) and to show her all the locations in the area that appear in the book. Pravda, as indeed any literary translator would have, found this hugely helpful.

Pravda’s energy and enthusiasm for Irish writing and for Ireland in general was overwhelming. She devoured books on a daily basis, taking buses to areas of great scenic beauty such as Powerscourt in Co.Wicklow and Trim in Co. Meath. Once she got there she found a comfortable spot in the shade under a tree and read works of Irish literature for the day. Her voracious appetite for Ireland and her desire to use the time she spent in Ireland as fully as possible meant that she travelled far and wide, even going on trips to the Aran Islands and to Belfast.

Pravda was interested in all genres of Irish literature and we were delighted to arrange a meeting between her and one of our finest children’s writers, Siobhán Parkinson. We also arranged a visit to the national children’s book organisation, Children’s Books Ireland (CBI) which was very useful for both parties, as our colleagues were able to find out a little about the Bulgarian children’s book sector while filling Pravda in on aspects of  the children’s literature scene in Ireland.

A newly completed translation by Filipina Filipova of the great and difficult novel by Flann O’Brien, At-Swim-Two-Birds, has recently been published by Fama. This has to be one of the most difficult modernist works written in Ireland and we are delighted that Filipina undertook such a challenging project. Our independent assessor of the translation stated that “the translator demonstrated a complete creative command of her own language” – real praise indeed for a translator. We congratulate Filipina on her fine achievement.