Abstract |
At the beginning of the twentieth century Bulgarian culture and
spirituality opened out to the new fashionable art trends. Under
European influence, terms like fashionable, traditional, ours,
renovation, idealism, and innovation became widely used. Part of
this tendency towards renovation and the incorporation of the most
modern art trends is the reception of aesthetics and the artistic
practice of symbolism. In Bulgarian art symbolism became a trend in
its own right at the very beginning of the twentieth century, when
the traditional values of the Bulgarian national revival were
overthrown and a complex and contradictory spiritual disposition
came into being. The latter was dominated by the clear realization
of the dramatic dimensions of the new age. Social reality,
especially post-1900, when according to Geo Milev nearly all
ideological remnants from our past before the Liberation
disappeared, "alienated the idealistic intelligentsia from life"
and was conducive to the development of the special characteristics
of symbolic aesthetics. Those years were characterized by the
stratification of artistic values, the emergence of artistic trends
that were very definite in their aesthetic direction and the
unfolding of modernistic trends in art. In drama and theatre this
tendency became apparent in the search for new means of expression
in order to recreate the problems and characters of modern drama
dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century; in the
attempts to try out the forms of the modern symbolistic theatre; in
the union of the tradition of Bulgarian theatre and the trends of
this dramaturgy. The staging of the dramas of Moris Meterlink, the
most eminent dramatist-symbolist, in the National Theatre indicates
the opening out of the Bulgarian theatre in the process of
refreshing our theatre on the Road to Europe. Key words:
fashionable, ours, renovation, symbolism, innovation. Trend: Art
and Culture, section "the Road to Europe"
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