Dr. Georgi Gospodinov, Assist. Prof.
Institute for Literature
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
https://doi.org/10.53656/bel2021-3-1-bank.bglit
Absract. There is an invisible anthology of the Bulgarian literature that we literally carry along with us and hold in our hands every day. Its “pocket edition” is constantly before our eyes. And precisely because of that, it remains invisible and hidden from us. I am speaking about the texts printed on the last Bulgarian banknotes, those that we use now and that one day will be replaced by the common European currency.
We’ll demonstrate how through the selected 7 figures and their texts the ‘canon of the banknotes’ is slightly retreated from the national-revolutionary canon, yet remains in the patriotic register. There is an accent on culture and its institutions, on the openness to the European space and the world. Part of the figures that appear on the banknotes are canonical yet presented with less known para-canonical works. What I will try to do in this text is to provide a magnifying glass for seeing the hidden signs and reading the texts and stories inscribed on today’s banknotes, including the delicate female presence on one of them.
Keywords: anthology; banknotes; canon; St. Ivan Rilski; Paisiy Hilendarski; Petar Beron; Stefan Stambolov; Aleko Konstantinov; Pencho Slaveykov; Ivan Milev
