Teachers and students from the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki. He is the third man with the white beard, sitting from left to right in the first row.The first page of Parlichev's autobiography published by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education in the magazine Folklore and Ethnography Collection, a year after his death in 1893.
Grigor Parlichev was born on 18 January 1830 in Ohrid, Ottoman Empire, as the fourth child of Maria Gyokova and Stavre Parlichev, a craftsman.[5] Parlichev studied in a Greek school in Ohrid. He was taught by Dimitar Miladinov, a Bulgarian National Revival activist.[6] In the 1850s he worked as a teacher of Greek in the towns of Tirana, Prilep and Ohrid. In 1858 Parlichev started studying medicine in Athens but transferred to the Faculty of Linguistics in 1860. Adopting the Hellenized form of his name - Grigorios Stavridis, in the same year he took part in the annual poetry competition in Athens, winning first prize for his poem "O Armatolos" (Greek: Ο Αρματωλός), written in Greek.[7] Acclaimed as "second Homer", he was offered scholarships to the universities at Oxford and Berlin. However, Parlichev declined the offered scholarships.[8] Literary critics and the public in Athens also emphasized his non-Greek origin. In 1862, he also wrote another poem called "Skenderbeg" (Greek: Σκενδέρμπεης) in Greek, with which he participated in the poetry competition, but it was not awarded.[9] After the death of his teacher Dimitar Miladinov in the same year, he returned to Ohrid.[4]
Parlichev joined the struggle for independent Bulgarian church and schools, though he continued to teach Greek. After spending some time in Constantinople in 1868 acquainting himself with the Church Slavonic language,[9] he returned to Ohrid where he advocated the substitution of Greek with Bulgarian in the town's schools and churches.[10] In the same year, Parlichev was arrested and spent several months in an Ottoman jail in Debar after a complaint was sent by the Greek bishop of Ohrid.[11] At that time he began to study Bulgarian (or as he called it himself - the Slavonic language).[6]
From 1869 Parlichev taught Bulgarian in several towns across Ottoman Empire, including Struga, Gabrovo, Bitola, Ohrid and Thessaloniki. In this period, he got married and had five children: Konstantinka, Luisa, Kiril, Despina and Georgi.[5][12] In 1870 Parlichev translated his award-winning poem "O Armatolos" into Bulgarian in an attempt to popularize his earlier works, which were written in Greek, among the Bulgarian audience.[12] Parlichev was the first Bulgarian translator of Homer's Iliad in 1871.[7] However, he was criticized by Bulgarian literary critics because they considered his knowledge of Bulgarian as poor.[4] Parlichev used a specific mixture of Church Slavonic, Bulgarian, Russian and his native Ohrid dialect.[9] In 1872, he published the poem called 1762 leto.[5] In 1883 Parlichev moved to Thessaloniki where he taught at the Thessaloniki Bulgarian Male High School (1883-1889). During his stay there he wrote his autobiography between 1884 and 1885.[4][13] After his retirement in 1890, he returned to Ohrid, where he died in 25 January 1893.[11][12]
Identification
Per historian Raymond Detrez, who received his PhD for his thesis on Parlichev,[14] in his early life Parlichev was a member of the Romaic community, a multi-ethnic proto-nation, comprising all Orthodox Christians of the Ottoman Empire.[15] It had been under way until the 1830s, with the rise of nationalism in the Balkans. In his youth, he had no well-defined sense of national identity and developed a Greek (Rum Millet) identity (in the sense of being an Orthodox Christian), but as an adult, he adopted a Greek and later a Bulgarian national identity. In the last decade of his life, he adhered to a form of vague local Macedonian patriotism, though continued to identify himself as a Bulgarian. Thus, in the context of discussions about the existence of the Macedonian nation, his national identity became disputed between Bulgarian and Macedonian (literary) historians.[16]
Language
As a child, Parlichev learned to write excellent Greek and later wrote in his autobiography that he mastered literary Greek better than a native speaker. However, as an adult, despite his Bulgarian self-identification, Parlichev had poor knowledge of literary Bulgarian, which appeared to him as a "foreign language". He started learning to read and write in Bulgarian only after his return from Athens in 1862.[9] In his autobiography, Parlichev wrote: "I was, and I am still weak with the Bulgarian language,"[17] and "In Greek I sang like a swan, now in Slavic I cannot even sing like a donkey."[10] The then-emerging standard Bulgarian language was based on the easternmost Eastern South Slavic dialects, while his native dialect belongs to the western dialects.[18] He used a mix of Church Slavonic, Russian and Bulgarian words and forms, as well as elements typical of his native dialect, calling it Common Slavic. He also wanted to enrich the emerging standard language with elements taken from the Russian language.[18] Because of this, he was criticized for his translation of Homer's Iliad.[19] Thus, according to Bulgarian historian Roumen Daskalov, Parlichev reacted against his Bulgarian literary critics by withdrawing into "an alternative Macedonian regional identity, a kind of Macedonian particularism."[20] However, when he came to write his autobiography, Parlichev used the standard Bulgarian language with some influence of his native Ohrid dialect.[21][8][22]
Legacy
His autobiography was published posthumously in Sofia in a Bulgarian periodical called Folklore and Ethnography Collection, produced by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education, in 1894.[6] Parlichev's son Kiril Parlichev became a prominent member of the revolutionary movement in Macedonia and a Bulgarian public figure.[4] After World War II, Macedonian historians started regarding him as an ethnic Macedonian author.[23] Both North Macedonia and Bulgaria regard him as a pioneer of national awakening.[4] The Parlichev Ridge in Antarctica is named after him.[24] A digital monument honoring him was set up in the center of Ohrid in 2022.[25][26]
↑ Janette Sampimon (2006). Becoming Bulgarian: the articulation of Bulgarian identity in the nineteenth century in its international context: an intellectual history. Pegasus. pp.61, 89, 124. ISBN9061433118.
↑ İpek Yosmaoğlu (2013). Blood Ties: Religion, Violence and the Politics of Nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia, 1878–1908. Cornell University Press. pp.72–73. ISBN0801469791.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Dimitar Bechev (2019). Historical Dictionary of North Macedonia (2nded.). Rowman & Littlefield. p.248. ISBN9781538119624.
1 2 3 Blaže Ristovski, ed. (2009). Makedonska enciklopedija: M-Š (in Macedonian). Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. pp.1226–1227. ISBN9786082030241.
1 2 Corinne Ondine Pache; Casey Dué; Susan Lupack; Robert Lamberton, eds. (2020). The Cambridge Guide to Homer. Cambridge University Press. p.484. ISBN9781107027190.
1 2 Elka Agoston-Nikolova, ed. (2010). Shoreless Bridges: South East European Writing in Diaspora. pp.56–57. ISBN9042030208.
1 2 Loring Danforth (1997). The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World. Princeton University Press. pp.50, 62. ISBN9780691043562.
1 2 Eleonora Naxidou (2015). "Competing Representations of Shared Legacies: Greek and Bulgarian Narratives in the 19th Century". Nationalism and Ethnic Politics. Routledge: 362–364. doi:10.1080/13537113.2015.1063920. ISSN1557-2986.
1 2 3 Raymond Detrez (2001). Криволици на мисълта (in Bulgarian). ЛИК. pp.147, 205. ISBN9546074543.
↑ Raymond Detrez (2015). "Grigor Parlichev's Autobiography as a "self-hagiography"". Литературна мисъл (2). Bulgarian Academy of Sciences: 56–79. Summary/Abstract: Among the many Bulgarian autobiographies written in the national revival period, that by Grigor Parlichev one occupies a particular place due to its highly fictional nature. On the one hand, the author provides very little factual information on the historical developments he participated in; on the other hand, he widely elaborates on events with little documentary relevance, inserting dramatic dialogues that cannot possibly be authentic. These particularities of Parlichev's Autobiography can be explained assuming that Parlichev used the medieval zhitiye (hagiography, vita) as a model for his own biography. Strikingly, nearly all the topoi of the zhitiye as described by Th. Pratsch in his exhaustive Der hagiographische Topos. Griechische Heiligenviten in mittelbyzantinischer Zeit (Berlin, New York, 2005) also feature in Parlichev's work, moreover in roughly the same order. The most elaborate episodes in Parlichev's Autobiography ― his victory at the Athenian poetry contest on 1860, which made him a Greek celebrity, and the weeks he spent in prison in Ohrid and Debar in 1868 ― transpire to be secularized versions (in the spirit of national revival) of the main topoi in most hagiographies: the temptation of the saint and his or her suffering for the sake of Christ. As a result, Parlichev succeeds in similarly representing himself in his Autobiography as a "martyr" for the Bulgarian national cause. Happily for the reader, this whole operation is accompanied by a refreshing dose of (unconscious?) self-irony that sometimes makes Parlichev's Autobiography remind of Sofroniy's Life and sufferings.
↑ "Book Reviews". Southeast European and Black Sea Studies. Routledge: 178. 2007. doi:10.1080/14683850701189915. More surprising is another omission: there is no entry on Grigor Parlichev, a Hellenised Bulgarian author who, in the course of his literary career, rejected Hellenism and reverted openly to Bulgarian nationalism. This is rather odd, given that Parlichev was the subject of Detrez's doctoral thesis.
↑ Yordan Ljuckanov (2015). "Bulgarian Cultural Identity as a Borderline One". Interlitteraria. 20: 96. doi:10.12697/IL.2015.20.2.9.
↑ Raymond Detrez (2007). "Canonization through Competition: The Case of Grigor Părličev". Литературна мисъл (in Bulgarian) (1). Institute of Literature - Bulgarian Academy of Sciences: 61–101. Summary/Abstract: The normal criteria for an author to be included in a national literary canon are that he should belong to the nation to which the canon is related, that he must write in the nation's (standard) language, and that his work is of reasonable size and aesthetic value. A criterion of secondary importance, valid in societies marked by nationalism, may also contribute to an author's canonization: the "national" character of his work in the sense that it deals with national themes, displays the national identity, or attests to the author's devotion to the national cause — a devotion preferably supported by his real-life heroism or martyrdom. Părličev's canonization has proven to be problematic in all respects. To which nation did he actually belong? In his youth he had no well-defined sense of national identity and probably considered himself a "Greek" in the sense of being an Orthodox Christian. As an adult he explicitly identified himself initially with the Greek and later with the Bulgarian nation. In the last decades of his life, he seems to have tended to exhibit some vague Ohrid-based or Macedonian particularism, though apparently continuing to perceive himself as a Bulgarian. With such an evolution, it is understandable why disputes between Bulgarian and Macedonian (literary) historians flare up around the issue of Parlichev's national identity, which also refer to the debate about the existence of a Macedonian nation.
↑ Grigor Parlichev (1894). Автобиография[Autobiography] (in Bulgarian). p.59.
↑ Raymond Detrez (2007). "Canonization through Competition: The Case of Grigor Părličev"". Литературна мисъл (in Bulgarian). Institute of Literature - Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. И накрая, Автобиографията е написана на приемлив стандартен български, който все пак носи в себе си известно влияние от родния охридски диалект. (Finally, the Autobiography is written in acceptable standard Bulgarian, which nevertheless carries some influence from the native Ohrid dialect.)
↑ Harvard Slavic Studies. Harvard University Press. 1953. p.369.
↑ Raymond Detrez (2007). "Canonization through Competition: The Case of Grigor Părličev". Литературна мисъл (in Bulgarian) (1). Institute of Literature - Bulgarian Academy of Sciences: 61–101.
Parlichev, Grigor. Автобиография. Сборник за народни умотворения, наука и книжнина, book IX, Sofia (1894). ( Media related to Parlichev's Autobiography at Wikimedia Commons) (in Bulgarian)
Parlichev, Grigor. Автобиографија. Skopje, 1967 (scan) (in Macedonian).
Shapkarev, Kuzman. Материали за възраждането на българщината в Македония от 1854 до 1884 г. Неиздадени записки и писма (Materials about the Bulgarian Revival in Macedonia from 1854 to 1884. Unpublished Notes and Letters). Balgarski Pisatel, Sofia (1984) (in Bulgarian)
Sprostranov, Evtim. По възражданьето в град Охрид (On the Revival in the City of Ohrid), Сборникъ за Народни Умотворения, Наука и Книжнина, book XIII, Sofia, pp 621–681 (1896) Archived 2019-05-11 at the Wayback Machine(in Bulgarian)
Cyril and Methodius were brothers, Byzantine Christian theologians and missionaries. For their work evangelizing the Slavs, they are known as the "Apostles to the Slavs".
Macedonians are a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group native to the region of Macedonia in Southeast Europe. They speak Macedonian, a South Slavic language. The large majority of Macedonians identify as Eastern Orthodox Christians, who share a cultural and historical "Orthodox Byzantine–Slavic heritage" with their neighbours. About two-thirds of all ethnic Macedonians live in North Macedonia and there are also communities in a number of other countries.
Naum (Bulgarian and Macedonian: Свети Наум, Sveti Naum, also known as Naum of Ohrid or Naum of Preslav, was a medieval Bulgarian writer and missionary among the Slavs, considered one of the Seven Apostles of the First Bulgarian Empire. He was among the disciples of Cyril and Methodius and is associated with the creation of the Glagolitic and Cyrillic script. Naum was among the founders of the Pliska Literary School. Afterwards Naum worked at the Ohrid Literary School. He was among the first saints declared by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church after its foundation in the 9th century. The mission of Naum played significant role by transformation of the local Early Slavs into Bulgarians.
The orthography of the Macedonian language includes an alphabet consisting of 31 letters, which is an adaptation of the Cyrillic script, as well as language-specific conventions of spelling and punctuation.
Marko Kostov Tsepenkov was a Bulgarian folklorist from Ottoman Macedonia. In his own time, he identified himself, his compatriots and his language as Bulgarian. He was born in Prilep.
The existence and distinctiveness of the Macedonian language is disputed in Bulgaria and the name of the language was disputed by Greece. By signing the Prespa Agreement, Greece accepted the name "Macedonian language" in reference to the official language of North Macedonia.
Kuzman Anastasov Shapkarev,, was a Bulgarian folklorist, ethnographer and scientist from the Ottoman region of Macedonia, author of textbooks and ethnographic studies and a significant figure of the Bulgarian National Revival.
The history of the Macedonian language refers to the developmental periods of current-day Macedonian, an Eastern South Slavic language spoken on the territory of North Macedonia. The Macedonian language developed during the Middle Ages from the Old Church Slavonic, the common language spoken by Slavic people.
Kiril Peychinovich or Kiril Pejčinović was a Bulgarian cleric, writer and enlightener, one of the first supporters of the use of modern Bulgarian, and one of the early figures of the Bulgarian National Revival.
Taga za Yug was a poem by the Bulgarian National Revival poet Konstantin Miladinov. It is a patriotic-reflexive song in which the author, who lives in Moscow, expresses his homesickness for his homeland. By the end of the 1850s, Bulgarian poets as Miladinov started to write lyric poetry in vernacular. This poem was written in the Struga dialect.
Macedonian nationalism is a general grouping of nationalist ideas and concepts among ethnic Macedonians that were first formed in the late 19th century among separatists seeking the autonomy of the region of Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire. The idea evolved during the early 20th century alongside the first expressions of ethnic nationalism among the Slavs of Macedonia. The separate Macedonian nation gained recognition during World War II when the Socialist Republic of Macedonia was created as part of Yugoslavia. Macedonian historiography has since established links between the ethnic Macedonians and various historical events and individual figures that occurred in and originated from Macedonia, which range from the Middle Ages up to the 20th century. Following the independence of the Republic of Macedonia in the late 20th century, issues of Macedonian national identity have become contested by the country's neighbours, as some adherents to aggressive Macedonian nationalism, called Macedonism, hold more extreme beliefs such as an unbroken continuity between ancient Macedonians, and modern ethnic Macedonians, and views connected to the irredentist concept of a United Macedonia, which involves territorial claims on a large portion of Greece and Bulgaria, along with smaller regions of Albania, Kosovo and Serbia.
Slavic speakers are a minority population in the northern Greek region of Macedonia, who are mostly concentrated in certain parts of the peripheries of West and Central Macedonia, adjacent to the territory of the state of North Macedonia. Their dialects are called today "Slavic" in Greece, while generally they are considered Macedonian. Some members have formed their own emigrant communities in neighbouring countries, as well as further abroad.
Rayko Ivanov (Yoanov) Zhinzifov or Rajko Žinzifov,, born Ksenofont Dzindzifi was a Bulgarian National Revival poet and translator from Veles in today's North Macedonia, who spent most of his life in the Russian Empire.
Kiril Parlichev was a Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary and public figure. He was a member of Internal Macedono-Adrianopolean Revolutionary Organization (IMARO) and a popular teacher, journalist, translator and writer.
Parteniy Zografski or Parteniy Nishavski was a 19th-century Bulgarian cleric, philologist, and folklorist from Galičnik in today's North Macedonia, one of the early figures of the Bulgarian National Revival. In his works he referred to his language as Bulgarian and demonstrated a Bulgarian spirit, though besides contributing to the development of the Bulgarian language, in North Macedonia he is also thought to have contributed to the codification of present-day Macedonian.
Clement or Kliment of Ohrid was one of the first medieval Bulgarian saints, scholar, writer, and apostle to the Slavs. He was one of the most prominent disciples of Cyril and Methodius and is often associated with the creation of the Glagolitic and Cyrillic scripts, especially their popularisation among Christianised Slavs. He was the founder of the Ohrid Literary School and is regarded as a patron of education and language by some Slavic people. He is considered to be the first bishop of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, one of the Seven Apostles of Bulgarian Orthodox Church since the 10th century, and one of the premier saints of modern Bulgaria. The mission of Clement was the crucial factor which transformed the Slavs in then Kutmichevitsa into Bulgarians. Clement is also the patron saint of North Macedonia, the city of Ohrid and the Macedonian Orthodox Church.
The Kostur dialect, is a member of the Southwestern subgroup of the Southeastern group of dialects of the Macedonian language. This dialect is mainly spoken in and around the town of Kastoria, known locally in Macedonian as Kostur, and in the surrounding Korešta region, which encompasses most of the area to the northwest of the town. The Kostur dialect is also partially spoken in Albania, most notably in Bilisht and the village of Vërnik (Vrabnik). The dialect is partially preserved among the ″people of Bulgarian origin in Mustafapaşa and Cemilköy, Turkey, descending from the village of Agios Antonios (Zhèrveni) in Kostur region ″.
"O Armatolos" is a poem written by the 19th-century poet Grigor Parlichev. The poem was composed in 1860, and officially published on 25 March of that year to participate in the Athens University competition for best Greek language poetry, winning first place. Parlichev considered the poem his lifetime achievement.
The Eastern South Slavic dialects form the eastern subgroup of the South Slavic languages. They are spoken mostly in Bulgaria and North Macedonia, and adjacent areas in the neighbouring countries. They form the so-called Balkan Slavic linguistic area, which encompasses the southeastern part of the dialect continuum of South Slavic.
Bulgarian Folk Songs is a collection of folk songs and traditions from the then Ottoman Empire, especially from the region of Macedonia, but also from Shopluk and Srednogorie, published in 1861 by the Miladinov brothers. The Miladinovs' collection remains one of the greatest single works in the history of Bulgarian folklore studies and has been republished many times. The collection is considered also to have played an important role by the historiography in North Macedonia.
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