Grigor Parlichev

Grigor Stavrev Parlichev (also spelled Prlichev, Parlitcheff or Prličev; Bulgarian: Григор Ставрев Пърличев, romanized: Grigor Stavrev Parlichev; Greek: Γρηγόριος Σταυρίδης, romanized: Grigorios Stavrides, Macedonian: Григор Прличев, romanized: Grigor Prličev) was a Bulgarian[1][2] writer, teacher and translator. He was born on January 18, 1830, in Ohrid, Ottoman Empire and died in the same town on January 25, 1893. Although he thought of himself as a Bulgarian,[3][4] according to the Macedonian historiography he was an ethnic Macedonian.[5][6]

Grigor Stavrev Parlichev
Native name
Григор Пърличев
Born18 January 1830
Ohrid, Ottoman Empire
Died25 January 1893 (aged 63)
Ohrid, Ottoman Empire
Pen nameGrigorios Stavrides (for his Greek works)
Occupationpoet, writer, teacher, public figure
LanguageBulgarian, Greek
PeriodBulgarian National Revival
Notable worksO Armatolos
1762 leto
Autobiography
Notable awards1st prize, Athens University Poetry Competition (1860)
SpouseAnastasiya Uzunova
ChildrenKonstantinka Parlicheva
Luisa Parlicheva
Kiril Parlichev
Despina Parlicheva
Georgi Parlichev
Teachers and students from the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki, which foundation Parlichev initiated. 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.

Biography

Parlichev studied in a Greek school in Ohrid. 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. The same year he took part in the annual poetic competition in Athens winning first prize for his poem "O Armatolos" (Ο Αρματωλός), written in Greek. Acclaimed as "second Homer", he was offered scholarships to the universities at Oxford and Berlin. At that time he was pretending to be a Greek, but the public opinion in Athens emphasized his non-Greek origin. Disappointed Parlichev declined offered scholarships and returned to Ohrid the next year.[7]

The house of Grigor Prličev in Ohrid, North Macedonia

In 1862 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 Church Slavonic literature, he returned to Ohrid where he advocated the substitution of Greek with Bulgarian in the town's schools and churches. The same year Parlichev was arrested and spent several months in an Ottoman jail after a complaint was sent by the Greek bishop of Ohrid. At that time he began to study standard Bulgarian, or, as he called it himself, the Slavonic language.[8] From this time until his death Parlichev continued writing only in Bulgarian.

From 1869 Parlichev taught Bulgarian in several towns across Ottoman Empire, including Struga, Gabrovo, Bitola, Ohrid and Thessaloniki. He initiated the creation of the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki. 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. He also wrote another poem called "Skenderbeg". Parlichev was the first Bulgarian translator of Homer's Iliad in 1871, though he was criticised for his language. Parlichev used a specific mixture of Church Slavonic and his native Ohrid dialect. He is therefore also regarded as a founding figure of the literature of the later standardized Macedonian language.[9] 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. After his retirement in 1890, he returned to Ohrid, where he died.

Parlichev's son Kiril Parlichev was also a prominent member of the revolutionary movement in Macedonia and a Bulgarian public figure.

Identification

Per Raymond Detrez, who received his PhD on the issue,[10] in his early life Parlichev was a member of the “Romaic community”, a multi-ethnic proto-nation, to comprise all Orthodox Christians of the Ottoman Empire. It had been under way until the 1830s, when the rise of Greek nationalism destroyed which later lead to the formation of the modern nations on the Balkans. Parlichev is seen by Detrez as belonging to this community, however initially he had no well-defined sense of national identification. In his youth he developed a vague Greek identity,[11] but as an adult he adopted a Bulgarian national identity.[12] 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. In this way Parlichev’s national identity has been used by Macedonian historians to prove the existence of a Macedonian ethnic identification during the late 19th century.[13]

Language

As a child, Parlichev learned to write excellent Greek and later mastered literary Greek better than a native speaker. However, as an adult, despite his Bulgarian self-identification, Parlichev had poor knowledge of standard 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.[14] In his autobiography, Parlichev wrote: "I was, and I am still weak with the Bulgarian language,"[15] and "In Greek I sang like a swan, now in Slavic I cannot even sing like a donkey."[16] The then-developing literary Bulgarian language was based on the easternmost Eastern South Slavic dialects, while his native dialect belongs to the western dialects.[17] He used a mix of Church Slavonic and Bulgarian words and forms, as well as elements typical of his native Ohrid dialect, calling it Common Slavic. He also wanted to enrich the new 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, Parlichev reacted against this critic, withdrawing into "an alternative Macedonian regional identity, a kind of Macedonian particularism."[20] However, when he came to write his autobiography, Parlichev used the Bulgarian literary language.[21][22]

See also

References and notes
  1. MacKridge, Peter (2009-04-02). Language and national identity in Greece, 1766-1976, Peter Mackridge, Oxford University Press, 2009, ISBN 0-19-921442-5, p. 189. ISBN 9780199214426. Retrieved 2013-11-18.
  2. Becoming Bulgarian: the articulation of Bulgarian identity in the nineteenth century in its international context: an intellectual history, Janette Sampimon, Pegasus, 2006, ISBN 9061433118, pp. 61; 89; 124.
  3. The pursuit of knowledge despite all obstacles was a sentiment proudly espoused by the Bulgarian national intelligentsia, such as Grigor Parlichev, or the Miladinov brothers, the pioneers and heroes of Bulgarian education in Macedonia. Parlichev and the Miladinov brothers had been educated in Greece, and they had utmost facility with literary Greek, which was not atypical of young Bulgarian nationalists in mid-nineteenth-century Macedonia.83 Instead of Hellenizing the Miladinovs and Parlichev however, the Athens experience had actually aroused a more conscious sense of being Bulgarian—and different—in them. Parlichev wrote in his autobiography that he had worked hard to raise the money necessary for his training in Greece. He had enrolled as a medical student but continued to compose poetry, which was his real passion. In fact, his poem “Amartolos” won first place in 1860 at a poetry contest in Athens, where he competed against acclaimed poets and philology professors. Purlichev’s reminiscence of his victory exuded not so much of elation as bitter redemption: We, Bulgarians, have been so abused and despised by other nationalities that it is high time we regained our dignity. When one reads our folk songs, in which every beauty is called a Greek woman, then one will instinctively conclude that wretched self-contempt is a national characteristic of the Bulgarian. It is high time we prove ourselves men among men. Bulgarian industriousness is rarely to be found among other nationalities; it has ennobled us, and it will be our salvation... For more see: İpek Yosmaoğlu, (2013) Blood Ties: Religion, Violence and the Politics of Nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia, 1878–1908. Cornell University Press, pp. 213-214, ISBN 0801469791.
  4. Raymond Detrez, Grigor Parlichev’s Autobiography as a “self-hagiography”, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Journal: Литературна мисъл, 2015, Issue No: 2, Page Range: 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.
  5. Shea, John (1997-01-01). Macedonia and Greece: The Struggle to Define a New Balkan Nation, John Shea, p. 199. ISBN 9780786402281. Retrieved 2013-11-18.
  6. Prlicev and Sazdov, Gligor,Tome. Izbor. Matica. ISBN 978-86-15-00214-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. Elka Agoston-Nikolova ed., Shoreless Bridges: South East European Writing in Diaspora, Rodopi, 2010, ISBN 9042030208, pp. 56-57.
  8. Jolanta Sujecka, Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Profile of Grigor Prličev, (Grigorios Stawridis), p. 240.
  9. L. M. Danforth: The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World, Princeton University Press 1995, p.50, 62.
  10. More surprising is another omission: there is no entry on GrigorParlichev, 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. For more see: Dimitris Livanios, Book review of the Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria, by Raymond Detrez (Scarecrow Press, Historical Dictionaries of Europe 46, Lanham, MD, Second edition, 2006, ISBN 0-8108-4901-1) in (2007) Book Reviews, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 7:1, 177-207, DOI: 10.1080/14683850701189915
  11. Although modern Greek identity has been based on this assumption of continuity, the "proper" geographical boundaries of Greece and the ethnic characteristics of the Greeks remained vague for some time. Only during the second half of the nineteenth century did the consolidation of the national narrative take place. As late as 1824, the Phanariot Theodore Negris identified Serbs and Bulgarians as Greeks, a definition that was closer to that of the Orthodox religious community of the Rum millet than to the definition of a modern secular Greek identity. But between 1839 and 1852 an important ideological change occurred... The gradual rise of the Bulgarian national movement, and the religious revival within the Greek kingdom all collided, suggesting the need for a different evaluation of Greece's historical past... and transforming the religiously based identity of the Rum millet into a modern, secular national identity. But this project did not put down strong roots in the local "Romaic" popular consciousness. For more see: Victor Roudometof, Nationalism and Identity Politics in the Balkans: Greece and the Macedonian Question. Journal of Modern Greek Studies 14.2 (1996) 253-301.
  12. Yordan Ljuckanov, Bulgarian Cultural Identity as a Borderline One, INTERLITTERARIA 2015, 20/2: 88–104, p. 96. DOI: https://doi.org/10.12697/IL.2015.20.2.9 .
  13. Raymond Detrez, Canonization through Competition: The Case of Grigor Părličev, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 2007, Journal: Литературна мисъл, Issue No: 1, Page Range: 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 a Greek Orthodox Christian. As an adult he explicitly identified himself initially with the Greek and later with the Bulgarian nation. In the later decades of his life, he seemed to have been inclined to adhere to some form of vague local particularism, though apparently continuing to perceive himself as a Bulgarian. Given this evolution, it is understandable that Părličev’s national identity grew into a sensitive issue in the framework of discussions about the existence of Macedonian nation between Bulgarian and Macedonian (literary) historians...
  14. Раймонд Детрез, Григор Пърличев и билингвизмът и диглосията на Балканите. Билингвизъм, транснационални явления и транснационални перспективи в Академичен Кръг по Сравнително Литературознание, (АКСЛИТ/CALIC/ACCL).
  15. Пърличев, Григор. "Автобиография" (in Bulgarian). p. 59. Retrieved September 20, 2022.
  16. Loring M. Danforth (1997) The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World; Princeton University Press, p. 62, ISBN 0691043566.
  17. Tchavdar Marinov, In Defense of the Native Tongue: The Standardization of the Macedonian Language and the Bulgarian-Macedonian Linguistic Controversies. In: Entangled Histories of the Balkans - Volume One, pp: 419–487, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004250765_010
  18. Lindstedt, Jouko (2012). When in the Balkans, do as the Romans do – or why the present is the wrong key to the pas (PDF). p. 117.
  19. Slavica Gandensia, Issues: 33–34; Rijksuniversiteit te Gent. Department of Slavonic Philology, 2006, p. 48.
  20. Rumen Daskalov; Tchavdar Marinov (2013). Entangled Histories of the Balkans - Volume One. p. 171. ISBN 9789004250765.
  21. Harvard Slavic Studies, Harvard University. Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University Press, 1953, p. 369.
  22. Raymond Detrez, The Temptation of National Identity: The Case of Grigor Părličev In: Shoreless Bridges, Pages: 51–63, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789042030213_006

Further reading
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Grigor Parlichev.

Parlichev's Autobiography
  • 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).

Biographies
  • Parlichev, Kiril. Към характеристика на Григор С. Пърличев (Towards a Characteristic of Grigor S. Parlichev), Macedonian Review 4, book 2, p. 99 (1928). (in Bulgarian)
  • Matov, Dimitar. Гр. С. Пърличев. Книжовно биографически чертици (Gr. S. Parlichev: A Literary and Biographical Outline), Balgarski Pregled, book 4-5 (1895). (in Bulgarian)

Historical context
  • 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)
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