Dimitar Voev's Poetry in Petar Kanev's Translations in English - Poems Vanity and The Egg

Dimitar Voev (1965 - 1992) - 2 Poems - Translated by Petar D. Kanev
Dr. Petar Kanev - author of the book "The Dimitar Voev Phenomenon. Transformation of the End of the World.", which is to be published by "Paradox" in 2024, with the assistance of the National Culture Fund.
May 21, 2024 marks the 59th anniversary of the birth of Dimitar Voev. And on May 30, 2024, it will be 37 years since the writing of his "program" poem "New Generation Forever" - a kind of watershed - a transition to his subsequent stunning creativity on his way to transformation into a phenomenon that entered the "cultural temple" uninvited during his lifetime - and especially: "beyond death".
In the pages of the "Unread" collection, the reader has the opportunity to immerse himself in the inimitable poetic world of one of the brightest representatives of the "alternative culture" in Bulgaria. And the alternative that Dimitar Voev embodied in his work and in his apparently short life has already passed the "test of time" and continues to be relevant even after the end of the 20th century, perhaps because it is essentially "beyond time". It stands for:
- painful truth as an alternative to lying;
- radical honesty as an alternative to hypocrisy and amoralism;
- the unrestrained imagination as an alternative to narrow-mindedness;
- the personal position as an alternative to the collective one;
- personal dreams (dreams and nightmares) as an alternative to "greenhouse life";
- sarcastic to the point of absurd humor as an alternative to "throne stupidity";
- suffering in the soul as an alternative to soullessness and spiritlessness.
Contrary to superficial opinions, Dimitar Voev is not and has never aspired to be a "subcultural artist". The cultural alternative that he stands for and represents is Culture itself as an alternative to simplicity. Although associated with legendary scandals and "informal", as he matured he sought to achieve more and more "serious" classical perfection in his art and as much publicity as possible in his appearances - concerts, festivals, interviews, recording in " Balkanton', videos on TV. The watershed of change in his aspirations for self-expression was also directly stated on May 30, 1987 in his "program" poem "New Generation Forever": the goal is "to enter the cultural temple"; and at that to enter there not alone:
…
I've waited so long
five, six centuries.
I'm coming with you.
Hands up everyone!
Kneeling, standing, walking,
crying, real, flying.
Let's all do it together
a big one
to enter the temple of culture.
So holding hands together,
we start howling
like a herd of hyenas
which remained:
Always!
Always!
…
(Dimitar Voev)
The purpose of the event "Unread: the Dimitar Voev phenomenon" is to focus attention on the "unknown" and "unrecognized" dimensions of a significant and unique creator of symbols, who himself became a symbol "beyond his time" and a cultural phenomenon of the most - the new Bulgarian history.
Photography - Neli Nedeva-Voeva