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"Royal
Marko", the hero of Bulgarian epic, painted by the contemporary
Italian artist David Baffetto.
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Revoked in
an imaginary past, epic heroes are nevertheless called in present times
by the perfomance of singers, bearers of an obscure and important message
whose interpreter and audience feel the importance while knowing that they
cannot exhaust its meaning. Bulgarian, like Serbian land, offers an exceptional
field for understanding this refined game of memorizing and actualization.
Its aeds, bards, village rhapsodes or masters in narration, blind beggars
or reciters of verses on fairs have been practising this skillfull excercice
for centuries, or even millenaries (...). Moreover, the Second World War,
the irruption and subsequent fall of communist regimes, the Bosnian war
and the resulting unceasing civil conflicts, the demonstrations and dramatic
confrontations of entire populations with foreign armies and policies have
revitalized the conditions in which aeds and rhapsodes of the past sang
their epic pieces. Epic expression that Parry (Parry Milman, Lord Albert,
Serbocroation Heroic Songs, Cambridge Mass., Belgrade, 1954) considered
out of use in the 30's in Yugoslavia, was actually still in practice until
the 70's in some Bulgarian villages of the Pirine. Completely out of common
use in the 90's in Bulgaria, it was well known by old people in its oral
form and as a narrative genre. And above all, it was pecrfectly mastered
by a few holders of the original arts of oral expression, musical accompaniment
and song. So, it is thanks to Todor Todorov's advice (the author of a book
in Bulgarian on blind singers and beggars in Bulgaria) and after a long
searching in Bansko and Brednitza in the Pirine and, more especially, in
Paniceri in the district of Plovdiv, that I could collect some marvellous
pieces of Bulgarian epic poetry. 
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