Double Female Presence among the “April” Poets (Lyrics by Vania Petkova and Nadia Kekhlibareva in the 1960s)

Abstract

This article focuses on the presence of two significant poetesses, Vania Petkova and Nadia Kekhlibareva, among the “April” generation of the late 1950s and 60s, who stand out amongst a background of male poets. This is especially significant considering the scarcity of women in the Bulgarian literary canon. The image of woman in the works of both poetesses is associated with a sensual, emotional, and even irrational beginning; the poetess fights for her space and the right to her own opinion, and she perceives the world mainly in accordance with her nature. The image of a woman in this poetry is often parallel to the image of a new hero of that time, although her image is associated with a sensual beginning and a woman brings beauty and freshness to drab everyday life. Nature, from the point of view of the lyrical heroine, corrects human relations (which are not devoid of lies and prejudices), cleanses and charges a person with new forces, and brings spontaneity. The lyrical heroine closes her existence with the life of the Motherland and declares that she breathes this in, thus strengthening her significance. Interestingly, doubts about faith in ideology and idols, new disappointments and the fears that time brings, as well as new aesthetic horizons appear in their poems despite them being characterized by the plot schematicity of ideological statements. Many poems are ahead of the general flow of literary works in terms of taste and poetic utterance, refreshing the literature and making it much more diverse, vital, and conditional. At the same time, they shift the emphasis to highlighting personal uniqueness and the need to fight for the preservation of one’s own identity in order to protect it from the unifying tendencies that threaten it.

Keywords

• bulgarian literature of the twentieth century
• “april” lyrics
• women’s poetry
• ideology
• vania petkova
• nadia kekhlibareva