site.btaNational Museum of Bulgarian Literature Marks 159th Anniversary of Pencho Slaveykov’s Birth

The National Museum of Bulgarian Literature is organizing a literary evening entitled A Dream of Happiness at the Petko and Pencho Slaveykovi House Museum in Sofia. The event on the occasion of the 159th anniversary of the birth of Pencho Slaveykov will be held on April 24, the museum announced on Tuesday.

During the event, actor Stoyan Chobanov will perform excerpts from Pencho Slaveykov's letters. Literary researcher Katya Zografova will present Volume 5 of Pencho Slaveykov's collected works From Leipzig to Brunate. Zografova is the compiler and editor of the newest volume. Literary critic Professor Milena Kirova will speak about the book, personality, life and work of Pencho Slaveykov. The Director of the National Museum of Bulgarian Literature, poet Atanas Kapralov, will open the event, the museum announced.

A temporary exhibition with valuable items from the collection of the National Museum of Bulgarian Literature will be presented at the literary evening. Among them, the only manuscripts of the emblematic works Dream of Happiness and Bloody Song with Pencho Slaveykov’s notes and drawings.

The youngest son of poet and politician Petko Slaveykov was born in Tryavna, central Bulgaria, on the northern slopes of the Balkan range, on April 27, 1866. Against the backdrop of his noteworthy family history, Pencho Slaveykov built his emblematic presence in Bulgarian literary history. Along with his outstanding poetic talent, his powerful personality attracted scholars, writers, and painters under his influence. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, there was talk of the Slaveykov School, in the context of knowledge and the view of the world of Bulgarian and European art, the National Museum of Bulgarian Literature adds.

The National Museum of Bulgarian Literature, founded in 1976 with the task to search, collect, preserve, study, publish and display material and documentary monuments, related to the overall history of Bulgarian literature since the founding of the Bulgarian state to the present day, has a large literary archive. The literary House Museums in Sofia are branches of the National Museum, and those in towns outside the capital fall under its methodological guidance.