L'Affaire Džem et Moi, Anne Comnène de Vera Mutafčieva : de l'Histoire-héros à l'Histoire-prétexte

Abstract

Two Novels by Mutafčieva The Džem Affair and I, Anna Comnena : from History as a Hero to History as a Pretext A renown writer and historian in Bulgaria, Vera Mutafčieva became the first in 1966 to save not just the historic novel but the novel in general from the rut narrowly traced by the socialist realism and the purely descriptive narration which altogether was characteristic of the Bulgarian novel since its origins. In 1991, she was also the first to publish a valuable novel just after the change of regime in Bulgaria. In a way one could say that, from History as a hero to History as a pretext,The Džem Affair and I, Anna Comnena mark out the history of the Bulgarian novel during almost half a century, that is from 1944 to 1991. Many common points connect the two works: an omnipresent game with History, whose borders are abolished due to a continuous dialogue between past and present, the dead and the living; a polyphonic narration, a non-linear temporality and the fact that these two works obtain a particularly sharp meaning in relation to the context in which they appear. At the same time they are very different novels : with the first one, it is mainly a meditation upon History, the relationship between the individual and History, that the historian Vera Mutafčieva delivers. History is very present, in the speech of ail narrators (History even becoming a judge in its own court as staged through the work) even to the point of establishing a heroic status. In the second book, the most feminine that has yet been written in Bulgaria (a novel written by a woman, narrated by women, and whose main characters are women), it is rather a reflection on political power and the temptation that it exerts on the intellectuals, on the creation and the role of the intellectuals in a society, than a accreditation on motherhood, education, conjugal love, etc. Stretching throughout an emblematic journey, in particular that of a Bulgarian writer, these two works mark out in a certain way the trials and tribulations if not the avatars of socialist realism in Bulgaria.