The Diversity of Register of the Other in the Work of Iordan Radichkov

Abstract

Discovering and communicating with the other ensure a better self-discovery, by understanding the other, the individual understands himself better. In Iordan Radichkov’s work we observe identity and alterity in their pure variants as well as in connection and interaction. In the first case, the ego represents the inflexible human type, cloistered in the patriarchal culture paradigm, expressing the archetype in eternal repetition, venerating a system of values consecrated by millennial experience and continuing to lead a life as his ancestors have led, refusing to notice that the world around is changing. Everything that surpasses this universe is perceived as strange and is ignored, considering that whoever moves away from the roots betrays and loses his integrity. It is believed that modernity, which aspires to plurality and imposes new values, including the mutation from „ego" to „the other", from local to European and universal consciousness, has as a consequence the fracturing of identity and leads to the crisis of thinking and of values. For Radichkov, ramifications of the opposition „identity - alterity" are the relations: „villager - townsman", „peasant - intellectual", „child - adult", „Bulgarian - foreigner" etc. There is an other that can be discovered in oneself, alterity as a product of the interaction between the world of the living and that of the spirits, mediators that feed the belief in the reality of other forms of existence, yet another attempt to humanize the unknown. This is the other ego, the secret/mystical and inexplicable in the human being. At the same time, the Bulgarian writer is convinced that no matter how comfortable the monologic existence is, the individual must overcome it, including through acceptance, communication and collaboration with the other.