Once There Was Spring
£15.00
Artistically and politically radical, Bulgarian poet, translator and activist Geo Milev (1895–1925) produced an astonishing array of work over the course of his short life and yet very little of it is readily available in English translation. Once There Was Spring contains new translations of all his major poems and prose poems, from the early Symbolist cycle ‘The Cruel Ring’ and First World War prose sequence ‘By Doiran Lake’ to his modernist reworking of Bulgarian folksongs ‘The Icons are Sleeping’ and his most famous work, the radical anarcho-communist epic ‘September’.
“A century after his death, Geo Milev’s poetry and prose has found in Tom Phillips a skilful translator and competent interpreter. In this selection the figure of a major Bulgarian poet looms as an important representative of European expressionism”– Alexander Shurbanov
“Anyone interested in symbolism, expressionism and modernism, as well as the fate of European intellectuals in the early twentieth century, will need this book.” – James Peake
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“A century after his death, Geo Milev’s poetry and prose has found in Tom Phillips a skilful translator and competent interpreter. In this selection the figure of a major Bulgarian poet looms as an important representative of European expressionism”– Alexander Shurbanov
“Anyone interested in symbolism, expressionism and modernism, as well as the fate of European intellectuals in the early twentieth century, will need this book.” – James Peake
March
Comrades, raise your heads
high and proudly on.
Our hearts beat in our chests –
chests of brass and iron.
Forward, forward
our blood – and fire and stars!
On to the struggle –
always the first –
be always first and fearless!
Flows through us headlong joy,
fiery lightning in our chests!
Our goals are vigour and youth
and we’ll be first to reach them!
Forward, forward
our blood – and fire and stars!
On to the struggle –
always the first –
be always first and fearless!
ISBN: 978-1905208524
Pages: 171
“A century after his death, Geo Milev’s poetry and prose has found in Tom Phillips a skilful translator and competent interpreter. In this selection the figure of a major Bulgarian poet looms as an important representative of European expressionism”– Alexander Shurbanov
“Anyone interested in symbolism, expressionism and modernism, as well as the fate of European intellectuals in the early twentieth century, will need this book.” – James Peake
“Tom Phillips’ decision to translate Milev in full is admirable and successful. An illuminating introduction persuasively makes the case for international significance […] I wished for an entire book again of his prose poems, fascinating thumbnails of frontline life and a valuable addition to our poetic knowledge of WW1. […] In a bitter irony Milev was silenced by exactly the kind of political erasure he had always opposed. This important book begins the rebellion against that silence for English readers.” – James Peake, writing in BODY
“one of the most striking qualities of Milev’s poetry is its ability to evoke those classical associations making it significantly different from much of the poetry that had been written in the England of World War I, that same conflict that embraced the world of the young Bulgarian writer.” – Ian Brinton. Read the full review at The High Window
Tom Phillips introduces excerpts from his translations of Geo Milev in Ars Poetica magazine.
Geo Milev was born near Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, in 1895. After studying in Sofia and Germany, he served with the Bulgarian army in the First World War and sustained a serious head injury that resulted in the loss of his right eye. On returning to Bulgaria, he embarked on a prolific literary career, publishing poetry, translations, theatre criticism and literary articles. Influenced both by expressionism and leftwing ideas, his work became increasingly radical, most notably in ‘September’, his response to the Bulgarian uprising against the 1923 coup d’etat. Milev was one of more than 400 innocent suspects executed without trial in the reprisals that followed the communist attack on Sofia’s St Nedelya Church in 1925.
