Marin A. Lazarov - Bio
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Marin A. Lazarov
Marin A. Lazarov (amata) was born 63 years ago - on 24 April 1961. During his life he wrote more than 1000 poems. I hope no one will argue with me that Marin's poems are the best that gave the world Bulgarian poetry at the end of XX century and the beginning of XXI century. I want to write about the worldview, theological essence of his work.
The main mood of Marin Lazarov's poetic texts - anxiety colours everything he undertakes to write and speak about. The easiest way to explain it is the historical situation, the social disintegration, the traces of which were particularly clear in the mid-1980s. Lazarov is indeed historical! In some of his poems he accurately describes the late communist absurdity. In some of his poems, he shows its genesis. Clearly contrasts the state-Bulgarian, as something evil but active, and ethnic-Bulgarian, as light but passive. Bulgaria, the poet believes, has been literally raped by the communists, who appear in his poems as caricatured half-humans.
The unnatural duality of the social vertical (with the "evil communists" on top and the "honest, good" Bulgarian people at the bottom) creates a discord in the social horizontal. The result is what the poet called "temporary edelweisses", a situation in which there is no longer a "great disgrace" of Bulgarian culture, but many individuals worthy of love and capable of love.
Lazarov looks intently into the very living root of the Bulgarian ethnos that the communists failed to strangle. The poet's nationalism is touching, he is ready to love his countrymen. In connection with this hidden Bulgaria Marin sees the meaning of any life and his poetic craft.
The image of the Angel is very important for Marin: man, like a grain, must be ground, turned into dough and then into bread, with which all - near and far - will be satiated. The ultimate goal is an ideal human community.
A sense of this eschatological perspective is constantly present in Lazarov, but precisely as a vague, unreflected intuition: "The history of Bulgaria is full of unbearable vicissitudes and tolerable miracles."
But the inescapable anxiety of Marin's poems is rooted not only in the experience of the surrounding social reality, but also in the comprehension of the original, deep structure of the psychic world of the individual.
In some texts, the break with the childhood perception of life is acutely experienced. For example, the poem "The Tramp" turns into a song of a depressed person, unable to share the naive human joy. Of course, in this poem there is also a longing for a bygone world.
It is as if Marin peeks through a peephole at a reality that is already alien to him, and then plunges back into the hated reality... The main message, however, is different: no matter how beautiful the illusion of childhood is, there comes a moment when the soul "wakes up". This awakening both torments and makes a person human.
For Marin Lazarov, mental discord is a disease... but a disease that testifies to the vitality and creative activity of the soul ("Oh, how I wish I could walk the streets with girls, turning my pockets inside out, smiling at the beggar, showing him their holes, counting clouds, naming them, until my neck goes numb.").
Marin takes this thought to the extreme, comparing such a state to the soul's stay in hell. But this "hell" is not a punishment for sin, but a point of "zero reference" for the beginning of the conscious (and creative) process. Therefore, the focus of poetic attention is the contradictory, realising its doom, striving for something more than man is in his initial givenness. On this path, the poet experiences both joyful ("The white starry upper room - / A dreamy eternal kingdom./ What you have wished for will come true./ It means that you did not dream in vain.") and deadly and hopeless moments: "The bloody collapse / Cannot be shaken with the palms of your hands./ This is the role of an idiot./ But who will allow him to play it / In a reasonable world!".
The poet has always tried to find the lost harmony, or rather to find something new, surpassing both the unity with himself of a child's soul and the painful bifurcation of an adult: "I remembered the old joys of freedom,/ I fainted after steep turns/ And began to realise,/ That I don't want to live again".
The seven circles of hell, the seven steps of the natural sonority, the seven strings of the soul - all these are all denotations of everyday reality, not only Bulgarian, but a universal, existential deadlock, filled with longing and hopelessness. "The Eighth Circle" is a breakthrough into superhuman existence.
In the poetry of Marin Lazarov there are quite a lot of allusions to the concepts of Orthodox theology. However, the status of the supreme reality in his worldview is not always certain. On the one hand, it is there ("Saying goodbye to someone who was close to our souls,/ We are approaching the thresholds of death./ But death does not come with a scythe when summoned/ Or maybe we hurried to say goodbye, in the whirlwind?"), it (death) can even be addressed prayerfully ("Those who have gone astray at the cold crossroads,/ These wanderers, chosen once,/ Will be caught up by an angel in a bodiless essence/ "Isn't it harder for you to die twice?").
On the other hand, Lazarov writes much more insistently about the impersonal and inaccessible for understanding fate, about the inevitability and repetitiveness of everything that happens.
Marin tries to live and perceive the hardships of life as something filled with meaning, coming from God. But his inner, invisible to all of us, depression returns...
Marin Angel in this movement is very reminiscent of the ancient Stoic, who also gazed into the divine impersonality, trying to discern the Face, accepting the blows of meaningless fate as if they had meaning. Just like Seneca, the poet denied the necessity of premature, groundless, impulsive departure from life ("My cross is a sign of action, to lay down my head/ For dying early/ For living very gloriously" by Seneca.
But one thing is poetic reflection. Another is the circumstances of place and time.
Until now, periodically approaching depression (these attacks are eloquently spoken about, to the delight of not all, his prosaic texts) could be localised with the help of poetry, in which the share of self-condemnation is great, the desire to convince oneself to wait, not to do drastic things.
Once, during a telephone conversation, Marin told me that he could no longer write poetry... that he could not even read it. I didn't question him - it wouldn't have been friendly.
Most likely, the fact is that for the last eleven (2013-2024) years he had lived under such an inhuman strain of human strength, feelings and nerves that his exhaustion could not help but set in. He gave too much and too quickly to all of us. His window to God was opened...
I.I.G. (New York) 20.4.2024
Përgatiti dhe dergoi për botim Sherife Allko
