2023-11-17 09:41:40
196 years ago, on November 17, 1827, he was born in Veliko Tarnovo Petko Slaveikov. Ivan Vazov says about him: “A gifted writer, poet… Slaveykov carried like solid granite all the storms of a painful era and served as a trumpeter of the sighs and lamentations of an entire nation, carefully listening to his sweet and loud speech.”
Petko Slaveykov is an inexhaustible creator, born to change everything that aroused his interest. To begin with, he changed his own surname – Kazandzhiev – to Slaveikov, enchanted by the song of a nightingale. however, it is possible that he took the family name of his mother’s family, Buyuklievi, which in Turkish is Slaveikovi.
His desire to become enlightened led him in his early youth to the libraries of the monasteries, and then to Svishtov, where he learned Greek in order to be able to read world literature not translated into Bulgarian. Already when he was 17 years old, he became a teacher in Veliko Tarnovo, and then in other cities. In the town of Elena, she works in the first grade school, which she calls “Daskalolivnitsa”.
In 1864 he went to Constantinople, as he was invited to participate in the translation of the Bible. Under his leadership, the assembled team completed this work in 1871. But Petko Slaveykov did not rest in Constantinople. Thanks to the translation of the holy book, he established the literary Bulgarian language, his son Pencho Slaveykov wrote later.
Georgi Chapkenov’s sculpture of Petko Slaveyko and his son Pencho has been decorating the “Slaveykov” hall in the capital since 1998
In addition to the Bible translation, he is engaged in publishing as many as 8 newspapers and magazines, and 60 books. There he also wrote his famous poem about the unfortunate girl Gergana and her lover Nikola “The Spring of the White Leg”.
From Constantinople he went to Edirne to establish the first Bulgarian school in the city, and from there he returned to Stara Zagora. He participated in the April Uprising with his work and went to prison. During the Liberation War he accompanied Gen. Mikhail Skobelev was a witness to the Shipchinsky victory.
Along with the great work he left behind, Petko Slaveikov was actively involved in politics after the Liberation, becoming one of the leaders of the Liberal Party. In 1880 he was the chairman of the National Assembly, and when the party won the elections and Petko Karavelov formed a cabinet, Slaveykov was appointed once as Minister of Education and a second time as Minister of Internal Affairs.
Petko Slaveykov died on July 1, 1995 at the age of 67 in his home in Sofia, which was located on today’s Slaveykov Square.
Some of the proverbs collected by Petko Slaveikov:
In a bigger city, more mind.
In bigger water, bigger fish (taken).
Don’t throw a stone in thin mud.
Whatever dance you get into, that’s the game you’ll play.
In the village of the one-eyed blind, anyone becomes mayor.
I was looking for her, Grandpa Pope, she wasn’t there. “What about at home, are you asking?” “I didn’t ask you, Sal.”
Grandma saw the needle on the bowl, but she didn’t see the bowl.
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