Bulgarian poet, belletrist, publicist, translator and cultural expert Vladimir Nikolov-Svintila is a remarkable phenomenon in Bulgaria's cultural life. Vladimir made a semantic association of his nickname Svintila with “light”. His talent helped him translate Robert Burns, Shakespeare sonnets, Bernard Shaw and other internationally acclaimed authors. Here is what Svintila said in his memoirs of 1978 preserved at the golden archives of the Bulgarian National Radio.

“I lived in Pancharevo residential district", Svintila recalls. "My house was built on a high hill and was literally touching the sky. Nightingales used to sing every night in the nearby lilac forest. I often worked in their accompaniment. The desk lamp used to throw light only on the white paper in front of me. I used to make up to eight to ten versions of a given song. In the warm summer nights I often swam in the small blue pond nearby. I lived the way environmentalists want to live nowadays. I worked twelve, fourteen or even sixteen hours a day. At night I was wandering under the pale moon and silently recited Burns's poems.”

Svintila's contribution to Bulgarian literature was acknowledged even by some of his opponents.

“Svintila had an important contribution to translation from foreign languages into Bulgarian. He delved tenaciously into various fields. His translations were not perfect, yet they were the best at that time. In other words, Svintila will remain part of the history of Bulgarian literature and culture. He was a great and very important man of letters”, Bulgarian writer and art critic Atanas Slavov admits in another recording kept at the BNR golden archives, although Slavov himself had a personal dispute with Vladimir Nikolov in the past.

Vladimir Svintila was born in 1926. He passed away in 1998. Svintila graduated from the Italian Language High School in Sofia, but also spoke Russian, French, German, Spanish and English. He was a fan of the western European culture during the socialist period. That is why he was chased by that regime and in 1949 was sent to Bogdanov Dol forced labor camp under false indictments on espionage. Later he was sent to Kutsian Camp. He left that camp in a very bad health condition. In 1952 he graduated the Sofia University St Kliment Ohrisdski majoring law. Later, he worked as an editor at Narodna Kultura newspaper. He was a contributor of Bulgarian and foreign printed media and wrote literary criticism and essays for them. He also wrote 20 books. Svintila was both ignored and praised, but he never integrated into the socialist system. Although he was an author of European dimension, he didn't place among the most popular Bulgarian authors either before November 10, 1989 (the start of democratic reforms in Bulgaria) , or after that date.

“Vladmir Svintila was not the only Bulgarian who did not manage to cover himself in glory. This was typical of the Bulgarian environment where many authors had their intellectual presence worldwide, but were not as highly recognized as authors in their own country as they were in other countries”, his student Yavor Ganchev, who used to communicate with Svintila a lot in the last years of Svintila's life, contends. "The society in other countries communicates more actively with the local intellectuals, whereas in Bulgaria active audience fails to prevail over intellectual life. In my view, this is due to the inertness of our society. ”

Those who read Svintila's books are astounded by the verbal opulence of the Bulgarian language. His journalism is full of philosophical immersion. He showed great knowledge in history and the psychology of the Bulgarian people. He accentuates on topics such as the need of the people to go back to their roots. He criticizes modern phenomena such as clientelism, fake morality, “the bad influence of the administration over the human spirit” and the struggle of the personalities for survival typical of the Bulgarian everyday life.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov