Mr. Kadiiski, how long are your relations with French culture?
If we should seek the roots, we must go back to my university years. I got my first “impressions” from France when I was 4 or 5 years old and they are connected with… a truck. I was born in the village of Yabalkovo, Kyustendil district. I spent my childhood by the river, playing and fishing. Road construction workers there dug up sand and transported it by a truck. I was very intrigued by this truck because I could not see its engine. All other trucks had an engine in the front but this one didn’t. One day the driver took me for a ride and I saw the engine was between the two seats. Now I know it was a Renault from the war years. So this was my first “encounter” with France.

Later in Kyustendil, I was already in school, my father brought a few books one day. On one of the covers there was a picture of a little girl carrying a large wooden bucket – it was Cosetta from Hugo’s “The Miserable”. The book impressed me strongly, it made me very sad. So I am reared with Hugo and his Tenardier, Gavroch, Cosetta. That was France for me at the time.

My next encounter with the French culture was Baudelaire translated by Georgi Mihailov. Poets and writers often learn a foreign language because they’ve fallen in love with an author. For me this author was Baudelaire and “the cursed”. I learned French language because of him.

My true contacts with France date back to 1979 when I first visited this country. Then I met Pierre Segers and Alain Bosquet , and later many other French writers and intellectuals. My acquaintances and contacts increased every year. Every year I took part in interesting poetic forums and biennials. In such contacts writers mutually enrich each other. Alain Bosquet liked my verses from the start and published a book of selected poems. Ever since everything I have written has been translated and published in France. Except my latest book, “Yorik’s Skull”, which came out recently.

It was my longstanding and numerous contacts with French writers, actors, artists and publishers that motivated me to apply for the position of director of the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Paris. And this was appreciated by the jury. I think I can be useful for Bulgarian culture. One of the first things I’ll do when I get there is to form a circle, or society, “French intellectuals – friends of Bulgarian culture”. Anyway I am on friendly terms with most of them.

You said you studied French because of Baudelaire. Was it because of him you later started translating French poetry?
One of my first translations were his “Flowers of Evil”. This was some thirty years ago. Then I went on with Rimbaud, MalarmÎ, Guillaume Appolinaire. I compiled the anthology “From Villon to Vian. It was sold out long ago and we should republish it. In Nov Zlatorog we are preparing its follow-up: “Modern French poetry from the second half of the 20th C”.

Your publishing house Nov Zlatorog publishes mainly French literature.
Yes, you may say so. But a lot of other things, too: children’s books, novels from different languages, Bulgarian authors. In the final reckoning, the best we’ve published is from French literature – essays, novels, classics and contemporary ones. The emblem of our house, however, is French poetry. Recently we published an anthology of French love lyrics, which was met with great interest. Any time now Guy Gofet’s book of essays about Verlaine will come out. In a separate volume we shall present also Pierre Oster, a wonderful modern poet. We’ll publish a book by Venus Kuri-Gata. Her magnificent novel “The Fiances from Cap Tenes” came out before a couple of weeks. We are planning a book of poetry by Jean Orizet. We have published him but now he has written some very interesting new works.

Does the name of your publishing house have anything to do with the once famous Zlatorog magazine?
Before November 10 I financed the publishing of a series called Nov Zlatorog. Right after November 10 I started a homonymous magazine which existed only two years. The idea was to demonstrate that alternative book publishing could be done in Bulgaria. As we know, the state had total control over it. In this sense, my self-financed publications showed a new opportunity. From the name of the series and the magazine came the name of the publishing house. It is also a homage to Vladimir Vasilev, who for many years published the original Zlatorog. I think that we haven’t disgraced his name with what we publish and the form we publish it in.

How did your poetic career go?
I started writing verses when I was in the university. I saved myself the adolescent emotions and tortures through which my coevals went through. I did not need to put down on paper my first love thrills. I think art is a compensatory activity. Poets write about what cannot happen to them in real life. So, partly in jest, partly in earnest, that is how I explain to myself the fact that I don’t have love lyrics. Maybe because I fulfilled my love in real life and did not need to compensate for it in poetry.

Sometime in my university years I stopped to thing about the meaning of life and I started writing. I know that no one will ever find out the truth about the things in life, but what matters is that we strive for it. In this striving one finds fulfillment, a chance to make one’s intellectual life worthwhile.

You have a longstanding artistic partnership with the painted Nikolay Panayotov. It started with your book “Before You Resurrect”, 1990, then we see it in the bibliophilic edition of Fata Morgana “Lamentations”, in the second French edition of “A Phoenix Feather and Other Verses”, down to your joint “Panayotov&Kadiiski” published by Colibri, and now this thick volume “Yorik’s Skull and Other Verses”. What do you think of the connection between poetry and the other arts?
Let me first say that Panayotov is not an illustrator of my poems, nor do I write for his pictures. Our works simply complement each other in a very curious way.

In the totalitarian so-called “creative” unions, everything was parceled out, perhaps to make it easier for monitoring and control. There was a section for poets, section for prose writers, for children’s poets, etc. And these sections were strictly outlined. Everybody understands that as there are no clear boundaries between the literary genres, so writers cannot be divided into this kind and that kind. Where do we place Hugo, for example? With the poets or the writers? And what about his book “The Art of Being a Grandfather”? Maybe in the children’s authors section. In this line of reasoning, I don’t think an artist can be confined to only one art. There are many great writers who are also wonderful painters (take Hugo again) or musicians, or musicians who are also artists. The arts overlap, they blend into one another. More often than not, one art is not enough for an artist to get full fulfillment. Picasso painted but he also made sculptures, and towards the end did ceramics. Artists cannot be fitted into a mould.

As director of the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Paris, I will try to give an equal start for all arts in which we have achievements. I will not focus on literature. What is more, to present literature abroad it has to be translated. Unfortunately, we don’t have many translated authors, classic or contemporary. This fact will be a hindrance. This does not concern only the lack of translations, but also the lack of aspirations in the Bulgarian writers to be translated. I’ll give you a recent example. Last year we had the opportunity to fill a whole issue of the journal “Poetry” with works by Bulgarian authors. The journal is edited by Michael Demol, director of MoliÏre Theatre and of the French House of Poetry. He had devoted one issue to Romania and proposed to me to make a Bulgarian one. To start with I invited a dozen poets. My astonishment was immense when most of them said they didn’t have anything in French. The most frequent reply was: “See that someone translates me”. Bulgarian literature is not popular in the world. But the fault lies not only with the state policy, but also with the authors themselves, with their disinterestedness their works to step outside the borders of Bulgaria.

You mentioned Hugo and his “Art of Being a Grandfather”. What can Kadiiski say about this art?
I know it very well. I have two daughters. The older is married and has two children.

In my latest book I have verses for my granddaughters. The elder is called Velika and the younger is Maria. They are named after their two grandmothers. We don’t take time with poetry but they are doing well by themselves – they draw, put puzzles together, play games. The elder is in second grade and is an excellent student. Recently the younger impressed me in a strange way. Her grandma and I gave her a children’s book with bears. She looked at them, she cannot read yet but she wants to, so she started making up a story like the tales that have been read to her. And I thought how important it is books to be read to children so they would pick up good Bulgarian language, not just watch television. I don’t have much time for this, nor their grandma who also works in the publishing house, but their mother Kremena does it. My younger daughter Veneta graduated in finance. She is employed in a good company. I intent to leave to her to finish some Nov Zlatorog titles, which are well underway, while I am in Paris.

Ekaterina Pavlova