The year 2006 marks the 210th anniversary since the death of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns. In this sense, the celebration organized in St. St. Cyril and Methodius National Library on January 19 was both well timed and a testimony to the acknowledgment this poet has gained in Bulgaria, said Mr. Stewart Ian, Director of the British Council in Sofia, in his speech at the opening of the exhibition dedicated to this anniversary and the 70th anniversary of the death of Hristo Kovachevsky, one of the best Bulgarian translators of Burns.

The exhibition “The Familiar and Unfamiliar Hristo Kovachevsky” and Robert Burns' celebration, organized in conjunction with St. Kliment Ohridski University Press and A-3 Publishing House, were opened by the director of the National Library Prof. Boriana Hristova. The creative path of Hristo Kovachevsky, who did not live to see his translation of Burns published, was discussed by the art expert Prof. Ivan Marazov, who called the translator “the best pen and the most distinguished figure in the Bulgarian arts”. He shared some of his memories about him and highlighted that the works displayed in the exhibition were just a tiny part of his all-embracing work. The exposition consisted of three sections: early works, personal archives including unpublished books, and photographic material. We also had the chance to see his studies on world famous figures like Henry Moore, Stefan Zweig, etc. As author of The Madonna in the West European Painting (1991) and The Old Testament in West European Painting, his name figures in the catalogues of Alpone Fine Arts Collection.

Following the opening of the exhibition, there was a presentation of Robert Burns' book The Jolly Beggars translated by Hristo Kovachevsky, a joint edition of St. Kliment Ohridski University Library and A-3 Publishing House, richly illustrated by Georgi Lipovanski.

Mr. Stewart Ian spoke about the intricate life and creative path of the poet, who in a rather distant past – the second half of the 18th c., asserted the identity and right of every nation and every cultural community to create art in their own language and dialect. The Director of the British Council in Sofia read Burns' poems in the original Scottish dialect. Next, the poet and playwright Dimiter Hristov read Kovachevsky's translation of the same poems.

This parallel reading of Burns' poems – in Scottish Lallans, spoken in northwest Europe, and in Bulgarian, spoken in the southeastern part of the continent – was also a peculiar triumph of Robert Burns' ideas about the preservation of the identity of every culture and apt symbolism for the celebration of his anniversary.

A similar appreciation of Robert Burns' humane position is expressed in an interview for the Sud Deutsche Zeitung given by the Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, President-in-Office of the European Union since January 1, 2006. In his reply to a question about the future development of United Europe, he asserted the right to identity of each community, saying, “In Europe there are over 300 languages and over 500 dialects. Each of these languages constitutes an identity, a world of its own. This is my Europe… Our European power rests on this collective knowledge of various identities.”

Over two centuries ago Burns wrote in South Scots, creating poetry which people got to like, love and sing in their songs. One of the greatest Scottish poets is the son of a farmer, being called a “ploughman poet” and “people's poet”. He masters the English literary language almost perfectly, but creates magnificent poetry about life, love and humour, born and written in the vernacular of Lowland Scotland.

Robert Burns was born in 1759 in the village of Alloway, Ayrshire. In 1785, in the village of Mauchline, he started work on his cantata The Jolly Beggars, initially entitled Love and Liberty. Because of the abundance of words and expressions of the vernacular and the dialect it was written in, the author did not live to see his poem printed. Shortly after his death, the poem was released as a title in Glasgow in 1799. Some of his songs are printed in the collection The Merry Muses of Caledonia.

Robert Burns is well familiar to the Bulgarian readership, mainly from the translations by another noted translator of his, Vladimir Svintila, who translated the poems published in 1967 under the general title Songs and Poems. This book goes through several editions in Bulgarian. The latest book containing works by Burns, entitled Burns the Knight, came out on the Bulgarian market in 2004.

The Jolly Beggars (initially called Love and Liberty) is a new encounter with the great poet. The superb translation into Bulgarian is just another piece of evidence attesting that the language diversity does not pose an insurmountable barrier to the correct perception of talented belles-lettres, when the translator has the gift, knowledge and erudition of Hristo Kovachevsky.