The ‘Nothing Lasts!’ Motif in Stoyan Mihaylovski’s Sonnets

Abstract

The paper focuses on the 1895 collection ‘Philosophical and Satirical Sonnets’ by Stoyan Mihaylovski (1856–1927), a prominent Bulgarian poet and public figure. This collection allows researchers to study how the sonnet, a form of literary expression typically associated with Western Europe, settles in and makes itself noticeable in a creative path containing a vast number of East European features. The analysis begins with the sonnet ‘Nothing Lasts!’, which affirms the idea that human efforts, strivings and ideals are, after all, worthless. While this idea, among others in Mihaylovski’s collection, is consistent with ancient philosophical traditions, associated with Horace and his poem ‘Exegi monumentum’, the Bulgarian poet deals with it in an opposite vein: it makes no sense to erect a verbal monument untouched by a human hand. From here the analysis moves on to French Renaissance poet Pierre de Ronsard (1524–1585), as the ‘carpe diem’ motif (another reference to Horace), as well as acedia (a form of sadness or grief, characteristic of the Renaissance sonnet after Petrarch) are present in both Ronsard and Mihaylovski’s works. Acedia is discussed in connection with the two previously mentioned Horace motifs. The analysis leads to the conclusion that both poets search for a way out of acedia in their lyrical worlds. While Ronsard opts for the horizon of love and personal happiness here and now, Mihaylovski reaches out for a wider and more universal philosophical horizon, which excludes the possibility of such happiness. This is why Mihaylovski’s collection leans towards an escape from acedia that presents the ego dissolving in an unconscious existence, unaffected by the vicissitudes of fate and the triumph of destruction in the course of world history.