I decided to try one of the few Veltman novels I hadn’t yet read, Райна, королевна Болгарская [Raina, princess of Bulgaria] — it didn’t sound too appealing, and in fact didn’t turn out to be very good, but it was short and eventful and taught me a fair amount of Balkan history, so it was worth it. The odd thing is how un-Veltmanlike it is — I think it’s the only one of his books I wouldn’t have guessed immediately was by him. It’s sort of a prequel to Светославич, вражий питомец [Svetoslavich, the devil’s foster-child] (see this 2013 LH post), which features Svetoslavich’s search for his father’s skull, which had been made into a drinking cup by the Pechenegs; this novel covers the last years of the life of his father Sviatoslav I and ends with his death at the hands of the Pechenegs. But it has none of the bizarreries and divagations of the earlier novel (and indeed everything else by Veltman) — it’s pretty much a straightforward Walter Scott imitation, fictionalizing the events described here and adding the obligatory romantic subplot involving the titular princess (I’m not sure whether Veltman invented her or plucked her out of some obscure chronicle). It appeared in Библиотека для чтения 59 (1843), and wasn’t published separately as a book — it seems to have sunk without trace in Russia, unsurprisingly. The interesting thing is that it became popular two decades later in Bulgaria when it was translated and turned into a play; the Bulgarians, then engaged in a long effort to gain independence from the Ottoman Empire with occasional help from Russia, were thrilled with this tale of their struggle against the Byzantine Empire almost a millennium earlier, also aided by the Russians (well, Rus).
The only interesting feature from a linguistic point of view consists of a few foreign words tossed in as spicy exotica, e.g. кула (Bulgarian кула ‘tower,’ from Ottoman Turkish قله [kulle]) and калугер ‘monk’ (cf. Macedonian калуѓер, from Greek καλόγερος) — on the latter, see this 2006 LH post featuring the rare English word caloyer.
How did the book teach you a lot of Balkan history if you can’t be “sure whether Veltman invented [the princess] or plucked her out of some obscure chronicle”? Did it provoke you to read a bunch of other and less fictional sources to fact-check the apparent history in the novel?
@hat
Here are two links:
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https://www.facebook.com/groups/2057025077866499/posts/4262524647316520/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuriy_Venelin
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The first is a Facebook post in Bulgarian discussing the book and the historical basis for Raina. The second is the English Wikipedia for Venelin, who published a 3-volume historical work in Russian which would have been known to Veltman.
How did the book teach you a lot of Balkan history if you can’t be “sure whether Veltman invented [the princess] or plucked her out of some obscure chronicle”?
Because everything but Raina was straightforward material from the chronicles, easily verifiable from other sources. When I read historical novels I accompany them with actual history, so I learn the history.
PP: Thanks!
Interesting that I can read Bulgarian so readily, only having to look up the occasional word. One such word is забравя ‘to forget,’ for which Wiktionary gives no etymology — anybody have any ideas?
I wonder whether this princess is where Shaw got the name for the major’s daughter in Arms and the Man.
LH: I consulted with several people as well as etymological dictionaries, and I’m still not sure what the -brav means in that instance.
Otherwise yeah, it was hugely popular as a play. The performance of the play is even referenced in novels when people are not familiar with the concept of clapping after the play (but some are, the others finding it distasteful)), played for laughs (in the novel).
@hat, v
I too thought the text was very readable, despite my lack of training in or exposure to the language. Re the “forget” word,
FYLOSC has izabrati “to choose, select”. Maybe forgetting is viewed as “deselection/removal by selection”
V sent me an image of the relevant section of Български етимологичен речник, 1 том (1971), which derives the word from боравя ‘to handle, to deal with, to work with; to make use of, to utilize’ while noting Miklosich’s opinion that it is a derivative of the ‘be’ verb (*bv-or-).