Obesvaneto na Vassil Levski (The Hanging of Vassil Levski)
Translated by Thomas Butler [www.hristobotev.com]
O my Mother, dear Motherland
Why weep you so mournfully, so plaintively?
And you, raven, cursed bird –
On whose grave croak you with such a dread?
Ah, I know – I know you’re weeping, Mother
Because you are a dismal slave,
Because your holy voice, Mother
Is a helpless voice – a voice in the wilderness.
Weep! There, near the edge of Sofia town
Stretches – I saw it – a dismal gallows
And one of your sons, Bulgaria
Hangs from it with a terrible power.
The raven croaks dreadfully, ominously
Dogs and wolves howl in the fields,
Old people pray to God with fervour
Women weep, children cry.
Winter croons its evil song,
Gales sweep thistle across the field
And cold and frost and hopeless weeping
Heap sorrow on your heart.
Translated by Magdalena Rahn
This piece, written in reaction to the Paris Commune of 1871, was often appropriated by Communist Party leaders during Bulgaria’s socialist period, in attempts to make Hristo Botev out as a proto-communist.
Simvol-veruyu na bulgarskata komouna (A Symbol of Faith of the Bulgarian Commune)
I believe in the one common strength
of the human race
of earthly sphere,
to create good. And with the united
communistic order of society,
saviour of every citizen
from centuries of sufferings and sorrow through brotherly labour,
freedom and equality.
And with luminous life-giving spirit of reason,
strengthening the hearts and souls
of all people for success
and triumph of communism
through revolution. And with the united
and undivided Fatherland of all men
and the common ownership of all property.
I profess a single luminous communism,
corrector of the defects of society.
I await the awakening of the people
and the future communistic order
of the whole world.
Galati, April 20 1871
From the poem Strannik (Wanderer)
First published in the newspaper Svoboda (Freedom), issue 43, April 8 1872
Hurry, wanderer, go soon
your natal home to attain,
in front of the house is danced the horo,
through the horo you will pass.
“Welcome,” they will say to you
children, grannies and maidens;
and the boys – they dance
in the wake of their girls’ wedding preparations.
There is nothing! Other lands
those, that you have sometime loved;
but you also have a lass:
a god you have not with stones beaten.
The old mother will come out
to greet her dear son,
will begin to cry, begin to wail:
“Awaited son from abroad!”...
