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Greek literature is scarcely known in Bulgaria and it is not easy to find a publisher to take a risk with unknown authors, even though they may be award-winning or “cresting a wave” in Greece, even translated into some major languages, as was, for example, the case with Rhea Galanaki when I translated her first novel The Life of Ismail Ferik Pasha. The book, which came out in 1998, concerns itself with dual identity. It is the story of a Greek recruited into the Ottoman imperial system who rises to the highest rank in the entourage of Mohammed Ali, Khedive of Egypt. The issues are about dual identity, Christian-Muslim, Greek-Ottoman, Western-Oriental, traditionality-modernity, the Ottoman Empire confronting modernity, the role of the Western Powers. Much work and persistence is necessary after completing the translation to make a book by a modern Greek author popular in Bulgaria. In fact, only new editions or re-editions of older translations of Cavafy, Seferis, Elytis, Kazantzakis and Ritsos would probably manage with no advertising. These are the four poets and the prose writer unconditionally accepted by Bulgarian readership as “great” authors; all others need presentations and advertising of their work to become known to an Bulgarian audience.

You have translated some of the poems most cherished by Greek readers. Which poems are closest to your emotions and what do you associate them with?

It is hardly a coincidence that Greece gave the world two Nobel Prize winners and they are both poets – Seferis and Elytis. And some of the most rivetting poems were written in Greek: from the Palatine Anthology to the universal Cavafy who had rarely left his native Alexandria, and poets such as Angelos Sikelianos, Yiannis Ritsos, Tassos Livaditis, Takis Sinopoulos, Nikos Engonopoulos, Miltos Sahturis, Manolis Anagnostakis, Tassos Livaditis, modern ones too such as Mihalis Ganas, Yannis Kondos, Jenny Mastoraki, Katerina Angelaki-Rooke and many others.

Early in the twentieth century, Cavafy in his native Alexandria began to realize what his avant-garde stance would mean for poetry. His reflections on the fate of the artist, on the sacrifice a great poet is compelled to make, show how insightful and bitter his awareness is of the long and rough road he himself would have to travel until he gained recognition and claimed his individual voice in poetry.  "Full of mishaps" was the road Cavafy traversed to the symbolic meaning of Alexandria, where he was born, spent his whole life and died till it turned into a fortunate creative discovery for him making out of it a scale model of the world. This revelation came later, in his fifties, after a long, hard struggle with his own self and with this city. Only after a certain age does the poet realise the symbolic dimension the city offers to him and he becomes reconciled with its reality, utilising the diachronic tradition of Greek culture – antiquity, the Alexandrian epoch, the glory of Byzantium conceived as an interim step from ancient to the modern Greek world.

My favorite poem by Cavafy is “As Much As You Can”:

AS MUCH AS YOU CAN

And if you can't shape your life the way you want,

at least try as much as you can

not to degrade it

by too much contact with the world,

by too much activity and talk.

Try not to degrade it by dragging it along,

taking it around and exposing it so often

to the daily silliness

of social events and parties,

until it comes to seem a boring hanger-on.

(Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

Seferis’ poetry not only brings the readers the joy of overcoming of the triviality of everyday life and takes him on a journey to ancient myths with rich symbolism, but it will also show them the way to intuitively follow magic paths leading to a world of distant and free associations. To a certain extent one could say about his verse, as about Cavafy’s, that he is an "historical poet". Spiritually - and sometimes physically – he is present and creatively involved with the most significant events experienced by his country transforming them into poetry. With the gift to expand the spiritual meaning of an event of Greek history (the Asia Minor disaster, the Nazi occupation), using different characters, he is able to make out of it a universal event symbolising what has happened, happens or  might happen. The poet easily weaves his own intimate personal experiences into important historical events. The verse of the first Greek Nobel prize winners take us away from mundane, tedious life to remind us that we are additionally spiritual beings who want to "raise themselves a little higher."

Should a poet be a rebel to write good poetry?

It would be better if poets and intellectuals could change the world and they should play the role of social “adjusters” in all cases. I think there is room for them in the forefront and it is always appreciated when they play this role.

If not a rebel in the social sense – because not all poets are revolutionaries or in the vanguard of a social change, or leftists, some have conservative views – often the great poet displays an unorthodox attitude to the language, in usage of words, which marks the beginning of new and contemporary forms of expression. And this is also a kind of rebelliousness.