Biblical Villains and Historical Narratives in Modern Bulgarian Culture: From Secularised Figures to Postsecular Figurality

Abstract

The paper raises the question of the functioning of biblical tradition in terms of modernity by taking into consideration the case of Bulgarian culture, which represents a thought provoking encounter between the Western-European ideas and the local cultural patterns rooted in Eastern Orthodoxy. The research focus is on literary works on historical themes in which figures of the most popular biblical villains, i.e., Judas and Cain, are explicitly referred to. Two Bulgarian plays – The Last Supper of Deacon Levski (Последната вечеря на Дякона Левски, 1987) by Stefan Tsanev and Cain and the Magician (Каин и Магьосникът, 1972) by Kamen Zidarov – are interpreted as literary works that trigger and challenge the common presumption about of the role of the “Bulgarian” Judas’ and Cain’s in the national history. It is argued that they are subversive examples of “figure–fulfilment model of narrativity” (H. White) which goes beyond the notion of the secularized historical imagination, and as such – they point to biblical figurality as neither religious nor secular, but postsecular, i.e., rejecting the convention of the secular–religious relationship. It is suggested that in terms of local cultures of memory the biblical tradition potentially offers multiply re(con)figurations, as it opens to a network of synchronically and diachronically changing meanings – both those that are typically classified as “religious” and “secular”.