Bulgarian literature has not been a great attention arrester in the West, least of all in the English-speaking world. In this paper I wish to offer two short case studies of the appropriation of Bulgarian writers in England and Germany, embedded in a broader survey of the relevant contexts and trends. Chronologically, my focus is on the first half of the twentieth century, a time when Bulgaria's contacts with the West did not face the impediments that were so typical of the time after 1944. The first part of this paper centres on Pencho Slaveĭkov; the second, and longer part, concentrates on Iordan Iovkov. Particularly in Iovkov's case, I will be concerned to examine the ideological parameters of this appropriation, revealing a picture of enhanced German interest in Iovkov from a perspective and in a political direction he could not have predicted. Finally, I draw some conclusions that pertain to the topic of this book.

A look at the bibliography of the translations of Bulgarian literature abroad compiled by Veselin Traĭkov – still the most valuable research tool, but published, unfortunately, in a print run of onl y 710 copies – yields a common pattern of appropriation in the early stages. The first translations would invariably be those of folklore material. This is true of translations into Slavonic languages (the earliest one being a 1823 translation of a Bulgarian folksong into Czech), as well as translations into English, French and German.