Gospodinov started by reading from his two books, The Physics of Sorrow and Time Shelter, and briefly discussed the writing process. The two books deal with markedly different themes. The Physics of Sorrow attempts to capture the nature of the Bulgarian sorrow. Gospodinov describes the Bulgarian sorrow as an experience which combines the sorrow of things that did not happen, or places that Bulgarians could not visit despite the hope or longing for them, and the culture of silence, which he describes as a combination of the culture of fear during Communism and patriarchal culture. According to the author, sorrow is both personal and political, connected with the developments in one’s country.
Time Shelter, through the allegory of an Alzheimer’s clinic with rooms and floors which had encapsulated time in the decade that provided a “safe space” to each patient, explores the nature of trauma, nostalgia for a bygone area, and anxiety for the future in Europe. Gospodinov noted that memory loss inflicts not only the ability to recall events in the past but also the loss of the capacity to think about the future. This comment was made in reference to the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency. The author had started thinking about memory and nostalgia around 2014. Originally an innocent idea about exploring memory and nostalgia, the themes become more serious because of Brexit and the election of President Trump in 2016. The past, memory, and nostalgia had been weaponised. But it was an idealised version of the past combined with the anxiety of the future that had produced those two outcomes, according to Gospodinov.Paul Betts commended Gospodinov’s works and discussed Time Shelter. He had found the themes of the book quite interesting because it brought attention to the politics of building time shelters, which Betts found extremely important for European identity politics. He noted that the politicisation of nostalgia have been skillfully deployed by politicians throughout history. Nevertheless, according to Betts there has been a mass production of nostalgia and myth-making.
He further highlighted that while filmmakers and TV producers have been making mythic pasts, the producers of time shelters in the book are interior decorators – engaged creating (or reconstructing) the styles and aesthetics of past decades to provide safe spaces in the form of safe times for the patients. Thus, the interiors produced become the vehicles of identity.
Betts further noted that the book paints a picture in which different countries are engaged in promoting different decades of their national past. But he inquired why the author had focused on the national past as frame, rather than a regional, European, or international past. Betts then reacted to a phrase of the book, “…the past is my own country…the future is a foreign country…,” by suggesting that this feeling of anxiety about the future is prevalent because the present does not offer a shelter.
Marilena Anastasopoulou made broad comments on Gospodinov’s work by focusing on the main themes and the construction of stories. She noted that Gospodinov’s work navigating between past and present and address questions of history, memory, identity, sorrow, silence and paralysis. Of particular importance for Anastasopoulou are his attempts to show how memories of the past inform the politics of the present, and how memory and identity inform and construct each other.
Concerning the construction of stories, Anastasopoulou noted that the author discusses individual, family, collective, and cultural memory. She argued that Time Shelter is an impressive illustration of different levels and layers of memory, remembrance, and forgetfulness. Then she highlighted another important theme in the construction of the stories – namely the intergenerational transfer of memories and traumas. She argued that Gospodinov’s work focuses on the individual and collective past as sources of the formulation of the present. In Gospodinov’s work, the past is contagious, both lived and imagined, and the borders between past, present, and future are not clearly demarcated.
The discussion then moved from the panel to the audience. The questions put to Gospodinov by the audience ranged from the challenges to make his stories and experiences – which are steeped in Bulgaria – more universal to the uncertainty about the future of Europe and our contemporary traumas.
by Alban Bafa (ESC Research Assistant)
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