(1885 - 1960)

Nikolay Liliev (the penname of Nikolay Mihaylov Popivanov) was born in Stara Zagora. He went to the Svishtov School of Economics and then took up Literature at the University of Lozanne (1905-1906). Literary and personal friendships bound him to Dimcho Debelyanov, Vladimir Vasilev, Boyan Penev, and Dimitar Podvarzachov. In 1909 he left for Paris, where he studied Economics on a stipend from the Ministry of Trade, and he kept sending poems for Podvarzachov and Debelyanov to publish in the periodicals. Fourteen of them were included in the renowned Antologiya na balgarskata poeziya. Ot Vazova nasam [Anthology of Bulgarian poetry from Vazov to nowadays] edited by Podvarzachov and Debelyanov (1910). In 1914 he contributed his lyrics, translations and literary criticism to the five issues of the Zveno journal edited by Podvarzachov. At the beginning of 1920, he was editor and contributor to Vladimir Vasilev’s Zlatorog journal. Working on a historical bibliography of the Bulgarian industry through the centuries, Liliev spent the period 1921-1924 in Vienna and Munich and provided the foreign reports for the journal. He is the author of such books as Ptitsi v noshtta [Birds in the night] (1918, 1919) and Lunni petna [Moon spots] (1922), of the anthology Stihotvoreniya [Poems] (1931), and of the cycle Pri moreto [At the seaside] published in the Zlatorog journal. As a dramaturgist at the People’s Theatre (1924-1926 and after 1934), Liliev left a permanent trace in the culture of the Bulgarian theatre. For the sake of the repertoire he translated texts from classic and contemporary European drama: Shakespeare, Corneille, Metterlinck, Hugo von Hoffmannsthal, Hugo, Alexey Tolstoy, Ibsen, etc.

Liliev’s lyrics are representative of the aesthetic pursuits of Bulgarian symbolism.

English versions of Nikolay Liliev’s poems have been rendered by Peter Tempest, Vladimir Trendafilov, and Yavor Dimitrov among others.

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