Илюзорната повърхност на водата в лириката на Атанас Далчев

One of the most erudite Bulgarian poets, critic, translator from Russian, French, Spanish, German and Italian, Atanas Dalchev introduced new techniques and new artistic functions of „object imagery“ in the 1920s. The metaphor of water is secondary in Dalchev‘s poetics. In his poetry, water does not give rise to contemplation as it does in the poetry of Pencho Slaveykov, nor does it take the reader into Yavor‘s nirvana. But water has symbolic functions in Dalchev’s poems as well. Can we find other meanings behind the illusory surface of Atanas Dalchev‘s water? Does the overall semantic picture of water conceal the illusion of the unfulfilled life of the poet according to his own rules? On closer inspection we can discern three images of the miraculous liquid: the first image symbolizes life, its fecundity, the immense joy of its full experience - the cool, pure, spring water, clear and joyful, shimmering in the poems „Unexpected Rain“, „Pan“, „Spring Night“, „Brook“; the second image represents the dull, meaningless existence in the poem „Collie“; and the last metaphor - of disappearance, of the end - it is the sad, dark water in the poems „Rain“, „The Doors“, „Murder“. These symbols of water will be examined in our study. The semantics of miraculous water begins with the image of clear, spring water from which „no one has yet drunk“ and ends with the sad, dark, suffering water that evokes a sense of anguish and suffering. The voice of water is a reflection of human feelings that prompt deep meditation on our existence.