Telemachia: the Contemporary Debate on The Myth of Odysseus

How does the most Odyssean Greek hero become a figure of the native in the Bulgarian version? Through the metaphor of Telemachia, the paper examines how post-1989 intellectuals have redefined the interplay between domestic and cosmopolitan tendencies in our national project. Their reflections on Toncho Zhechev’s The Myth of Odysseus are an attempt to deconstruct the ideological implications behind the returning Odysseus and thereby rethink the history of Bulgarian criticism since the time of late socialism. Boyan Manchev interprets Zhechev in terms of national exoticism, particular universality and idyllic discourse. Miglena Nikolchina adds a new conceptual framework, indicating the role of the post-structuralists of the 1980s and their turn to Antiquity. Boyko Penchev dwells on Zhechev’s autochthonous conservatism, where the genus, the ahistorical, and the organic are privileged at the expense of nation and history—an approach designed to undermine the official ideology during the 1970s. What captures my attention is the genealogy of cosmopolitan attitudes that these intellectuals propose as an alternative to Zhechev’s conservative utopia.