Fund Nikolay Donchev
Nikolay Donchev
He was born in Sofia on October 29, 1898. He studied in the towns of Karlovo and Plovdiv, but completed his secondary education in Sofia in 1917. From 1919 to 1921 he worked as teacher in the villages of Dolna Studena and Dve Mogili. At that time his first collection of poems entitled "Burning Steppes" (1919) was published in Rousse. In 1920-1921 he took a course in technical subjects at the Art Academy in Sofia. From 1922 to 1926 he studied Slavic Philology at Sofia University.
In 1927 he published his second poem under the title "Harvester", and in 1934 published "Foreign Influences in Bulgarian Literature" in French and with a foreword by the French academic Marcel Brion.
In parallel with his creative activity Nikolay Donchev is an active journalist as well. As a student he worked in the daily press and mainly in the French-language newspapers. He goes through all stages of the journalistic profession. He is the editor of the weekly La Parole bulgare and Vita Bulgara (1936-43). From 1929 he began collaborating with the Paris weekly Les Nouvelles littéraires. Later he collaborated on a number of French, Italian and Belgian publications, where he published articles, reviews and reviews on Bulgarian literature.
He has translated novels, short stories and essays in the Bulgarian language by André Moreau, Jacques de Lacretel, François Moriac, Stefan Zweig and others.
In 1937 he was awarded by the French Government with the Academic Palms for his activities in the field of cultural exchange between France and Bulgaria. In 1939 he was awarded a medal by the French Academy for his book Etudes Bulgares.
Nikolay Donchev died in Sofia on January 1, 1988.
At the end of 2009, the heirs of Nikolay Donchev Jacqueline Doncheva and Sylvia Wagenstein donated to the NBU his archive, which contained documents from his creative activity, correspondence, photographic materials and books.
There are several variants of autobiographical texts, composed by Nikolay Donchev in Bulgarian and French. There are also his personal documents, proving his affiliation with various professional or cultural organizations and associations and documents related to his professional realization and his achievements as a literary figure.
The documents related to the creative activity of Nikolay Donchev are presented by manuscripts of articles, reviews and publications for Bulgarian, Italian and French editions, manuscripts of literary and memoir studies, biographical notes for Bulgarian, French and Italian authors.
Letters to Nikolay Donchev from representatives of Bulgarian culture and art have been preserved. Nearly 450 letters and greeting cards of 120 writers from Italy are stored at the University Archive of NBU. No less are the French correspondents of Nikolay Donchev. Here are the letters from the publishers and the editorial boards of newspapers and magazines in which Donchev has collaborated, from organizations, associations and foundations, from French writers and literary figures.
The printed materials have also been carefully collected by Nikolay Donchev over the years. Clippings and individual prints of dozens of his publications in Bulgarian, French and Italian periodicals have been preserved.
The University Archive also holds a part of the writer's library - his authors and translation books, books by Bulgarian writers and literary critics with dedications for Donchev, as well as monographs with gift inscriptions from French and Italian authors.