Ivan Vazov

Biography and major works

The exact date of Vazov's birth is disputed. His parents, Saba and Mincho Vazov, both had a lot of influence on the young poet.

After Ivan finished primary school in Sopot, Mincho sent him to Kalofer, appointing him assistant teacher. Having done his final exams in Kalofer, the young teacher returned to Sopot to help in his father's grocery. The following year his father sent him to Plovdiv to Naiden Gerov's school. There Vazov made his first steps as a poet.

He returned to Sopot only to leave for Oltenița in Romania, as his father wanted him to become an apprentice and study trade at his uncle's. Ivan Vazov showed no interest in the trade profession whatsoever. Instead he was immersed in literature. Soon he fled from his uncle's place and went to Brăila where he lived with the Bulgarian exiled revolutionaries and met Hristo Botev, a Bulgarian revolutionary and poet.

In 1874, he joined the struggle for his country's independence from the Ottoman Empire. He returned to Sopot in 1875, where he became a member of the local revolutionary committee. After the failure of the April Uprising of 1876, he had to flee the country, going back to Galaţi, where most of the surviving revolutionaries were exiled. There he was appointed a secretary of the committee.

Vazov was probably heavily influenced by Botev, who was the ideological leader of the Bulgarian revolutionary movement. He started writing his famous poems with Botev and some other Bulgarian emigrants in Romania. In 1876 he published his first work, Priaporetz and Gusla, followed by "Bulgaria's Sorrows" in 1877.

Bulgaria regained its independence in 1878 as a result of the Russo-Turkish War and Vazov wrote the famous Epic of the Forgotten. He became the editor of the political reviews Science and Dawn. He was, however, forced into exile once again, this time to Odesa, because of the persecution of the russophile political faction. Returning to Bulgaria with the help of his mother Saba Vazova, he started teaching. Vazov's next stay was in Svishtov, where he became a civil servant.

He moved to Sofia in 1889 where he started publishing the review Dennitsa.

Vazov's 1888 novel Under the Yoke, which depicts the Ottoman oppression of Bulgaria, is the most famous piece of classic Bulgarian literature and has been translated into over 30 languages.

Later in his life Vazov was a prominent and widely respected figure in the social and cultural life of newly independent Bulgaria. He died on September 22, 1921.