Geo Milev

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Geo Milev

Geo Milev (Bulgarian: Гео Милев) (January 15, 1895, Radnevo - after May 15, 1925, Sofia), born Georgi Kasabov Milev (Bulgarian: Георги Касабов Милев), was a Bulgarian poet and author. He studied in Sofia and later in Leipzig where he was introduced to the German expressionism. His university thesis was about Richard Dehmel. Since 1916 he fought in the First World War where he was severely injured; being cured in Berlin he started to collaborate with the magazine Aktion. Upon his return to the home country he started to publish a magazine named Везни (Scale) in Sofia which became a tribune of Bulgarian modernism. He worked as a translator, theatre reviewer, director and editor of anthologies. In 1922, he joined the Communist Party.

He was murdered in prison after being accused of taking part in the St Nedelya Church assault. His fate remained unknown, but later it was found out that after being sentenced to one year in prison and a financial punishment, he was taken for a "short interrogation" during which he was strangled the day after the verdict and then buried in a mass grave. His body was found when in the 1950s a mass grave with victims of 1925 was discovered during the construction of a dam. His body was identified due to the glass eye he was wearing after he lost an eye in World War I. He used to hide the lost eye by wearing a special haircut.

Self-portrait 1918

[edit] Works

His most famous poem is September published in the magazine Пламък (Flame) in 1924. It describes the brutal suppression of the Bulgarian uprising of September 1923 against the military coup d'etat of June 1923.

[edit] Selected bibliography

Жестокият пръстен (1920), The Cruel Ring
Експресионистично календарче за 1921 (1921), A Little Expressionist Calendar for the Year 1921
Панахида за поета П. К. Яворов (1922), The Commemoration Ceremony for the Poet P. K. Javorov
Иконите спят, (1922), The Icons Sleep