A-NARRATIVE STRATEGY OF REPRESENTING THE TIME AND SPACE OF BULGARIAN SOCIALISM IN GEORGI GOSPODINOV’S COLLECTION INVISIBLE CRISES

Abstract

This article explores the a-narrative strategy of representing time and space in Georgi Gospodinov’s collection of essays and stories, Invisible Crises (2014). The study’s relevance stems from the growing scholarly interest in the poetics of trauma and the artistic conceptualization of the post-socialist experience in contemporary literature. The theoretical and methodological basis for the study is the concept of “a-narrativity”, proposed by Gospodinov himself in his work “In the Cracks of the Canon” to describe the eventless experience of the Bulgarian socialist era. The paper employs a comprehensive approach, combining cultural-historical, conceptual, narratological, and structural-semiotic methods of analysis. The article argues that the a-narrative strategy is realized in the collection through a deliberate deconstruction of traditional notions of time and space. The analysis reveals that time in the collection is deconstructed through the introduction of the categories of “unhappened time” and “sacred silence”, where chronological stagnation and intimate rituals replace historical eventfulness. Concurrently, space is transformed by being filled with “objectsimulacra” that substitute for real experience and mark the private sphere as a place of memory for what never was. Space is structured around the opposition between the hermetic, isolated “here” and the mythologized, unattainable “there,” which generates existential emptiness. The fragmented composition of the collection, in turn, reflects the fractured nature of consciousness and of the chronotope itself. The idea of European space as a “luxury of the preserved past” is outlined, contrasting with the Bulgarian space of ruptured tradition. The article concludes that Gospodinov’s collection is not a linear narrative of an era but a polyphonic archive of symptoms of an a-narrative chronotope. The author demonstrates that the reconstruction of a cohesive past is impossible, offering instead a mosaic of personal stories, objects, and silence. This makes his text a significant source for the study of post-socialist memory.