24
GEORGES PAPAZOFF
G EORGES PAPAZOFF was born in Bulgaria. His
family, one of the oldest in the country, is covered with
glory; and legends which form part of Bulgarian
folklore have grown up around its more prominent
members. Georges as a boy had little liking for school
life. He had hardly read Robinson Crusoe before he imitated
him—and this in the heart of winter, on an island in a frozen
lake, and for background the virgin forests of the Balkans. He
lived on wild plums which he found beneath the covering of
snow. This bucolic episode lasted as long as a box of matches;
he came home barefoot like the son of a prophet. He began
work on a farm, spending his vacations at the lycee, where his
parents thought they should send him—as was proper for
respectable merchants of a little provincial town. He was their
favourite child. When of age he became a comitadji, taking
advantage of this venture to increase the probabilities of love.
Nevertheless, the shoemaker’s trade attracted him; and then,
after publishing several articles on Russian art, he did not hesi
tate to fight a duel with the director of the State Bank who
frequented the house of Papazoff’s mistress. He felt himself
insulted, but in reality it was the financier who laid prior claims
on this woman with her eyes as soft as those of a sleeping bird.
The Sofia prefect of police classed the incident by exclaiming,
“Vive la’amour.” Papazoff went into penance, accompanied by
some book of Dostoevsky and a good Mauser—selecting as the
scene of his exploits the independent theatre of Macedonia.
Later he picked himself the profession of architect, which ended
in disaster by his constructing a hangar for Zeppelins at Sofia
which was carried off by some fatherless wind. This was evi
dence to him that he was destined for a subtler kind of architec
ture and thus he became what we usually call a painter. His
painting is like the man. We will never know whether his
painting is done to explain his temperament or whether some
pure germ of painting seized his body to find there its incarna
tion. The bey Billouk, a great friend of his father, summons
him to Constantinople each time the needs of nature become
importunate. In the “Intran” some time back, there was an
advertisement: “Loft to rent (if possible in the Quartier Mont
parnasse). Address Papazoff, 28 rue Vavin.”
Tr. by Kenneth Burke.
MARX LOEBE