The Themes of Woman-Mother and Affection-Love in the Poems of Bulgarian Poet Elisaveta Bagryana

Bagryana, without a doubt, is one of the most captivating, colorful, and gifted poets of Bulgarian literature. Her works are among the most feminine, emotional, and impressive poems that Bulgarian literature has ever known. Bagryana's artistic world is magnetic, fascinating, philosophical, and full of love and enthusiasm. A united and simultaneously contradictory artistic world, a poetic world that challenges the patriarchal order and is emotional and sincere at the same time, a world that is easy to interpret and sometimes compelling to understand. Her literary works are interwoven with the quest for freedom and equality, selfless nationalism and captivating romanticism, longing for women's rights and love, masculine courage, and an ardent love of life. Therefore, Bagryana is known as both a belligerent and libertarian writer of Bulgarian literature and a poet who was often questioned and criticized. Individual struggle and women's rights, social liberation and love of the homeland, ethnic folklore and patriotism, observations of international travels, quest for love, and passionate devotion to life were at the core of her literary works. Bagryana was born into this world to fight for and defend individual and social rights, glorify her homeland, worship love, and distribute her love, and she, to a great extent, succeeded in this. Her feminine kindness and sensitivity, unconditional love for her homeland, and a liberal feminist perspective from beyond her age were the most critical characteristics that distinguished Elisaveta Bagryana from other Bulgarian poets.

Throughout her life, the author faced the dilemmas of good/bad, beautiful/ugly, correct/wrong, and sin/good deed, and her life adventure, love, and works of art were full of similar dilemmas. In her poems, love was fascinating, innocent, sacred, deadly, destructive, and sinful. There was love in her works that burnt and destroyed everything in her path; it was hopeless and wild, shattering and wounding. Bagryana's poems were highly emotional, sincere, rebellious, revolutionary, romantic, passionate, and powerfully connected to traditions. Her portraits of women in poetry were full of contradictions - eternal and rebellious, sacred and loving, and marginated and sinful simultaneously. A woman full of life, love, freedom, and passion. Bagryana was a playwright and fairy tale writer, a newspaper and magazine publisher, a gifted children's writer, and an extraordinary poet. Therefore, she can be deemed a multi-professional, multi-talented, and versatile Bulgarian artist.

In the Balkan literary circles, Bagryana is recognized as both an innovative modern woman of Bulgarian literature and a headstrong revolutionary feminist writer who lived in two different centuries. Bagryana, a versatile writer, created a portrait of a writer who considered feudal attitudes and primitive social prejudices superfluous, refused to live in a male-dominated world, and supported the modernization and liberation of women throughout her long life. Therefore, Bagryana, who occupied a unique and privileged place in Bulgarian literature, stood out with her rebellious and strong woman image, stood for individual and social freedoms, and sought rights and justice.

Considered one of the most outstanding Bulgarian poets of the 20th century, Bagryana's literary works included lyrical love, slices of life, beautiful sensual beauty, natural objects, themes of freedom and youth, individual and social problems, love of the land and homeland, human portraits and political themes. Her poems were not salient with breathtaking words, metaphors, or wordplay. Her literary works are ordinary, melodic, simple, and everyday poems. Then, where is Bagryana's literary originality and artistic mastery concealed?

Her most excellent artistic qualities included narrating simple events in a simple and emotional language that suited the public and the reader. Bagryana was a great and gifted poet because she brought a new feminine perspective to Bulgarian literature by considering life and death, love and longing, nature, and the homeland through a woman's eyes. Fearless and sincere observations, a revolutionary and libertarian spirit, and a discourse that rebelled against social traditions were the other artistic qualities that made her an immortal poet. Freedom in ideas and discourse, freedom in desires and goals, freedom in the spiritual world and expressions, combined with the quest for individual rights and social justice, transformed into a destructive and transformative wave of freedom that challenged the taboos of the time, and all of these were felt very strongly in Bagryana's poems. As a result, her commitment to human rights and freedoms was another artistic quality that ranked Bagryana among the great Bulgarian poets.

Elisaveta Bagryana, one of the most applauded, extraordinary, and beloved representatives of Bulgarian literature, was an author who was not very well known and not much contended in our country. Therefore, the central aim of this study was to introduce the life story, artistic achievements, and world of Bulgarian poetry to Turkish readers and the scientific world. Another aim of this study was to investigate the themes of love/romance and woman/mother by examining the poetry world of Bagryana.

Document analysis was utilized as a data collection tool since the articles, scripts, newspaper articles, and scientific theses published about the Bulgarian author Elisaveta Bagryana were investigated in the study. "Document analysis involves the analysis of written materials containing information about the phenomenon or phenomena targeted for the study." The first section reviewed the scientific literature on Elisaveta Bagryana in depth. The academic articles, scripts, script sections, journals, and scientific theses written in Bulgarian, Russian, English, and Turkish were reviewed and analyzed in this context. Furthermore, the literature review also included the views and observations of Bulgarian literary experts on Bagryana and the articles in daily newspapers and magazines.