Pencho Slaveykov

Who was Pencho Slaveykov?

Pencho Petkov Slaveykov was a noted Bulgarian poet and one of the participants in the Misal circle. He was the youngest son of the writer Petko Slaveykov.

Born in Tryavna during the Bulgarian National Revival under Ottoman rule, Pencho was educated there as well as in Stara Zagora and Plovdiv. After an accident in January 1884, when at the age of eighteen he fell asleep on a bench while it was snowing and thus he fell ill with pneumonia, and despite lengthy treatment in Plovdiv, Sofia, Leipzig, Berlin and Paris, this illness left him with serious impairments — he could not walk without a cane, and he wrote and spoke with difficulties. He suffered from melancholic episodes, which forced him to find a cure in literature and to harden his will.

Slaveykov's works include poems and intimate lyrics. He collaborated with a number of magazines, which issued his works, and spent a part of his life in Leipzig studying philosophy, where he became familiar with German literature, thought and art.

After returning to Bulgaria in 1898, Slaveykov joined the Misal circle with a number of other noted writers, such as Krastyo Krastev, Petko Todorov and Peyo Yavorov. He became an assistant director and later director of the National Library of Bulgaria and a director of the Bulgarian National Theatre.