The book is the most important ethnographic and folklore work of the artist Ivan Enchev-Vidyu (1882-1936), published during his lifetime; The collected field material is important for the later study of folk culture in Dobrudja and for the past of this Bulgarian region in general.
Old and new monuments in Dobruja. Artistic-ethnographic study
Iv[an] Enchev-Vidyu "Old and new monuments in Dobruja. Artistic-ethnographic study". Printing house of S. M. Staykov, Sofia: 1918 // 104 p.
The book is the most important ethnographic and folklore work of the artist Ivan Enchev-Vidyu (1882-1936), published during his lifetime; The collected field material is important for the later study of folk culture in Dobrudja and for the past of this Bulgarian region in general; Good preservation, some of the cars are completely separated from the body of the book; Visible soiling on the cover and traces of greasy fingers in the lower right corner of the pages; The damage to this copy of the book in no way affects the text; Despite the book being printed more than a century ago using a printing technique that is quite different from today's, the images are perfectly legible.
All those who have the desire to learn about Ivan Enchev-Vidyu's activities will find that throughout his short life he never stops dealing with one thing or another - the boundaries of his interests seem to be beyond the horizon. But the promulgation of what he collected during his endless travels to all corners of the Bulgarian land was negligible while he was still alive. The reasons for this are not known for sure, but he seems to lose interest in every job he completes - there are people like that…
With particular force, everything said so far applies to his life's work - the collection of over 1519 detailed ink or watercolor drawings of folk crosses, mostly tombstones, from almost the entire Bulgarian land, collected in a total of 14 thick scrolls. In addition to wooden and stone tombstones, the artist also painted metal crosses - church utensils and from the fences of temples. The crosses in Ivan Enchev's collection are mostly dated from the end of the XNUMXth to the beginning of the XNUMXth century; the earlier dated crosses are mostly redrawn material from scientific publications.
The collection work on this colossal and comprehensive work took more than 20 years of the author's life, and the scrolls were purchased by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. For unknown reasons, the first of these scrolls has not yet been found in the Scientific Archives of the BAS. The remaining 13 scrolls contain a total of 1519 drawings, from which 939 examples of folk crosses were selected, published in 1994* and which made Ivan Enchev-Vidyu's name known not only among Bulgarian scientists, but also among the widest circle of readers.
"Old and new monuments in Dobruja. Artistic-ethnographic study" is a type of scientific works that were widely distributed in the second half of the 70th and the beginning of the 80th century; they collect ethnographic, folklore, archaeological, art history empirical field material from an ethnographic area; the purpose of these collections is to serve as a basis for later collecting work, as well as to provide an opportunity for first summary works on a given issue related to the study of antiquities. In Bulgarian historiography, this type of scientific works are the predecessors of the large collections of the XNUMXs and XNUMXs of the XNUMXth century, which are the work of large scientific teams; they not only collected a huge amount of field material, but also made summaries that reveal in depth the processes in Bulgarian folk culture, most often from the end of the XNUMXth century onwards. Such comprehensive compendiums were promulgated for practically all ethnographic fields, and the collection of the field material, the writing of the texts, and their publication were all financed by the state.
Today, the book "Old and New Monuments in Dobruja. Artistic-ethnographic study" by Ivan Enchev-Vidyu is available to readers in most major Bulgarian libraries. The specialized scientific library of the National History Museum acquired it in 1980 as a ransom.
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*Ivan Enchev-Vidyu "Bulgarian National Cross". Academic publishing house "Marin Drinov", Sofia: 1994 // 182 p.
Text: Ivan Petrinsky
