Primitive point of view, or How the sparrows see us

Margarita Slavova

The paper presents one of the well-known modern Bulgarian writers, Yordan Radichkov, and his book We, the Sparrows, translated into many languages, including English. Ingeniously merging ‘naïve’ ideas about the unknown and invoking Nature via the biologically conditioned activities of the sparrows (a collective image), the author places human existence in relation to Nature in a way that allows us to view the first as a mirror-image to the second. This ‘double optics’ achieves a miraculous effect. The personification transforms the animal world into a grotesque reflection of the human world, while the human is observed, felt, and analyzed through a ‘primitive’ mind. This gives Radichkov’s zoo fantasy fiction a deep ethical and philosophical charge that makes it suitable not only for children but for readers of all ages.

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