Monument of Hristo Smirnenski

A memorial to the great Bulgarian poet may be seen on Sofia Boulevard “Eulogi Georgiev,” just across from the Sofia High School of Construction, Architecture, and Geodesy “Hristo Botev.” The monument to Hristo Smirnski was created by the well-known Bulgarian sculptor and Art Academy instructor Prof. Dr.Sc.(Econ.) Marko Markov, whose works are characterized by their simplicity of form, solidity, and obvious proportions. His work is also represented by the St. Constantine and Helena monuments. Patriarch Evtimiy and Alexander Stamboliyski in Sofia, as well as a number of military monuments around the province.

Hristo Dimitrov Izmirliev was born in Kukush in 1898. After seeing the joys of the Balkans (1912) and the horrors of the Inter-Allied War (1913), he was obliged to seek work in the town of Varna. Sofia, where Hristo attended Technical School. Following in his brother’s footsteps, Thomas started to contribute on many amusing publications (“What is it”, “Bulgarian”, etc.) in 1915, and despite his youth, he became one of the most prominent poets. In 1917, he adopted the pen name Smirnski, with which he became well-known in Bulgarian literature. Years of hard labor and sorrow followed, set against the background of the start of World War I (1914-1918) – the poet worked as a reporter, cashier, concealer, carnetist, and so on, but never stopped composing. His first book, “Divergent Sighs in Verses and Prose,” was released in 1918, and he published hundreds of his works – poems, denigers, feiletons – in the pages of The Magazine in 1919. “Red Laughter” and “Workers’ Newspaper” are two titles. His collection “To Be a Day” was published in 1922. Tuberculosis, or “yellow visitor,” as he refers to it, kills Smirnski in 1923, at the age of 25.

Hristo Smirninsky is remembered in Bulgarian literature as an immensely creative artist who resents injustice in the world via his poetry. Empathy for the weak and rejected dominates his cycles “Winter Evenings” and “The Children of the City,” his ideology is expressed in poems such as “Red Squadrons” and “The Rebellion of Vesuvius,” and his “Tale of the Ladder” – a critique of sales and selfishness – is current and the subject of public debate today.