very
three hours the bells of the Rila Monastery mark the passage of
time, taking us to that unknown, which we call eternity. When
you measure time with the chime of bells, it assumes a slow,
biblical aspect, and man, living at the rapid pace of our
civilization, is eager to grasp the opportunity of spending a
day of leisure, This day is exceedingly long from sunrise to
sunset, full of cool mountain breezes, the rustle of deep
forests and the scent of moss and crane's-bill. The Rila
Monastery is a place for hermits and runaways. Man has always
tried to escape from something, and the absurdity of this
escape has led him to change his mode of life. If this had not
been so, the Rila Monastery would not have come into
being.
e
go to this monastery as tourists, out of curiosity, or because
we are thirsty for knowledge. But there everything changes. An
indistinct feeling of being alienated from the world, puts us
into contact with our own self, and with an intensified
sensibility we begin to discover things, which hardly
exist.
vening
sets in slowly here, with that indescribable chastity which we
discover when we are alone among nature. The mountain becomes
blue, on the verge between day and night the murals assume
sharp contours, and a few moments later this sharpness begins
to disappear. Footsteps resound along the wooden verandas of
the monastery, but they reach your ear as an echo from another
world. A door, banged shut, reminds you of dark passageways and
vast rooms once inhabited by rulers. The past and the present
are projected in your mind and you stand crucified between the
ages. The moon wrests itself with difficulty from the clouds
and its dead light sprays the mountain with silver dust.
Hrelyo's Tower which has stood solid and immobile for
centuries, looks petrified from the cold of its
walls.
he
Rila hermit St. John came to the inaccessible mountain to voice
his protest against medieval obscurantism. These are the facts,
but they are actually impulses, which are motivated by the
person. St. John of Rila was escaping from the world to
establish a distance between it and himself, to evaluate it
morally and make an epoch. He was a hermit, but as he was
conscious of the fact that he was making an epoch, he sought
for a material expression of his protest. Thus, in the 10th
century he laid the foundations of the monastery. St. John of
Rila was a myth and a yardstick by which consciences were
measured. He knew perfectly well that he could not make hermits
of all the people, but he must have understood the loftiness of
his self-denial which was to be adopted later by the Bulgarians
in their search for moral values, because people get
passionately attached not to something over which they have
power, but to what is beyond their possibilities. If this is a
complex, it is the same complex which urged Tsar Peter, who
ruled then in Tarnovo Bulgaria's medieval capital, to set out
to look for the strange hermit His dignity of ruler made him
stop high up on a peak: the two men, both proudly conscious of
their worth, stood separated by a few ridges, but neither made
a step towards the other.
t
any rate, the monastery was built at the site where the holy
man went into exile, and, in one form or another it lasted
through the ages to delight the visitor till today with its
imposing beauty.
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 rotosebast
Hrelyo was a Bulgarian feudal lord of the 14th
century. Next to the cross and the biblical texts, he
held the parchments written by copyists within the
boundaries of his little realm. The 14th century was
marked by invasions and by rapidly changing frontiers,
the downfall of despots and the ascent of new princes.
He had seized earthly power but had lost the mystic
forces which John of Rila possessed Next to the
hermit's grave, Hrelyo raised a tower whose
construction now nails us to the spot in dumb
contemplation. The rough-edged stones seem to be
outlining the sharp profile of the legendary despot.
He was an earthly feudal lord and realized that near
the fulcrum around which swung the arms of the
balances, the swinging was not fatal. Thus he settled
down between Tsar Ivan Alexander and Stefan Dushan.
Each one of the two reckoned on being able to use him
while he received and sent back gifts. But when the
game became too protracted, one night he was stifled
and all that was left of him was an Inscription on a
tombstone.
 his
tombstone now is in the monastery museum. On the
inscription the wife of the despot "is still sobbing
and weeping bitterly, steeped in sorrow." For us this
is history, but history would lose Its sense if
present-day reality did not bind us to it.
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relyo's
throne and the altar gates of his church are also museum
relics. The chisel of a great master carved the wood which was
destined to survive through the ages and come down to us.
nvasions
shook Bulgaria and the walls of the monastery crumbled to
ruins. The Rila Monastery rose from the ashes, collapsed in
ashes and was again rebuilt. The last restoration was
remarkable, because it marked the revival of the whole nation.
Only the liberated consciousness of a nation can turn a
construction project into an architectural wonder. Nothing can
be created without a spark in the mind, because it is an idea
that seeks to be materialized.
lexi
Rilets and Master Milenko looked for the points of support in
the terrain and their restless imagination came to that
indescribable irregular pentagon, the two-meter walls of which
have for a century end a half been enclosing the monastery
yard. This asymmetry was a rejection of geometrical proportions
which made the building an embodiment of the builder's
feelings.
omewhere
in the northern corner stood hidden the old monastery mill.
Master Alexi whimsically gave a utilitarian solution to the
architectural problem by avoiding a quadrangular
courtyard.
ngular
branches creep up on the outside of Hrelyo's Tower ending in
the upper part into tile vaults. The columns are also both
points of support for the battlements and a means of defense,
as well as an artistic solution of the play of light and
shadow. Master Alexi submitted to their suggestion, breaking
the rhythm of the wooden arcade to make it a part of the
ancient tower.
ilenko
was not so much of a mason as he was a poet. The big stone
stands as a part of the decoration, the small stones making up
its natural environment in which it ceases to be a stone.
Fortress walls, yes. but warm walls, predisposing and enticing
you to look beyond them and promising to turn the mystery into
a revelation The masons finished their job. Krustyo of Debur
arrived to crown the walls with wooden verandas, woodcarved
consoles and capitals. Functional demands were combined with
decorative principles. You pass along the verandas: the floor
boards squeak a little. You stand bewitched and then you cannot
get rid of the thought that all this fantastic world which was
built so long ago is also meant to give you pleasure. Water is
bubbling somewhere in the cobbled courtyard as in the first day
of creation. The old manuscripts and murals cannot be seen
neither can you see the little chapels, hidden in the verdure
of the mountain, but you are aware of their presence. You can
see them all in the exhibits at the museum: Tsar Ivan
Shishman's Charter with which he donated lands to the monastery
in the 14th century; Raphail's cross whose maker for 12 years
in succession carved Biblical scenes with a pin on a piece of
linden wood until he became blind; the simple-minded popular
life of St. John of Rila dating from the 12th century; the
saint's icon with the naive miniatures around it, the lines of
which show us the loss we incur by gaining
knowledge.
ut
the things which we carry away with us without having seen them
are still more. Among them is the feeling of having visited a
holy place where the material world is both existent and
non-existent. What a people have wrested away from their heart
impresses you without knowing how. When Bulgarians speak about
the Rila Monastery they are never unable to explain
everything.
or
me it is a summer storm which thundered out quits unexpectedly.
Rain came pouring down and the ravines collapsed into a
bottomless darkness. Lighting zigzagged over Mount Malyovitsa
and the rocky ragged peaks shook illuminated for a moment by
their blue electric light. Thunder shook the slab covered
passageways, the monastery stone walls seemed to crumble down
over ms and I do not know why I took it all as an
omen.
