New Sale Preorder

The Melted Statue of Voltaire in Paris – Eternal in Verse.

Characteristics

Published	13 March 2026
Cover design	Иво Рафаилов
Edition	Paperback
Language	bulgarian
Language	french
Translator	Биляна Михайлова, Брис Пьоти
Dimensions	12/19
ISBN	978-619-02-1769-5
Pages	116

Latchézar Stantchev’s poem Snow in Paris immortalizes the symbol of the Paris Commune of 1871 – the bronze statue Voltaire Seated (Voltaire assis, 1781) by Jean-Antoine Houdon – which was melted down by the occupiers in 1942. Auguste Rodin once exclaimed: “What a masterpiece!” A marble copy of the 1781 statue now decorates the Comédie-Française (see Latchézar’s dream on page 112). In her foreword, Nadezhda Stoyanova evokes that the poet “perceives existence in its radiant clarity and innocent openness.” She also highlights: “…connoisseurs of Bulgarian literature can detect echoes of Latchézar Stantchev’s elegant poetics in the quiet and delicate voices of Bulgarian lyric poets of the 1940s (for example, in the works of Alexander Vutimski), and later in the 1970s and 1980s (in the works of Boris Hristov, Ivan Tsanev, Ivan Metodiev, and others).” Valeri Petrov, at the opening of the literary exhibition Latchézar – The Poet of the Smile in 2004, said: “I remember how much we loved him… I remember how we knew his poems by heart and how all of us were influenced… And most of all Vutimski (1919–1943) … We who remember can still see to this day the influence of Latchézar Stantchev’s verse…” The poet Radoy Ralin, as the compiler in 1993 of Lachezar’s poetry collection Boulevards in Love, highlighted the poem Rain drops are folling from the award-winning (1939).

Latchézar Stantchev (1908–1992), the first to bear the name Latchézar and a native of the spa town of Varshets, received the debut prize of the Union of Bulgarian Writers at the age of 22 for his first poetry collection Silent Days (1930), in which, according to Petar Dinekov, “the crystal clarity of the verse is combined with purity of image and mood.” This was followed by Spring on the Boulevard (1933), People on the Eaves (1935), and Earth Under the Sun (1939), which received the Grand Annual Poetry Prize and was praised by the renowned critic Yordan Badev. Stantchev studied Romance (French) philology at Sofia University and specialized at the Sorbonne between 1937 and 1939. The only Bulgarian poet of the 1930s who, during his stay in Paris, entered into dialogue with the Surrealists and with Paul Éluard, Latchézar Stantchev continued this exchange into the 1950s, encouraging the notable French edition of Hristo Botev’s poetry in Éluard’s translation-adaptation (1952). Svetlozar Igov, literary editor of Latchézar Stantchev’s poetry collection Raindrop (2018), notes that the poem You Are Returning reveals an inner dialogue between Stantchev and the poetics of Atanas Dalchev, in which “boundless disappointments still weigh heavily,” and to which Stantchev opposes “love and hopefulness in life.” The love poem The Smile later gained wide popularity as a song composed by Mitko Shterev.

Latchézar Stantchev reads his poems in Bulgarian: https://youtu.be/l4yBBkS6Fxg