A pilgrimage to the Nikos Kazantzakis Museum was made yesterday by Ms. Elena Koufova, granddaughter of Georgi Koufov, a respected Bulgarian translator of Kazantzakis' work into the Bulgarian language. Elena Koufova handed over to the Museum the translations of five novels by Nikos Kazantzakis that her grandfather translated. With great emotion, she conveyed to us how she came into contact with Kazantzakis' work through her grandfather's translation work.
Georgi Koufov (1923-2010) was a writer of Greek origin. His parents were merchants from Ioannina who in the 19th century moved to Plovdiv, Bulgaria, where the family's ancestral home remains to this day.
He came into contact with the thought of Kazantzakis in the 1950s and from 1960 he began to translate the works of Nikos Kazantzakis into Bulgarian. Until his death in 2010, he had completed the translation of seven works by Kazantzakis, namely: "Captain Michalis", "Zorba", "Christ Recrucified", "Report to Greco", "In the Palaces of Knossos", "God's Pauper" and "The Last Temptation".
In fact, perhaps it is a unique case of a translator of the work of Kazantzakis who carried out the translation work directly from Greek, alone without external collaborators, translating to perfection the special and colorful language of the author, wonderfully conveying the Cretan spirit and culture.
In 1998, Georgi Koufov was honored for his contribution to the spiritual rapprochement between Bulgarians and Greeks through literature, with the highest award "Golden Cross of the Order of Honor" by the President of Greece, Konstantinos Stephanopoulos. In Bulgaria, he is also highly regarded with the country's Ministry of Culture having awarded him the highest literary distinction, the Gold Medal of Saints Cyril and Methodius. Finally, George Koufov was the President of the Bulgarian Branch of the International Society of Friends of Kazantzakis.
We sincerely thank Ms. Elena Koufova for the kind gesture of donating the books that significantly enrich the Museum's Collections.
