268 | Ruler Visibility, Modernity, and Ethnonationalism
salient meaning—the land of the Bulgars, Bulgaria. The new development in the
1850s was the trend toward the representation of Bulgaria as mother. It strength-
ened the notion of a blood connection among the Bulgars and opened the door
to a more intense emotional appeal and group mobilization via accompanying
images of Bulgaria’s personification, victimization, and sanctification. These
novel processes were linked to antagonistic images of the “other” used as com-
munal rallying points. For the Bulgars, this was the Greek-speaking Orthodox
Christian group. By the late 1850s, motherly metaphors of the land appeared in
polemic articles in Bulgar newspapers. At the popular level, song lyrics also re-
flected them. Consider the final item of an 1860 songbook:
For many peaceful years
To our Strong Master
Sing, oh, brothers little Bulgars
All of you, all of you in one voiceLong live, long live
Tsar Abdul Medzhid [sic] Sultan
May his high Divan
Shine like the sunMay he live and not spare himself in giving
In all of Bulgaria today
May the Black Sea, the Danube, the Sava
Jump to the skies
May all countries listen
May it be heard across the world
How our dear tsar father
Is loved and glorified
And you, God! Gentle God
Protect him with invisible shield
And under his feet
All his enemies defeat
And His shining Diadem
Preserve Glorious and honest
For as long as there are in the world
Sun, moon and stars....
May he overwhelm his enemies.
This poetic sequence, which reappeared in later songs, spans a spectrum of con-
ceptual motifs—the act of naming oneself and the “other,” the trope of love, and
the personification of Bulgaria, along with fatherly tsarist and cosmic (grand-