Topping a grey pillar in the courtyard of Bansko’s Holy Trinity Church is a bust of Peyo Yavorov (1878-1914), twentieth-century Bulgaria’s most charismatic poet. Provincial post-office clerk Yavorov was catapulted to literary fame in the early 1900s when Sofia’s literary circles discovered his lyrical verse and declared him a genius. As well as writing the kind of soppy love poetry that is still quoted by sensitive handkerchief-clutching students, Yavorov was also a revolutionary idealist, volunteering to fight with anti-Ottoman freedom fighters who operated in the mountains around Bansko. It was with such a group of guerrillas that Yavorov entered Bansko during the First Balkan War of 1912, liberating the town from the Ottoman Empire and reuniting it with Bulgaria.
Yavorov’s position in Bulgaria’s romantic-literary pantheon is enhanced by the tragic circumstances in which he took his own life. Enraged by his repeated dalliances with both revolutionary politics and other women, Yavorov’s wife Lora shot herself on November 29 1913. A remorseful Yavorov took the same gun, shot himself in the head, but survived. Hounded by Lora’s family and friends, however, Yavorov shot himself again a year later, this time with rather more success.  [...]

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