Since my study is concerned with different aspects of the cultural mix in the Bulgarian territories, it should always be kept in mind that the situation is seen through the eyes of an Englishman, who, although trying quite successfully to put his observations on paper objectively, has some preconceptions, which reflect on his judgements. On the other hand, Barkley does not feel compelled to enter into an apology or to respond to the set of assertions regarding the body of Oriental knowledge which earlier and contemporary authorities had compiled. The civil engineer wishes to present the truth as he experiences it. For this purpose he uses a subjective approach, i.e., he puts himself and his psychological reaction to the foreground of the narrative.
The question of the authenticity of the unfamiliar reality represented arises when one considers that the author' s observations are filtered through the English cultural context that Barkley brought with him. Mary L. Pratt comments on this problem as follows:
Every travel account has this heteroglossic dimension; its knowledge comes not just out of a traveller's sensibility and powers of observation, but out of interaction and experience usually directed and managed by "travelees", who are working from their own understanding of their world and of what the Europeans are and ought to be doing. (Pratt, 135-6.)
A second filtration consists in the fact that the two books were written after Barkley' s return to England, where he, after distancing himself in space and in time from Bulgaria, puts his recollections on paper for his friends. The immediacy, which supposedly guarantees genuineness, is missing. This is reflected in the structural composition: chaotic flash-backs and reminiscences often break the chronological order of the narration; there is no subsequent recording of the events; and time gaps occur in the course of the relation. The next quotation gives an idea of how Barkley' s thoughts sometimes jump from subject to subject:
We treated the buffaloes with most respect, for, though the cow-catchers converted them into beef nine times out of ten, on the tenth they kicked us off the rails, and I have often had to spend all the night in a pestilential marsh, screw-jacking an engine back to the rails, with the smell of a smashed beast in place of a dinner.
Now that I am on the engine let me say a few words about my companions the driver and stoker, or rather of the former, for the stoker, if he keeps steady, attentive, and sober for a few years longer, will develop into a driver… (Barkley, 264.)
On the other hand, the centripetal force of memory starts -- in retrospection– to mould into a story some of the most striking moments of Barkley' s stay in Bulgaria -- recurrent topics are the ethnic face of the different nations (mostly the Turks) and their attitude toward the others. As a result the authentic experience is reconstructed through random recollections and thus probably deformed in the process of writing by the unreliability of human memory.
Barkley, Henry C., Between the Danube and the Black Sea or Five Years in Bulgaria (London: Murray, 1877).
Pratt, Mary L., Imperial Eyes. Travel, Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992).
Last modified 2001