Happy International Women’s Day, dear girls!
On March 8, we celebrate the international recognition of women’s social, economic and political achievements. Here are some interesting facts about why and how we celebrate Women’s Day today:
- International Women’s Day was first celebrated on February 23, 1909 in the United States, initiated by the American Socialist Party as a result of protests to improve working conditions for women.
- The holiday originated during the socialist regime, but gradually entered the culture of many countries and its political coloration disappeared.
- At the forefront is the celebration of the right to vote, to education, to a personal choice of lifestyle and a partner with whom to share it, to an equal attitude in the workplace in social and economic terms.
- Leading for March 8 today is the attention to women—as ladies, wives, mothers, in all their specific social roles.
That is why today we congratulate you with the poem Everything by Blaga Dimitrova, exquisitely presented by the Bulgarian actress Teodora Duhovnikova within the Poets, a project of InterViewTo. Listen to the original, read it in English one more time after that: if we have only watched the Wonder Woman on a film, then the Woman who welcomes and sends everything, who is Everything, we meet around us and in ourselves every day. Happy holiday, dear girls—young and elder!
EVERYTHING
You have youth and beauty.
You’re a smile all over.
Even the trees like you
And embrace you with their shadows.
Your shoulder is rising
Like a new moon.
Then—like a full moon.
And until you look around—
You have no youth and no beauty.
What do you have left?You have a lover and tenderness.
You’rе a thrill all over.
You step on the star vault
With thin, ringing heels.
And under your footsteps one by one
The stars die out
Like trampled butts.
Until you hit the ground.
You have no lover and tenderness.
What do you have left?You have talent and will.
You’re a torch all over.
At night you shine sleeplessly,
looking in the dark wasteland
for something that
never, nowhere, no one…
Just to find it,
the torch goes out and fumes
and turns into brand.
You have no talent and will.
What do you have left?You have a child and joy.
You’re a worry all over.
You lead the future by the little hand,
you teach it to be obedient
and not run too far,
to be yours longer.
Until disease, war or love
snatches it from your hand,
or the endless path…
You have no child and no joy.
What do you have left?To have everything, to have nothing.
To be a cupped hand all over.
To give everything, to take nothing.
To wrap yourself chilly
in solitude as in a faded scarf,
repeat your mother on the doorstep,
to remember everything,
to welcome everything,
to send everything.Everything.
—Blaga Dimitrova (1969, Pirin Mountain, Bulgaria; transl. by Sylvia Borissova)
That’s all you have left.