Dear Janos,
Your birthday is a wonderful occasion for me to express my deepest gratitude to you for what I have learned from you: the objective approach towards the sources, the conviction that we should not impose present-day understandings and ambitions on the past, the love with which one could work with medieval witnesses. When I am teaching (at the University of Sofia ), I always remember -- as a model -- your fatherly attitudes towards your students: attitudes of respect, love, and demand.
I still remember the question you asked me during the defense of my dissertation, a question concerning one of the important – in my view -- aspects of my argument, a question which made me happy that I had written this dissertation.
It was just ten years ago when you invited Adelina and me to participate in a session at the Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo (this experience encouraged me to contribute later to other international conferences) and when you supported our idea to spend two months in Columbus (the time between two conferences, one in Clermont and one in Kalamazoo) working with the materials of the Hilandar Research Library and the Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies, Ohio State University. You contacted the Director of the Center, Dr. Predrag Matejic, recommended us and we were invited there and offered research grants. The research done there and the discussions with our colleagues (Dr. Matejic, M.-A. Johnson, Prof. Charles Gribble, Dr. Ljubomira Parpulova-Gribble) opened new horizons for me in the sphere of medieval Slavonic written tradition and inspired new ideas and approaches. Now I am again at this center and research library at OSU, with a Fulbright grant for three months. Two years ago I realized that I could not pursue further my projects, one on Baptism in the Slavonic Middle Ages, and another on the reception of commentaries on the Song of Songs in medieval South Slavonic milieus, without consulting the numerous and invaluable resources, both manuscripts on microform and secondary literature on the Middle Ages from all over the world, kept in the HRL and RCMSS. My work here, as I expected, proves to be very rewarding.
Thank you very much for your unreserved support and encouragement!
BoNdi s’’drav’’! Na m’’nogaja leta!
I am sending to you 4 pictures from March 2009: 1. Margaret, her daughter Ivana, Dr. Lyubomira Parpulova-Gribble, and Dr. Predrag Matejic in our tour in the renovated building of the Main Library of Ohio State University: the room where the microfilms of the medieval Slavonic manuscripts will be kept after the renovation is finished this summer; 2. Dr. Lybomira Parpulova-Gribble, a student at OSU, and Margaret looking at the facsimile edition of a Byzantine scroll with the Book of Josua (Hilandar Research Library, OSU); 3. Margaret after the talk she gave at Bowling Green State University ; 4. Margaret’s daughter Ivana on our way to the Cloisters, New Your (Ivana studies Physics at Princeton University but she shares her mother's interest in the Middle Ages).
Margaret Dmitrova
