Ventseslav Konstantinov

Ventseslav Konstantinov (born September 14, 1940 in Sofia) is a Bulgarian writer, aphorist and translator of German and English literature.

Konstantinov was born in Sofia, the son of a music professor. He graduated in Germanic studies and philosophy and wrote a thesis on influences of German literary expressionism on the Bulgarian poetry between the wars. Since 1987 he has been teaching translation of German-language poetry at the University of Sofia. 1991–1992, Konstantinov was in Berlin as grantee of the Berliner Künstlerprogram (the Berlin Artistic Program) of the Deutsche Akademische Austaushdienst DAAD (the German Academic Exchange Service). He had lectures and conference participations in Berlin, Leipzig, Marburg, Vienna, Prague, Bern, Zurich and Lausanne. Konstantinov spent 1993–1994 at SUNY Geneseo, New York. He published poems and articles also made radio-contributions on German, Austrian, Swiss and Bulgarian literature, as well essays on Hans Sachs, Goethe, Schiller, Hölderlin, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Nikolaus Lenau, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, Stefan Zweig, Ödön von Horváth, Elias Canetti, Max Frisch, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Heinrich Böll, Alfred Andersch, Martin Walser, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Christoph Meckel. His book translations amount to 70 volumes. Konstantinov lives in Sofia and in the Rhodope Mountains village Solishta as a freelance writer and translator.