The Bulgarian PEN Club: A Study in Interwar Cultural Internationalism

This article reconstructs the history of the Bulgarian section of the International PEN. The PEN (initially standing for Poet, Essayists and Novelists) remains a global society of writers, founded in London in 1921, with the intent of promoting international understanding and higher social standing for writers and literature. The Bulgarian PEN was formed in 1926 by authors seeking to break the international isolation of Bulgaria, a former member of the Central Powers. The International PEN enabled Bulgarian literati to engage as non-state agents in cultural diplomacy of their own and to expand their intellectual and professional networks. Based on a variety of sources, the article analyzes the hopes, real limitations, and actual achievements of the Bulgarian PEN until its closing in 1941. It uses the organization’s interwar history to examine the workings in eastern Europe of what Akira Iriye called “cultural internationalism.” It demonstrates that while global literary and cultural relations remained inherently unequal, as discussed by Pascale Casanova, the International PEN did afford opportunities to smaller nations and literatures to establish regional and global contacts and become integrated in continental literary networks.

The Apotheosis of a Global Guru

This chapter explores Yogananda’s growing status as a global spiritual authority and a divine figure. The chapter begins by placing Yogananda in the context of religious internationalism, a subset of interwar cultural internationalism driven by concerns for world peace. It details his use of East-West as a vehicle for a cosmopolitan spiritual vision. An extravagant worldwide journey in 1935-36 from California to England, the Continent, the Middle East, and ultimately to his home city of Calcutta solidified his reputation as a “global guru.” The chapter also explores his syncretism, through his lengthy exegesis of New Testament gospel narratives that transformed the story of Jesus and his teachings into a revelation of yogic truth that hinted at Yogananda’s own divine identity. But it was the 1946 Autobiography of a Yogi that firmly established Yogananda’s reputation as a guru to the world. An analysis of this text’s structural features reveals it to be a new scripture, designed to inculcate belief in the spiritual world Yogananda evoked and a hagiography of the yogi who wrote it.

Young Vietnamese Artists Association [Hội Họa Sĩ Trẻ Việt Nam]

The Young Vietnamese Artists Association (YVAA; 1966–75) was an avant-garde artist collective founded in Saigon in November 1966 in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam; 1954–75). Also referred to as the Society of Saigonese Young Artists, the majority of its members were under the age of thirty and were recent graduates of the National College of Fine Arts, Saigon (est. 1954) and the Fine Arts College of Hue (est. 1957). The YVAA’s mission was to foster a new direction for visual art in Vietnam that would better reflect the cultural internationalism and modernization of the era. While YVAA artists experimented with a variety of artistic styles, abstract works influenced by the modernist styles found in the School of Paris—including Lyrical Abstraction, Cubism, Fauvism, and Naive Art—were prevalent. Initiated by art collector Dr Nguyễn Tấn Hồng and artist Ngy Cao Uyên (YVAA’s founding president), the Association’s founding members were mainly painters and sculptors: Vị Ý, Cù Nguyễn, Âu Như Thụy, Nguyễn Trung, Trịnh Cung, Nguyên Khai, Hiếu Đệ, Nguyễn Phước, Mai Chửng, Đinh Cường, Nghiêu Đề, Nguyễn Lâm, Hồ Hữu Thủ, and Hồ Thành Đức. With frequent sponsorships from the Goethe Institut and the Alliance Française, the YVAA became a driving force behind Saigon’s arts scene.

A New Pacific Community

American liberal Protestants continued to promote cultural internationalism and racial understanding through the interwar period. In 1923, American missionaries who had worked to defend the civil liberties of Asian North Americans established the Institute of Pacific Relations through which they recruited powerful U.S. officials. During the 1928 Conference of World Missions, they challenged international mainline Christian associations to do more to challenge racial discrimination both in and outside their institutions. Taken together, these examples show how liberal Protestants adapted their social reform during a period characterized by American isolationism and immigrant exclusion.