Mara Belcheva

Mara Belcheva (in bulgarian: Мара Иванова Белчева) (8 September 1868 – 16 March 1937) was a Bulgarian poet.

Life Mara Belcheva was born on September the 8th, 1968, in Sevlievo, Bulgaria. Her father was a leader of the April uprising against the Ottoman Empire.

In 1896, Mara Belcheva went back to Vienna to study philology.

In 1903 she began a relationship with poet Pencho Slaveykov which lasted until his death in 1912.

During the Balkan War in 1913, she served as a teacher and nurse. After a stay in Geneva, she returned to Bulgaria, where she dedicated herself to writing, publishing, and translation.

She lived in Sofia until her death on March 16, 1937.

The confessional tone of her early poems gradually evolved into a reflection on eternal human questions. The poetess evoked Christian virtues, drawing strength from them, with the thought of God becoming a central theme in her works. Her poetry is characterized by deep morality, a calm, dreamy, and nostalgic sense of love, and a quest for harmony in existence.

Belcheva also served as editor of The Selected Works of Pencho Slaveykov (1923). Belcheva is the second named woman to appear on Bulgarian paper currency. A street in Sofia, in the Triouguelnika-Nadezhda neighborhood, is named after Mara Belcheva.