Peyu Yavorov (January 1 1878 – October 29 1914)

Peyu Kracholov was born on January 1 1878 in the provincial town of Chirpan. At the age of sixteen, he was forced by his father to abandon his studies and take up work as a telegraph operator. It was in the post offices that Yavorov started to write the sombre, romantic symbolist poetry for which he became famous. Changing his name to Yavorov because it sounded more earthy ( Yavor means "sycamore tree"), he was instantly received into Sofia's literary world. A star while still in his twenties, Yavorov nevertheless yearned for more than the salon-bound cultural life of the capital and threw himself into the struggle to free Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire. His other great passion was writing love poetry to the two women with whom he had obsessive affairs. The first was Mina Todorova, teenage sister of teh writer Petko Todorov. Despite being an ardent admirer of Yavorov's writings, Todorov was horrified by the idea of having a penniless revolutionary poet as a son-in-law. Banned from seeing her, Yavorov wrote Mina love letters in verse. Mina died of tuberculosis in 1910, and it was at her graveside in Paris that Yavorov struck up a friendship with the next object of his affections, Lora Karavelova. The daughter of former Prime Minister Petko Karavelov, Lora was one of Sofia's most modern, emancipated women, and she and Yavorov soon became the city's favourite intellectual couple. They married almost immediately, but Lora found Yavorov - already wed to Macedonia and his own writing - a distant, difficult companion. By early 1913 Lora was convinced that Yavorov was having an affair with Dora Konova, the fiance of a friend. They argued, and Lora threatened to shoot herself. Whether intentionally or not, the gun went off. Yavorov was tried for her murder - and speedily acquitted, despite the popular feeling that he was the guilty party. Abandoned by his friends and living in extreme poverty, Yavorov then turned a gun on himself, but at the first attempt lost only his eyesight. A few months later, on October 29 1914, at his second attempt, he succeeded in taking his life.