Man of action, poet and charismatic loner, Peyu Kracholov was born in the dusty provincial backwater of Chirpan. At the age of sixteen, he was forced by an unsympathetic father to abandon his studies and take up work as a telegraph operator. It was in the post offices of provincial towns like Sliven and Pomorie that the introverted 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, hung out with all the major writers of the day (including Vazov, who championed his work), and became editor of the top literary magazine Misâl . A star while still in his twenties, Yavorov nevertheless yearned for more than the salon-bound cultural life of the capital. Tiring of his youthful passion for socialism, he threw himself into the struggle to free Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire, fighting as a guerrilla in the mountains and writing a biography of the movement's leader, Gotse Delchev. The death of Delchev and the failure of the Ilinden Uprising in 1903 left Yavorov disillusioned, but he continued to serve as an unofficial ambassador for the Macedonian cause, and returned to the fray as a voyvoda (guerilla leader) in the Balkan Wars, liberating the Aegean town of Kavala from Ottoman rule in 1912.

Yavorov's other great passion was writing love poetry to the two women with whom he had obsessive affairs. The first was Mina Todorova, teenage daughter of Petko Todorov, a fellow-member of the Misâl circle. 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, offering them to Misâl for publication at the same time. 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 (and niece of the Bulgarian revolutionary Lyuben 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 (probably without reason) that Yavorov was having an affair with Dora Konova, the fiancée 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, at his second attempt, he succeeded in taking his life.