Атанас Натев – ретроспектива в настоящето

The article dwells on Atanas Natev’s lifetime contributive research on the essence of aesthetic experience. It explores some of his most well-known publications on the forms of interaction between literature and society, as well as the dynamics and multiplicity of the reception of a literary product across a national culture. In addition, the paper tries to limn the contours of authorial intention in the long 20th century, offering insights into the controversial paths of the development of Bulgarian fiction and critical theory. We should also like to propound a strategy for perusing the matter of aesthetic responsibility through a closer look at Nikolay Haytov in view of Mikhail Bakhtin’s polemical perception of the content, material, and form of a literary work as founded on living experience.