Issue-1

1960 Book 1 Contents

Botev is a person in whose chest burns a Promethean fire, the fire of freedom. He is guided in life by great passions - he loves and hates strongly, he always keeps us in the world of inspired revolutionary ideas. And when he writes about love longing, about jealousy, and when he expresses some life anxiety, his thought goes beyond the boundaries of the narrowly personal. His spirit listens intently to sounds other than those that attract the soul of a person in love with himself. He is lured by visions other than those that disturb the ordinary person. We can say: what is awarded by history is dear to him, what attracts him is what he represents humanity with. And his poetry took Heights unsuspected before him.

N. Rozov. A strange thing! We have been arguing for an hour now, and I still cannot penetrate the essence of your "fictional thinking." D. Dame. Ask yourself - why? I know critics who handle ready-made formulas inherited from ancient philosophers, and cling to them like blind men cling to their staff. Therefore, any slightest touch on dogmas and traditional phrases throws them into bewilderment and anxiety. They begin to wonder: is there not a deviation from the dogmatic canon here, which is for them one of the seven deadly sins?

Our dramatic authors in a number of their works reflected the new man in the context of modern life, of the construction of socialism. Our dramaturgy on a modern theme contained a number of socio-psychological and socio-critical elements. Its main feature was the denial of the then capitalist reality, the affirmation of the new that was coming. These works outlined the rapid development of socialist realism from the initial period after September 9 to the present day.

In this article we will not talk about the different types of causes that can lead to a tragic outcome, we will not talk about the tragedy of man in his struggle with nature or in some private collisions (unrequited love, etc.). Here we are interested in the highest form of the tragic, which can be conditionally called historical-tragic. We use this term not in the sense of historical and factual reliability, but to indicate that form of the tragic (and in art) that springs from the real historical process as a product of this process. When we talk about the tragic here, we mean precisely this form of it.

Todor Pavlov belongs to those creative personalities who, with their fruitful activity, open up new horizons for scientific thought. That is why they attract and will attract the attention of both contemporaries and future generations, of all who strive to become related to the great creative individuality - who has seen truths, the knowledge of which enriches man, pushes him towards new quests, towards an ever greater tension of thought and of the will to master the laws of society and nature. The fascination of such people increases immeasurably when the penetrating thought is carried by a great human heart, when their scientific knowledge is combined with highly humane moral principles.

In the extensive activity that G. Bakalov develops for the popularization and establishment of Russian literature in our country, a particularly important place is occupied by the work of N. A. Nekrasov. The Marxist critic has known and loved the poet of Russian revolutionary democracy since early adolescence. He admires his highly ideological art, is inspired by his deep love for the people, by his passionate hatred for their enemies. Like Nekrasov, he values ​​in a literary work above all its ideological content - its connection with life, with the revolutionary ideals of the time.

The name of Hristo Botev became widely known in Russia in connection with the April Uprising. The Russian press in June-July 1876 repeatedly mentioned the name of Hristo Botev in numerous correspondences dedicated to the Bulgarian uprising as one of the prominent figures of the liberation movement in Bulgaria. Naturally, there were also significant exaggerations and inaccuracies in the newspaper reports, which are explained not only by ignorance, but also by the desire to present Bulgarian events to Russian society in a certain light. These newspaper notes are interesting insofar as they contain information about the revolutionary poet.

In the first years after the September 9th uprising, Radoj Ralin belonged to the youngest generation, he had not yet published a book, and some were already talking about his "style". But while the talent of the young poet was undeniable, what was called then, and later, his style was far from undeniable. Radoj Ralin's style was characterized by the deliberate focus on simple, "ordinary" things and the conscious denudation of the verse from the brightness and juiciness of expression.

Before us is a biography that, with great detail and accuracy in terms of facts, depicts the life of one of the most deserving sons of the Bulgarian people from the era of the Revival - the writer and revolutionary Lyuben Karavelov. This biography, written by the skilled pen of the authoritative and respected not only in our country expert on the history of the national liberation movement in Bulgaria in the 19th century, Academician Mihail Dimitrov, is the result of the author's own long-term research and what has already been done by Lyuben Karavelov's previous biographers.

The victory of 9. IX. 1944 opened a new era both in the socio-political development of the Bulgarian people and in the development of Bulgarian science. The people's power, the Bulgarian Communist Party have always emphasized that the construction of a socialist society is impossible without the comprehensive development of all branches of science and are constantly making efforts to create the necessary conditions for its flourishing. And if the natural, mathematical, technical sciences were harnessed to the creation of the material base of society, then the humanitarian sciences had to contribute to the formation of a new consciousness, of new moral, ethical, philosophical views in people - builders of socialism and communism. Hence the special importance of science, which deals with the problems of literature - one of the most active factors for ideological Education and re-education, for the creation in man of a new worldview, a new socialist worldview.

The famous Ukrainian magazine "Vse Svіt" in its first issue of this year published an article about the great merits of Academician Todor Pavlov in the field of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics. The article emphasizes that the name of the Bulgarian scientist is well known to the Ukrainian reader, who has more than once encountered his philosophical and literary-aesthetic articles in Russian. The article was written on the occasion of the commendable initiative of the State Publishing House for Fiction in Kiev, which for the first time publishes a separate voluminous collection of literary-critical and aesthetic studies in Ukrainian under the general title "Питання теориї та историї літерутури" (Problems of Literary Theory and History).

The previous issue of "Literary Thought" included the article by the young literary critic Lyuben Georgiev "Three Rivals". The author poses and examines in his own way some questions of our contemporary lyric poetry and expresses an opinion on the development of the three, in his opinion, the foremost poets among the young" - Ivan Radoev, Georgi Dzhagarov and Pavel Matev. The editorial staff expected that Lyuben Georgiev's article would arouse a number of objections, would provoke a dispute over many assessments and some general conclusions. But without such polemical "snaps" the broad exchange of opinions and assessments that Comrade Todor Zhivkov spoke about in his speech to the writers could not have taken place.