Issue-3

1960 Book 3 Contents

Bulgarian scientific and cultural workers, and especially Bulgarian writers, joining the nationwide celebration of the 90th anniversary of the greatest man of our time, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, rightly dwell first of all on the new that Lenin's creative genius brought to all areas of science, culture, art, education, politics, construction, etc. One of the issues that has always deeply concerned our cultural workers and writers is the question of the party affiliation of literature and art in general. It is included in almost all scientific and general ideological sessions, meetings and conferences that are taking place and are yet to take place in our country in connection with the 90th anniversary of V. I. Lenin, and the Union of Bulgarian Writers has also organized a special scientific session dedicated to the question of the party affiliation of literature and art in general. The issue does not leave the pages of the relevant magazines, newspapers and other periodicals and non-periodical publications.

The question of characteristic detail is connected with almost all the important problems of literary creation and, of course, to a considerable extent with the problem of conciseness in prose, of condensed, synthetic prose. It is needless to emphasize that the detail that enlivens the incident, the event, the character, that individualizes them, but at the same time typifies them, is the basis of what separates realism both from naturalism and from schematism and simplification in their various forms. It is known that the fiction writer, faced with the life that he has to recreate, first of all encounters a huge number of details. In the diversity of human actions, in the multiplicity of tones that fill the atmosphere, in the tangle of human experiences, the writer should orient himself and recreate them in his presentation. We know how complex reality is, both in the great of the infinite and in the small, in the fragment, even in the microscopic. In a single blade of spring grass there is so much life and color and meaning that, as is known, ancient Japanese artists created an entire school.

One of the most characteristic phenomena in our literary development after September 9, 1944, is the continuous influx of young, fresh creative forces into the ranks of our poetry. It can certainly be said that never before has our poetry been enriched so intensively and on such a broad front with young, reliable creative cadres. The removal of artificial barriers between literature and the people is one of the great conquests of our cultural revolution. As is known, this is a two-sided dialectical process, which is characterized by the wide penetration of literature among the people, among the many-million readership and by the raising of the spiritual level, the aesthetic education of this reader, by the cultivation and manifestation of his creative abilities. "Art belongs to the people," says Lenin, "it must penetrate with its deepest roots into the bosom of the broad masses of the people. It must be understandable to these masses and beloved by them. It must unite the feeling, thought and will of these masses, elevate them. It must awaken artists in them and develop them."

The paths by which a writer penetrates beyond the borders of his homeland are very different and complex. Having followed their winding paths, the artist often receives new dimensions from different eras and among different peoples, is "discovered by those who are not even aware of them in their time. There is something very characteristic of the fate of a writer in the way in which he is assimilated outside his homeland. Sometimes, having vividly expressed the trends of his time, having created a unique style and handwriting, the artist powerfully conquers the minds of his era, his work becomes a banner, a slogan, a platform, and often in the end - because the last stage of the rapid assimilation of a unique talent is almost always epigonism - and a literary fashion. Such is the fate of some great artists of the Western European classics of the last century (Byron, Schiller). There are also writers who remain almost undiscovered by their contemporaries, in order to measure their value from other eras or among other peoples. Such is the fate of Stenda Often literary fashion opens a green light for some unhealthy literary trends. The fame of such literary ephemera, the most characteristic example of which in our country is perhaps Przybyszewski, only testifies to the aesthetic level of famous circles during the era.

Ivan Vazov has left us a lot of information about his life and work. However, there are quite a few unclear questions and contradictory information in his biography. This article sets itself the task of clarifying some moments in the poet's life, some of which are interpreted incorrectly, and others have not been presented for consideration in our press at all. Here we will focus on the question of Vazov's first attempts at the time he spent in Romania during his first trip to participate in the Bulgarian Central Charity Society, correcting some information about Vazov himself along the way. And it is natural that in clarifying these questions, we should first of all proceed from the information that the poet himself has left us. However, this information must be compared and checked repeatedly. Because the uncritical attitude towards them has led to the current situation - to allow not only in popular works, but also in some serious studies about Vazov, gross factual errors and inconsistencies.

Recently, in the archive of Naicho Tsanov, part of which is kept in the State Archives in Vratsa, I found three poems in manuscript by Kiril Hristov. In terms of artistic merit, these poems are not of particular interest, but they shed light on some aspects of the poet's civic biography and indicate that he was no stranger to the political and social struggles of the people. According to a letter from K. Hristov to Naicho Tsanov, which is kept in the same archive, and the content and focus of the poems, it is clear that they were written in 1900, a period of sharp social struggles - the peasant revolts against the tithe in Trstenik, Shabla, Durankulak, etc. Two of them - "Hey, prince, do you hear?" and "A means for your peace of mind even in these days" are by Vazov, from whom the author borrows entire verses. However, something else is striking: the obvious sympathy for the people's suffering, the strong and courageous criticism of the arbitrariness of the authorities, the undisguised great hatred for Prince Ferdinand, which goes as far as openly threatening revolution.

The history of Bulgarian Literature is long. Originating in the 9th century, it gradually achieved great conquests, had a beneficial impact on other Slavic peoples, while at the same time learning from the world's masters of the artistic word. Today, the work of writers, writers and poets is increasingly attracting the attention of scholars from different countries. This interest is constantly growing not only in old Bulgarian literature, when our literary thought reached an unusual flourishing for that time, but also in more recent periods, in the Revival and post-liberation literature, in the achievements of our contemporary artistic word. And if learned Slavists turn to our literary works in order to reveal their connections with the artistic thought of other peoples, to point out their historical and cognitive significance, to understand the general and specific laws of their development and the literary process in general, then thousands of readers reach for one or another work in order to relate to the past and present life of our people, to experience their long-standing, epic struggles for national Independence, social justice and cultural progress, to feel the pathos and heroism of today's glorious socialist modernity. This continuous interest also finds expression in numerous articles, essays, in a number of studies on specific issues, as well as in more general works. Recently, attempts have also appeared for a more comprehensive exposition of our literary development. Here too, Soviet science, continuing the traditions of Russian Slavic thought, works with its inherent scope, noting undoubted successes - the largest of which in recent times is the voluminous volume "Essays on the History of Bulgarian Literature of the 19th-20th Centuries", prepared by Bulgarian literary scholars at the Institute of Slavic Studies at the USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow. Along with the many individual studies, articles, and books on specific historical and literary issues, we are already aware of some partial attempts by Soviet literary workers to give a popular systematic exposition of more comprehensive periods of our literary development. Without underestimating the importance of these attempts to popularize Bulgarian literature, it should be emphasized that they lag far behind the work prepared at the Institute of Slavic Studies. The team of "Essays on the History of Bulgarian Literature 19th-20th Centuries" has taken a much broader and more in-depth look at its task, has carried out significant research work and has achieved undoubted results. And what is even more important. This work is the first more comprehensive attempt to examine literary development over the last century from Marxist positions, to see literary phenomena in their complexity and contradictions, to summarize and explain them by a single scientific criterion.

During the last decade of his life, the great German poet Johannes R. Becher published several books in which - in the form of personal and sometimes even intimate reflection - he expressed his observations, conclusions and convictions on a number of unclear or controversial issues of artistic creativity. The great theoretical and practical interest that these books represent lies both in the diversity of the problems addressed and in the sharpness, sometimes even innovative courage, with which the author expresses his views. Preceded by the published diary of the poet from 1950-1951, entitled with a verse from Shakespeare's "The Tempest" ("And yet - what great hopes!"), these volumes (published in the years 1952-1957 and united under the general title "Endeavors") are: The Defense of Poetry, The Poetic Credo, The Power of Poetry and The Poetic Principle.

What is aesthetic?" - this is the question that begins the monograph of L. N. Stolovich "Aesthetics in Reality and in Art" (Moscow, 1959). "From the point of view of modern aesthetic science," the author writes, "those phenomena and objects of reality, those human abilities are characterized as aesthetic, which in one way or another are included in the special, special attitude of man to reality - the aesthetic attitude." As we see, a very general definition, the meaning of which is expressed in the fact that the aesthetic is understood as a special attitude. From this premise to a more comprehensive definition of the aesthetic, several directions are possible. Stolovich chose the one according to which the aesthetic attitude is determined by its object - the aesthetic properties of reality. They (beautiful, disgusting, ugly, tragic) exist objectively, independently of our will and our consciousness, although they are not outside of society and man. The author distinguishes himself from A. I. Burov, according to whom aesthetic qualities are not realized "without the perceiving subject."

The literary theory section at the Institute of Bulgarian Literature discussed the work of junior research associate Atanas Natev - Purpose or End-in-itself of Art? (Critical Observations on Neo-Kantian Aesthetics in Bulgaria). The author dedicated his work to the problem of the penetration of neo-Kantian aesthetics in Bulgaria - he examines the works of its supporters and the results of their activities. The work is divided into seven chapters: Theoretical zigzags of a thesis; The psychological vow of aesthetics; Purpose or social aimlessness of art; The specific purpose - social justification of art; Tendency and tendentiousness of art; Exiled knowledge and Aesthetic pleasure and art. The pivotal chapter is the fourth, which contains the author's aesthetic credo - in it he seeks to provide a scientific justification for his thesis on the specificity of art. According to Natev, the specificity of art (in the most general sense) comes not from the subject, not from the object, but from a special social need. Artistic images, after appropriate objectification, can become art only if they gain a public, if they enter social circulation.