Issue-6

1960 Booklet 6 Contents

Of those among whom he began and continued his creative path, only three or four remain. They are the only ones who can testify to the truth of those distant years. In this journey through the past, things and people suddenly emerge - clear, categorical, devoid of any ambiguity, having acquired their true weight, without the need for any interpreters. The miracle of human memory returns to us that complete, self-existent world, the most real because it is the one of the time, in which even when we ourselves participated, we now remain more spectators than actors. For the dead, time has stopped, they do not age, and in our memory their existence remains more alive, because they are unchangeable. And for us, who knew Yordan Yovkov for almost a quarter of a century, from 1913 to 1937, he will forever retain his sharply outlined image, the same in the different aspects of those different years. He is the reserve lieutenant or captain in a marching greatcoat during the war years; he is the lonely man, sitting at his little table against the wall, in the upper section of the former Tsar-Liberator confectionery, and whose narrowed eyes thoughtfully pierce the smoke of his cigarette. He is all in that muffled, flowing, throaty laughter that gushes uncontrollably and infectiously amidst some always interesting border guard or hunting or military incident, sprinkled with those wonderful Turkish wisdoms for which he had a weakness and told by him with unattainable expressiveness and wit. It is in that phrase (inserted later in a feuilleton) with which, when he once explained why the socialists won the elections, he presented the peasant voter in front of the ballot box, who pushes a cap over one eyebrow, blinks mischievously and laughs: "Wait until I cast a red ballot, let's see what comes out!.. It is also in those words with which, before his departure for an official position in Bucharest, he answered my question - whether he was not sad that he was going to Romania, which had seized his beloved Dobrudja - words, and which echoed from the voice of his Seraphim -: "You know, I love them - the Vlachs..."

One of the main issues in Yordan Yovkov's work is the question of tragedy in life and its artistic reflection in art. The writer is able to see and convey with irresistible force the tragic beginning in reality. With his best works, he convinces in an artistic way that tragedy can be caused not only by the immediate material conditions and circumstances inherent in a given time, but also by a number of individual qualities and characteristics acquired during the millennial existence of humanity. In this way, Yovkov shows that these qualities and characteristics, which are ultimately formed again under the determining role of material conditions (only not the current material conditions), have relative independence and very often have a great, even decisive influence on the fate of man. Such an artistic attitude comprehends, albeit insufficiently, the economic reasons, without ignoring other factors and circumstances for the existence and manifestation of tragedy. Although it increases the risk of errors in the artistic reflection of reality, it opens up great possibilities for the comprehensive and profound depiction of life. Thanks to it, in some of his best works Yovkov manages to reach true heights of artistic mastery in reflecting the tragic in reality.

In the Oriental Department of the Vasil Kolarov National Library - Sofia, an original correspondence is kept, handwritten in Turkish with Arabic script, containing letters and resolutions from March 1853, respectively emanating from the kaymakam of the Sliven Liva, the commander of the Rumelian Army, and the Supreme Military Council of the same army. The document in question is classified: Sliven, Kaymakam - and Liva. Date March 10, 1853, new style. II. Outlawry, and refers to the person Shabiloglu Mustafa, a gypsy from Gradec, a famous robber who roamed this region for years during that dark era of slavery and instilled fear and trembling among the population of several districts in the Sliven region. In view of the content of the cited document and the interest it represents for our literature, in which the person Shabil through the pen of the writer Yovkov is described as a legendary hero in the famous Stara Planina legend under the title "Shibil", we give the entire content of the Turkish correspondence, translated into Bulgarian. The document is unknown to our public and has not been published so far. Apparently, it was not known to the late Yovkov when he wrote his legend about Shabil. We are publishing it for the first time in order to protect our literati - poets and writers from infatuation, delusion and mistakes in the future regarding the legend of "Shibil", which, like the document, sheds full light on the truth about Shibil. Shibil is no longer a "legend", but an ordinary robber.

In September 1920, Yordan Yovkov was appointed by order of Prime Minister Alexander Stamboliyski as a clerk at the Bulgarian legation in Bucharest, where he spent about six years holding various positions: "press assistant", "secretary", and finally, as a "reward" for his conscientious work, due to the "lack" of the necessary qualifications, he had to fulfill the duties of... Dragoman". Despite his official employment and his difficult financial situation, in the Romanian capital he worked with true inspiration and for the joy of Bulgarian culture - he completed "The Song of the Wheels", wrote "Stara Planina Legends" and began "Evenings at the Antimov Inn". Yovkov's life in Bucharest, as his letters and the memories of his friends testify, was difficult and joyless. The plenipotentiary ministers at that time were Todor Nedkov, General Iv. Fichev, Georgi Kyoseivanov and Svetoslav Pomenov, who treated the writer with disdain and looked at him almost as an ordinary official, something more - as an imbecile. On various occasions, the writer wrote letters to his friends in his homeland, shared with them his difficult fate and rewarded them for small favors. Some of these letters were published in books and magazines and are known to the Bulgarian reader. (See Grigor Vassilev, "Yordan Yovkov", 1940 and "Unpublished Letters of Yordan Yovkov" magazine "Literary Thought", vol. 5, 1957).

The first to encounter his name in print were the readers of the magazine "Savremennost" in the autumn of 1906. The magazine was rather nondescript. Its loud name was probably chosen to remind us that the editors St. Donchev and G. Savchev, whom no one knows today, had the "new literary trends" at heart, i.e., symbolism. At that time, in the minds of some intelligentsia, susceptible to literary fashion, decadence was a sign of modernity. But in the cycle "Dedication" by the new poet Dimcho Debelyanov, there is no decadent "modernity" to be seen. The poems are not shrouded in a symbolic fog, they are clear, traditional". "The inspirations come from elsewhere - from the poet whose personality fills the young man's heart with adoration - Pencho Slaveykov. At that time, Dimcho Debelyanov, born in 1887, was nineteen years old. He had just graduated from the first Sofia male gymnasium. In the gymnasium, he earned a reputation as a warm-hearted and talented young man. Many loved him - for his bribing immediacy, although he was also inclined to solitude, for his directness, for the pure fervor with which he spoke and declaimed. One of his speeches on the feast of Cyril and Methodius was long remembered. He made an even deeper impression with his recitation in "Slavic Discourse" of Vazov's poem "Come and See Us". This time he even gained the attention of the monarch Prince Ferdinand himself, who had come to the solemn student matinee. And no wonder. Dimcho was not at all embarrassed by Coburg. Turning to him, he boldly threw the angry denunciations of the people's poet into his eyes:

Those who deal with aesthetics know that one of the most talented representatives of French materialism of the 18th century - Denis Diderot - was also a brilliant defender of realistic art. He hated the otherwise skillful artist François Boucher for his sweet, romantically-influenced allegories and pointed to the crude but truthful art of Chardin as a measure for young artists. And just when he opposed creative "hypocrisy" to naive fidelity to nature, Diderot simultaneously claimed that "exaggeration and falsehood lie at the foundation of the arts." Indeed, at first glance, the contradiction is obvious, and the surprised reader instinctively seeks to restore the broken monolithicity in Diderot's views, declaring the quoted thought to be a random thought or a "pen error." But here is the creator of socialist realism - Maxim Gorky, whose aesthetic concepts were incomparably clearer than those of Diderot, considers exaggeration and fiction to be inevitable aspects of the artist's work. Obviously, here the theory of art is faced with a real antinomy, which must be clearly stated and explained: how to combine the principle of the truthful reflection of reality with the inevitability of exaggeration and fiction? Are not the latter an attempt on the sincerity of the artist, which we in any case solemnly demand of him? These questions - interesting in themselves - have a direct connection with one of the most vividly treated problems of our aesthetic science: the problem of the reflection of reality, undoubtedly in art. It is precisely

One looks for a motto for the article. One does not find it.... There is no unifying word, thought, phrase from and about this congress (if one does not consider the profound maxim of Alek's hero: "The world is wide - there are all kinds of them"). The fault is not in the multi-topic nature of the congress, although there was such a thing - seven topics were announced for the sectional sessions. Indeed, one general congress topic was also announced: "The State of Aesthetic Problems Today". But as can be seen, it only outlines the boundaries of the congress's subject matter. It did not set a task for the congress to try to solve. Moreover, it could not set one. The entire course of the congress, the spirit of the discussions, the style and organization of the sessions spoke perfectly clearly that it was not the type of scientific congress whose task is to solve problems. That is, to establish what is true and what is not, what is right and what is wrong - to search with the possible for the given moment of their selection is quite characteristic and deserves to be cited: 1) The concept of classical and contemporary concepts of art; 2) Art and the sacred (i.e. religion); 3) Functional and artistic value; 4) Art and modern technology; 5) Art and psychology of the depths (psychoanalysis); 6) "Non-finite and completion (of the work), norms, standards, etc.; 7) Research methods and new concepts, information theory, semantics, etc. 80 scientific accuracy the regularity of the phenomenon under study. This ambition was alien to the congress as a whole. As it was obviously conceived and as it was realized, its goal was not to move towards the solution of the problems, not even to clash opinions, but to show them. The congress was a colorful forum of opinions, a crowded bazaar of theories and hypotheses, an exhibition-demonstration of the current state of aesthetic thought in the world, which was sometimes boring. And this is the first, so to speak, slight shock that the scientific worker from the socialist side experiences when he comes across such a congress. What for us, with all its difficulty and complex historical relativity, is a main concern, passion and duty - namely to we select, in the click of ideas, to the correct idea - for them it obviously goes to the second and third plan. For us, a scientific congress is a struggle for scientific truth, for them - an opportunity to express opinions. Behind the first stands the deep conviction that truth is achievable, ergo - obligatory; behind the second - that it does not exist or if it exists, it is unattainable, and even if it is achievable - sometimes and in part - it is not obligatory. The pathos of scientific search burned weakly at the Fourth International Congress of Aesthetics. And this is not surprising, considering the eclectic-relativist, tinged with agnosticism and even mystical atmosphere of the congress - we repeat, of the congress as a whole.

P. Zarev's book "Style and Artistry" expresses that new spirit in Marxist aesthetics that has been felt over the last five or six years in the Soviet Union and in our country. Its characteristic features are a dislike for dogmatic Phraseology, an aspiration to overcome sociologism and epistemology, and an increased interest in the specific aspects of artistic depiction. In addition to clarifying general methodological positions, this new spirit also means emphasized attention to special aesthetic issues that will bring us closer to the intimate and unique in the poetic image. P. Zarev strives to follow the new trends not by theorizing on the basic principles, but by implementing them in more specific studies. In the pathos of the individual articles, we perceive a general concept that determines both the interests and conclusions of the author. And although it does not have a monographic character, although it is composed of individual articles, each of which arose on a specific occasion and treats an independent issue, the book is internally unified. From beginning to end, it is permeated by a characteristic aesthetic concept - the concept of the aesthetic wealth of literature. We constantly feel the conscious struggle against simplification and dogmatism, the desire to impress upon us a more precise artistic criterion. One may not agree with all the conclusions and solutions on the topics considered, one may even think that the author has not been able to fully fulfill the task set, this is a separate issue. However, there is no doubt that he has identified a correct and fruitful direction in the understanding and study of fiction and that in his efforts he has achieved a number of positive results. One cannot properly assess the book "Style and Artistry" if one does not penetrate its inner pathos, nor understand the fundamental meaning of the individual articles if one does not look at them in the light of this basic pathos. The main supporting points of the author's concept are two. The first emphasizes the aesthetic nature of artistic content, and the second - the subjective - creative nature of artistic reflection.

In the great Cyril and Methodius problem, the main question is the question of the beginning of Slavic writing. Many prominent Slavic scholars have written about it: Dobrovsky, Shafarik, Bodiansky, Sreznevsky, Yagich, Shakhmatov, Lavrov, Lamansky, Ogienko, Emil Georgiev, etc. And yet it is still open, there is no unified opinion among scholars on it. While some scholars directly connect the beginning of Slavic writing with the Great Moravian mission of Cyril and Methodius (862-863), other scholars move this beginning a few years earlier, connecting it with 855, indicated by Chernorizets Hrabar. This special question - which year to take as the beginning of Slavic writing - has existed almost since the emergence of Slavic studies as a science. For a long time, it was not written about separately, because in most cases, scholars, when they touched on it in their research, took one position or the other. After the Second World War, in our country, somehow imperceptibly, it became the subject of several larger or smaller studies, such as those conducted by Al. Burmov, M. Genov, Em. Georgiev, K. Kuev, P. Petrov, B. St. Angelov, etc. And here two groups emerged - supporters of

The latest trends of modernism gravitate towards an ever more decisive liberation from the forms of the concrete-historical, the objective and the real. They give way to the tendency towards abstract art, which deprives them of the living colours of artistic diversity, pushes them towards the embodiment of "abstracted essences", outside their individual form of manifestation and existence. Combined with a self-serving technicalism, abstractionism ignores the "sensuous-objective and aesthetic reality" and condemns the human image in art to disintegration. It is known how wide the terrain has been conquered by the abstractionists in modern painting. From the canvases of many contemporary artists, figurativeness is defiantly banished and the artist's independent interest in his technical, optical and color problems is proclaimed, through which he establishes contact with the spirit of the times and its scientificity. The artist skips the figurative, the intermediary link between the idea and the embodiment, in order to reach directly to the hidden substance, to the abstract meaning. And then, under the incomprehensible tangles, under the chaotic color spots, lines and geometric figures, we read designations such as: "Vertical", "Strive", "Expression", "Passion". This is a leap straight into the kingdom of abstract essences, of the "thinkable" - without the old-fashioned mediation of objects. One of the clever theorists and practitioners of this tendency in literature, Hermann Broch, writes: In all isms, ultimately, a common process is evident: the empirical and accidental object is replaced by something whose ultimate roots reach back to the logical and to the Platonic idea. And since Plato in his project for the ideal state did not allocate an enviable place to artists, since they deal with the crude, empirical, sensible forms of reality, with the "shadows" of things, moving away from them from the higher and ideal essence, from the world of ideas, now his modern followers have decided to save the honor of art by freeing it from its objective language and elevating it to the rank of a medium that speaks directly to the mysterious world of essences, of ideas. But since art can hardly get rid of its "double" - the objective, the individual and the concrete, otherwise it will cease to be art - "the functions of the double" are now fundamentally rethought. The image loses its relative independence as a reflection of objective things and becomes solely. . a symbol of the subjective. It falls into the clutches of the free play of associations, of the whims of subjectivism, of a deforming architectonics. The objective-sensible receives a new tonality, since the reality of the object becomes a mere substitute for the abstract and a performer of ornamental functions. Therefore, the object can be raped and deformed to infinity" (H. Broch). In the last decade, abstractionism has increased its ambitions, spreading its tentacles to literature as well. It wants to provide a theoretical and cognitive basis for its experiments, conducting them under the sign of a newest, ultra-contemporary artistic knowledge". Its strangest creations are pretentiously defined as a cipher of the Modern Soul", as an adequate expression of modern man. Because this man represents one. "... a non-existent, formless, intangible, but suffering being" (Claude Mauriac).

To get some idea of ​​the "murky whirlpool of problems" in which the aesthetes of the United States and Canada have found themselves today, it would be enough to leaf through the latest issues of the representative American quarterly "The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism." It is the organ of the American Society of Aesthetics. Its editor is the director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Professor Thomas Munro, the universally recognized leader of contemporary American aesthetes. In the March issue, in an article entitled "A Criterion for Art Criticism in Contemporary Art," Lester D. Longman says: "It is not clear what we value most in art today. . . Since we fear that any clearly defined Criterion in art would seem dogmatic, we prefer anarchy in critical thinking."

From November 11 to 16 of this year, a meeting of the International Committee of Slavists was held in Sofia. For six days, some of the most prominent representatives of Slavic thought in the world held creative conversations, talked, and debated in order to identify and formulate the most current problems of Slavic studies. The direct goal of the meeting was to discuss the issues and topics for the upcoming Fifth International Congress, which will be held in Sofia in 1963. As hosts of the meeting and the upcoming congress, the Bulgarian Slavists were tasked with developing a draft of the problems and topics that would serve as a basis for the discussion. The draft was compiled and promptly sent to the national committees of Slavists in the individual countries, so that it could be discussed by all scholars dealing with the problems of Slavic studies. The meeting showed that the interest in the thematic program of the future congress is extremely high and that scholars from Slavic and non-Slavic countries who deal with one or another issue of Slavic studies are preparing to take an active part in the future congress in order to shed new light on the most important problems of Slavic studies.

In two meetings - on September 29 and October 13 of this year, the Scientific Council at the Institute of Literature in an expanded composition discussed the work of Alexander Nichev on Aleko Konstantinov. The work has a monographic character and includes the following sections: Introduction: Biography; Literary Attempts; To Chicago and Back; Bai Ganyu; Feuilletons; Poetics; Aleko Konstantinov and Bulgarian Social Democracy. The reviewers Emil Stefanov and Rozalia Lykova evaluate Nichev's work as the first comprehensive scientific monograph on the life and work of our great writer. They see its positive qualities both in the collection of valuable and in many respects new factual material, and in the analysis of this material. "Everywhere in his book, Nichev has carefully, in detail, and with the necessary arguments explained Aleko's ideological and political development," emphasizes Emil Stefanov. "For the first time in our Literary History, Aleko's ideological positions have been widely and thoroughly examined and explained."

On October 4 and 15, 1960, the Section of Bulgarian Literature until the Liberation continued the discussion of the materials for the collection dedicated to Lyuben Karavelov. Diverse and rich, still insufficiently studied and illuminated, the creative work of the editor of "Svoboda" provides for study interesting problems in the fields of literature, journalism, folklore, ethnography, linguistics. This to a significant extent predetermines not only the diversity of the topics that will be included in the collection, but also the striving for originality in their development. Svetla Gyurova's article, for example, "Lyuben Karavelov as the 143rd editor of P. Hitova's book "My Journey through the Stara Planina" is a successful attempt to give a true idea of ​​Karavelov's editorial manner through Hitova's memoirs. Comparing the original of the work and its first edition, made by P. Berkovski, with the text printed in 1873, the author comes to the conclusion that Karavelov, without making changes to the content, makes creative corrections” to the language, composition, imagery and social sharpness of the work. Along with tracing the editorial work on the Memoirs, Gyurova also provides an idea of ​​the work as a whole, of the interest shown in it in some Slavic countries and of the place it occupies in Bulgarian Renaissance literature. Highlighting the undeniable merits of the article, which were also pointed out in their statements by Prof. M. Arnaudov and Prof. P. Dinekov, the reviewer Docho Lekov expressed a wish to place more emphasis on those Karavelov’s additions that have a social and political character, to expand the concluding part of the work and to bring unity to the bibliographical notes.