The positive hero of Bulgarian fiction during the Renaissance

The literature of every nation is connected in a unique way with reality, with its ideals. At different times, depending on the nature of social ideas and the state of art, this connection is realized in a specific way in the individual literary genres, with each individual creator. However, the bold social thought always seeks means to express itself aesthetically, to assert itself through artistic images. Bulgarian literature during the Revival is to a significant extent utilitarian. It was supposed to "react" to all current problems in a more specific form, to seek the most direct path to the reader. Its very first manifestations, regardless of its aesthetic inferiority, were ideologically purposeful - to find the positive hero of modernity and recreate him as an artistic reality, as a type. Of course, this was a long and difficult process, which was influenced by various factors - the definiteness of public ideas, the degree of artistic knowledge of the writer and reader, the literary tradition, the talent and worldview of the individual person, etc. That is why the literary process does not proceed evenly - there are periods of stagnation and flourishing, of "orientation" and innovation. All this cannot be ignored when the question of the positive hero of Renaissance literature in general and fiction in particular is raised. In lyric poetry, for example, he appears and is established significantly earlier than in the short story and the novella. But between the lyrical and the fictional positive hero there is a certain dependence, which is determined by the regularities in the development of the New Bulgarian literature. Common moments in the treatment of the positive hero are also observed in the translated and original works of art. In many of the translations made before the Crimean War, he is religious and humble, associated with the passing patriarchal life. His portrait characterization is schematic, the spiritual world - one-sided. But he also undergoes development, consistent with the worldview and artistic practice of translators and "Bulgarizers".