The poems of Ivan Vazov

The works that we usually understand under the name "poems of Ivan Vazov" are united not only by their external genre features, but also acquire a broader meaning in the process of the author's growth as an artist. Created in the short period 1879-1884, they are closely related to a certain stage of Vazov's poetic biography, expressing the regularities of an important moment in his creative development. At the end of 1879, when Vazov's first poem was published, he was already the author of three collections of poetry. Collections of poetry in which he experienced the full force of the ecstasies and sorrows of his people. But the days of upsurge and despair, of georism and ecstasies have already died down. Amid the idyllic silence of his Berkovo solitude, the turbulent feelings and pathetic outbursts in the poet's soul calm down. And those invisible processes of artistic rethinking of life experience begin, from which his future works will crystallize. What until recently was a heated atmosphere of the present is now transformed in consciousness into the past, into a memory, subordinated to the sense of historical perspective. After the period of immediate emotional reactions, the time of broad artistic generalizations and calm historical assessments comes. "Epic of the Forgotten", "Unloved-Unloved" and "Under the Yoke" could not have appeared immediately after "Pryaporets and the Gusla", "The Sorrows of Bulgaria" and "Deliverance". Between the one and the other lies the border of a historical era and crossing this border meant for the author a process of new ideological creative maturation. The transformed living environment asserts its rights, the radically changed ideological atmosphere leaves its mark. Disappointment comes in place of enthusiasm, naive faith is replaced by skeptical irony. And from this dramatic interweaving, new faith and new optimism are born... Freed from the black shadow of slavery, life shines with all its multi-huedness. The artist's outlook becomes broader and wiser, his poetic perception of the world - more complex and richer.