The Artist's Humanism and the Revolution. On the Work of Emliyan Stanev after 9.IX.1944

The great humanist artists always stand close to the progressive ideas of their era. In our time, many of them reach socialism. And they reach it on their own path, through the internal logic of their development; the humanistic power of their talent brings them to the achievement of revolutionary justice. Emilian Stanev appeared in the 1930s. In all his works from those years there is a reflection on the fate of man. In them one can see not only the animalist artist - the subtle connoisseur and painter of nature and animals. These works tell us about the inequality between people, about the wolfish laws of bourgeois society. They are imbued with a deep sadness for the beautiful in man. But the social views of that time and the humanism of the writer did not allow him to see the real perspective of historical development, he could only express his abstract dream of a better order of the world. Later, Stanev began to see in the revolutionary changes in his country those real conditions that create an opportunity for true emancipation of the human personality. The writer was in a dispute - not a speculative-abstract, but a deeply creative one - with various modernist concepts that isolate man from society. The ideological and artistic evolution that took place in him tangibly and concretely gives answers to the great problems of the century - about the true stimuli of artistic progress, about humanism. The gradual discovery of the new world, the developing revolutionary worldview of Stanev significantly moved his artistic horizons, he saw in the revolution the realization of higher humanistic ideals.