Ivan Vazov and the struggle to create nationally distinctive realistic literature

One of the most characteristic features of the new Bulgarian literature is that it is born and develops in organic unity with the national socio-historical and cultural-moral processes. Its first representatives lived and created with a clear awareness of its great role in the development of national self-knowledge, they sought various forms and means to direct creative thought on the right path. The era from Paisius to Botev, an era in which the foundations of our national literature were laid, is incomparably grand in civic pathos and creative tension, in intellectual-spiritual insights and artistic conquests. The struggle for political and cultural independence - understood in all its comprehensiveness, depth and meaning, is accompanied by an equally stubborn struggle for sound national aesthetic and artistic principles. With artistic speech, with cultural-publicistic and literary-critical articles, with writings of the most diverse genre and thematic aspects, people, possessed by creative impulses, strive to create a nationally distinctive literature, in tune with the needs of life, passionately fight against the primitive and retrograde in social and aesthetic understandings. A rare dedication and foresight characterize the work of these pioneers of national literary thought. The artistic and critical-theoretical traditions established by them have served as a support and inspiration for later works.