Dobri Chintulov and the development of genres in Bulgarian literature

Dobri Chintulov is our first poet who has a developed sense of the nature of various literary genres and forms. The lyrics and poems of Pushkin and Lermontov, the works of the Russian pseudo-classics and pre-romanticists (Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Baratynsky, etc.) awaken in him the follower, not the imitator. Acquaintance with an impressive literary tradition leads to the manifestation and progress of personal powers. As with any original talent, here too the school suggests above all that which corresponds to one's own nature. Chintulov does not experience the anxiety of P. R. Slaveykov, who has to struggle with weak literary preparation, and marks the beginning of that intimate kinship with the forms of poetic art, with the style and composition of poetic genres, without which any creativity is unthinkable. While Nayden Gerov still struggles with the principle of organization, in Chintulov the motifs find their most appropriate expression in the forms of the hymn, the elegy, and the poem.