Questions Answered by Soviet Literator D. F. Markov

What poems did I write before becoming fascinated with symbolism? What was my youthful poetry like? Like every beginning poet (1903–1904), I had not one but several notebooks filled with poems. These were poems in the spirit of folk heroism, written under the influence of Botev, Vazov, and P. R. Slaveykov. I was able to restore a small part of them in the 1954 collection Poems. In 1905, I moved from Plovdiv to Sofia with the intention of studying and supporting myself with my own work. I stayed with a classmate I knew, who later took these poems with him, and for a long time I saw some of them printed in provincial newspapers under his name. In 1905, I was greatly impressed by Pushkin's poem "Vechny Oleg" in Pencho Slaveykov's translation. Pushkin and Lermontov became my favorite poets. Their poetry was of such high quality that it could not be imitated. I began to translate it, clumsily at first. In 1907, I read my translation of Lermontov's "The Demon" to a student audience. The impression was encouraging. I usually translated Pushkin and Lermontov under difficult circumstances (in prison, at the front, in hospital, in exile), with a feeling of love and gratitude for their genius. This raises the question: why did I not remain faithful to my love for the poetry of Pushkin and Lermontov? How can my enthusiasm for symbolism, shared by other Bulgarian poets of that period (1905-1915), be explained?