Realism and Romanticism in Bulgarian Literature from the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries.

The problem of the originality of realism of the 20th century and its relationship to other creative methods attracts the keen attention of literary critics, since it is organically connected with the current and vital issues of our time. The experience of every national literature can serve to resolve this problem. Some generalizations, supporting or supplementing our ideas about the peculiarities of the world literary movement of the 20th century, can also be made on the basis of material taken from the literature of Bulgaria. In 1912, A. M. Gorky noted the characteristic feature in the development of Bulgarian literature - the exceptional intensity of the processes taking place in it. It was in this connection that he wrote: "After five centuries of oppression by foreign nationalities, Bulgaria returned to life, bright with individuality, full of creative forces and quickly took its rightful place in the family of cultural nations." Indeed, in Bulgarian literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such phenomena arose and sometimes manifested themselves with great force, which, when taken into account, are of interest of a fundamental nature - they contribute to a broader understanding of both the general regularities and the diversity of national forms in the world literary process. It is characteristic, for example, that the literature of critical realism in Bulgaria, as well as some other countries of Central and Southeastern Europe (unlike a number of Western European countries) at that time was not on the line of decline, but on the line of rise: in the 90s of the last century, Bulgarian critical realism entered the phase of its flowering, establishing itself as the strongest literary trend. At the same time, developing in conditions of heightened class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the revolutionary proletariat already entering the historical arena, Bulgarian literature acquired other features largely similar to those processes that took place in all European literatures in the era of imperialism.