Dimcho Debelyanov in three articles

Debelyanov has a direct emotional relationship with art, a pure intimate connection with it. It attracts him primarily with its specifically aesthetic qualities, and he perceives works of art more with his heart than with his mind. As an artist, he is excited by the general problems of aesthetics. However, the tendency to participate in literary discussions through the press, to impose views and assessments on the public, is alien to him. Literary-theoretical and critical work in general does not attract him. Therefore, every newly discovered literary material that has come out from under the poet's nose is of serious interest to the researcher. The three articles offered here - About an Old Song, "Letter from the Village" and "The Last Outlaw" - are currently the only known developed literary works and, along with the "literary notes" in the magazine "Zveno" (1914), provide direct data on Debelyanov's aesthetic views. They express thoughts and views that with irrefutable force shatter the legend of the "purebred" symbolist Debelyanov and reveal his true attitude towards modernism. In the light of these materials, previously familiar statements acquire a different, true meaning. Written in a clear and emotional language, they reveal the innermost ideas of the post, its aesthetic ideal. The articles, especially the first two, have not only literary and historical value. The issues raised in them still retain their relevance today, because they are related to the ethics of writing and the attitude of art to life. The interpretation that Debelyanov gives them, regardless of the contradictions of thinking, imposes itself with its moral idealism and straightforwardness. And although written at a different time and from different positions, they sound contemporary in many respects. The central question in the first article is the question of the conditions of creative work and the ethics of the writer under the conditions of capitalism, which by its nature is hostile to art and condemns the honest artist to misery and humiliation.