Yordan Yovkov

Of those among whom he began and continued his creative path, only three or four remain. They are the only ones who can testify to the truth of those distant years. In this journey through the past, things and people suddenly emerge - clear, categorical, devoid of any ambiguity, having acquired their true weight, without the need for any interpreters. The miracle of human memory returns to us that complete, self-existent world, the most real because it is the one of the time, in which even when we ourselves participated, we now remain more spectators than actors. For the dead, time has stopped, they do not age, and in our memory their existence remains more alive, because they are unchangeable. And for us, who knew Yordan Yovkov for almost a quarter of a century, from 1913 to 1937, he will forever retain his sharply outlined image, the same in the different aspects of those different years. He is the reserve lieutenant or captain in a marching greatcoat during the war years; he is the lonely man, sitting at his little table against the wall, in the upper section of the former Tsar-Liberator confectionery, and whose narrowed eyes thoughtfully pierce the smoke of his cigarette. He is all in that muffled, flowing, throaty laughter that gushes uncontrollably and infectiously amidst some always interesting border guard or hunting or military incident, sprinkled with those wonderful Turkish wisdoms for which he had a weakness and told by him with unattainable expressiveness and wit. It is in that phrase (inserted later in a feuilleton) with which, when he once explained why the socialists won the elections, he presented the peasant voter in front of the ballot box, who pushes a cap over one eyebrow, blinks mischievously and laughs: "Wait until I cast a red ballot, let's see what comes out!.. It is also in those words with which, before his departure for an official position in Bucharest, he answered my question - whether he was not sad that he was going to Romania, which had seized his beloved Dobrudja - words, and which echoed from the voice of his Seraphim -: "You know, I love them - the Vlachs..."