Yavorov's novel

There is hardly another writer in Bulgarian literature whose life and work have sparked such irreconcilable disputes as Yavorov. As soon as his name is mentioned, polemics flare up, perceptions cross paths, it is difficult to find a common language and much more difficult to find a common assessment. Not that anyone today disputes his civic and creative work as a whole - the poet and revolutionary have remained forever in the hearts and memories of the people. But there is no other great Bulgarian creator so contradictory and so difficult to explain. Moreover, his life path is so strewn with twists and turns, intersected with so many destinies; his work confuses and upsets even the most perfect schemes and artificial constructions... It slips away every time someone tries to put some decent literary uniform on him. It does not fit into it, tears it apart at all the seams and continues to exist outside it and create endless difficulties for literary historians and theorists. This is so, it seems to me, because every time we struggle to see the poet and the man not as he is, but as we want him to be. Each of us knows Yavorov so personally that he has created his own idea of ​​him. And it is natural that it will very rarely coincide completely with what we constantly read and hear about the poet. We are impatient and strictly demand that everyone see in Yavorov exactly what we see ourselves. If such coverage is not obtained, we get angry and are ready to fight for Yavorov... It is quite natural in this situation that a book about P. K. Yavorov will arouse great controversy. Even more so a book like that by M. Kremen, which enters a delicate area where so many views and interests are intertwined. How difficult it is to take an objective and correct position, how painful it is to show elementary tolerance (not uncriticality, however) towards someone else's interpretation, how tempting the temptation is to fall into the position of a person who necessarily wants from researchers only what he himself considers to be the most correct... Now the disputes surrounding this book have subsided and, as the noise has died down, I think we can now calmly, without prejudice and critically approach M. Kremen's book, to see and soberly assess both its positive and negative sides.