Книжка-2

1961 Book 2 Contents

Pencho Slaveykov is one of those authors who, compared to his predecessors, discovers a completely new poetic world for us. He is not a follower of an artistic school that is fading in its development, but is himself a pioneer and herald of an original direction in art. Although with his patriotic, historical and even intimate works he reminds us of the poetry that preceded him, he conquers us with a new vision, with new ideas about morality and love for nature and man. The reader is attracted by his ethical aspirations and, despite the feeling of contradiction in his ideas, hides in his heart a warm love for his poetry. However, for a long time progressive criticism, constrained by dogmatic views, misinterpreted the legacy of Pencho Slaveykov, connecting him entirely with the reactionary ideology and with the individualism of Nietzsche. It was not only wrong in the assessment of individual works - a phenomenon that is completely possible. (It is known that even the great critic Brandes made a serious mistake by calling Tolstoy's magnificent work "War and Peace" a pile of paper.) Literary criticism misinterpreted the poet's personality, his ideals, and incorrectly assessed the direction he represented. Gradually, the ice was broken, and we abandoned the loud and superficial denials in order to live more freely with the charm of Slaveykov's personality and the beauty of his poetry.

In the history of aesthetics, there is no theorist who, to one degree or another, has not touched upon the problem of the beautiful. And not only touched upon it. If the theorists who developed aesthetics in the form of classical poetics (Aristotle, Horace, Boileau) have encountered the problem in passing and as if by the way (although they have nevertheless expressed sentences of astonishing depth), then the theorists of traditional philosophical aesthetics - the English of the 18th century and mainly the Germans of the 18th-19th centuries - have unequivocally placed the beautiful at the center of their scientific research. The scope of philosophical aesthetics includes a significantly larger number and significantly more diverse objects of study - this fact alone naturally leads to a search for points of contact, common moments, unifying principles and criteria with the help of which these diverse objects will be brought into unity, into a system. It is well known what role systematic research played in the classical Philosophy of the Germans - as if the German philosophical spirit was permeated by the need for systematicity. In the systems of Western European and mainly German aesthetics - from Baumgarten through Kant, Schelling and Hegel - the beautiful occupies a central place. And this fact is not the result of the adventures of speculative thinking, but the natural fruit of the search for unity in the overall aesthetic experience of man, expressed, on the one hand, in the aesthetic contemplation of nature, and on the other - in conscious and free artistic creation. Thus, Kant's "Analytics of the Beautiful" includes both moments, because according to Kant, the selfless delight in pure form necessary for everyone" is derived from both nature and art. Hence all the analogies that Kant makes between nature and art - sometimes art turns out to be a model of nature, sometimes the artistic instinct of genius makes him carry out the laws of nature, thus he turns out to be a part of nature itself.

The significant achievements of humanity in the field of culture are not the result of isolated creative processes among individual nations. Nations, even when they built walls like the Chinese, communicated with each other: they used and assimilated values ​​created by other nations, developed their own and borrowed ones further, and themselves offered their conquests in the field of culture to other nations. Thus, with joint efforts, the universal human culture was built and is being built. Nations create their literature in the same way: on the one hand, the tribal, folk, or national genius leaves its mark on it; on the other hand, however, the literary heritage of humanity and numerous manifestations of multilingual modernity are used and developed; creating their literature in this way, a nation makes its contribution to world literature, offering works to foreign readers and influencing foreign authors. We must note that the national peculiarity of individual literatures is not an obstacle to diverse influences in all directions. Literary interactions enrich literatures, contribute to their faster growth, contact with a foreign work is often a contact of flint to flint. Literary interactions are especially characteristic of our modernity due to the increased communication between peoples, the mass translations of literary works from one language to another, the study of foreign languages ​​as a necessary component of modern education. In this situation, literary studies could not and should not be limited to the facts and processes of only one separate literature. Even isolating these facts and processes, it could not present them in a full and truthful light, reach all their original sources and those streams that increase the flow of the general stream, and trace their entire meaning if they also pass into other literatures. The isolated consideration of literatures, their periods, authors and works does not allow for the discovery of a large number of phenomena, processes and patterns, which become apparent only if the phenomena, processes and patterns in several literatures are compared. Phenomena gain brightness, magnitude and relief when compared with similar phenomena.

The most widely used and widespread definition of Taras Shevchenko is that he is a folk poet. We can definitely agree with him, as far as the blood and inseparable connection of the poet with the people is concerned. However, the term folk poet needs clarification. There were people who considered Shevchenko only a composer of songs in the folk spirit, who accidentally mastered the literary art and therefore became known as the continuer of the nameless folk singers. There were certain grounds for this undoubtedly one-sided view. Shevchenko grew up in the folk song element, although, it should be noted, he broke away from it very early. The poet knows and loves his native folklore excellently - this is evident not only from his poetic heritage, but also from his stories and diary written in Russian, as well as from the numerous testimonies of his contemporaries. In his creative practice, Shevchenko often resorted to the folk song form, sometimes preserving it entirely and even inserting entire lines and stanzas from the songs into his poems. We know the masterpieces of Shevchenko's "female" lyrics, i.e., the poem-songs written by a female or maiden name and testifying to the extraordinary sensitivity and tenderness of the reincarnated poet. Such poems among them as: "Oh, if I had shoes", "And I am rich", "I fell in love", "Mother gave birth to me", "I was going to the grove", of course, very much resemble folk songs in their structure, in their stylistic and linguistic structure, in their epithets, etc.

The Outsider 1 - this was the title of the first book by the twenty-five-year-old general worker and former member of the Anarchist Union Colin Wilson, which was published in London in 1956. Wilson was not alone. With his work he was speaking on behalf of a group of radical young English authors who allowed themselves to violate the golden rule of every artist: to let their work speak for itself, and who attempted to clarify theoretically what their objections were to the conciliatory nature of the bourgeois literary tradition. However, this so shocked the defenders of good taste, or as they later called them, the "square heads", that they gave them the obligatory nickname of "angry young people". Once appointed, the "angry" did everything possible to justify their nickname. Declarations, militant tracts, literary scandals followed. Passions flared up. The "angry" published a joint anthology with the American opponents of conformity - the representatives of the so-called "beaten generation." The "square heads" were not left behind. The personal tragedy of Norman Mailer, who killed his wife, was attached like a ponytail to the flag of the movement. ΤΟ But last summer one of the "angry" - Kingsley Amis, appeared in the pages of "Encounter", turning to the past decade to admit to us that... ...one morning the whole commotion simply died down and disappeared silently and we all stood up, limited within our natural frameworks, to be judged again only on our creative qualities". And he launched into a sharp criticism of the philistine verbosity that had overblown and distorted things. 2 At the end of the decade, Colin Wilson himself condemned his fascination with empty grand phrases and the theoretical simplification of the conflicts that he sought in society. 3

I will be very pleased to fulfill the request of the editorial board of the magazine "Literary Thought" and tell you about the plans of our magazine. Recently, "Questions of Literature" published a similar statement by the editor-in-chief of our related literary organ in Bulgaria, Dr. P. Zarev, and the exchange of this kind of information is, in my opinion, a practical implementation of our literary contact. We can hope - things are going so well that Soviet and Bulgarian critics and literary scholars will not only be better informed about what has been done by each other, but will also more often participate in the common solution of certain research problems. That is why it is all the more important to know what problems interest each of the two countries. Our work this year will be marked by preparations for the upcoming XXII Congress of the CPSU. Since the congress will review an important historical period and adopt a new program of the party - the program of building communism - this obliges literary figures to understand the path of its development, to think more deeply about the laws of the construction of the great art of communism, about the distinctive features of this art. That is why the section "On a Contemporary Theme", with which each issue of our magazine opens, should be not only sufficient in volume, but also acutely problematic, including articles of a generalizing nature, analyzing the process of literary development in the conditions of victorious socialism. Introductory articles are planned in each issue on the work of critics and literary scholars in contemporary conditions; the titles: "Criticism and the Ideological Struggle", "Criticism and Life", Socialist Aesthetics - at a New Level", "Criticism and the Aesthetic Education of the People". The articles in the section "On a Contemporary Theme" should examine what literature has already achieved and outline further paths for a deeper artistic understanding of life, for higher mastery. Our plan includes works on the following topics: the in-depth reflection of the contemporary theme in literature (V. Survilo), labor and man (by M. Kuznetsov), combative Soviet humanism and abstract, contemplative humanism (V. Ozerov), the problem of building a new person in literary works (V. Baskakov), the moral and ethical theme in art (S. Koritnaya), Literature and village life (F. Svetov), ​​the search for new forms in art (S. Gaysaryan), the civic nature of young poetry (R. Kopilova), etc. In addition, reviews of the state of individual literary genres will be published: prose (T. Trifonova), journalism (V. Litvinov), etc. In a number of articles and publications we intend to develop the important topic of the party nature of literature and to show with concrete facts how fruitful the party's Leadership of Literature is, the new forms and methods that the party is applying with enormous benefit in today's conditions. In general, the magazine sees its task in analyzing those new features and peculiarities of the literary process and the entire course of literary life, which developed especially strongly precisely in the period of our life, marked by the decisions of the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU.

Veselin Yosifov has already written dozens of reviews, articles and critical notes, and has published a number of reports and talks. Written on different occasions and at different times, scattered across many newspapers and magazines, prefaces to publications, etc., in their entirety they outline a temperamental creative physiognomy, diverse interests and literary culture. And here, after so many years of work in the literary and critical field, he presented to the reader a very small part of them in a book entitled "Articles for Bulgarian Writers". Whether this is the best thing written by a critic is difficult to judge, but in any case it must confirm and illustrate his understanding of literature and criticism. I have heard it said about Yosifov that he has a sharp pen. And this is undoubtedly true. Because there are few of our critics who affirm or deny as sharply as he does. In all his works, "hate" and "love" are clearly visible. Therefore, for a critic like Veselin Yosifov, it seems to me, the words of S. S. Smirnov from his article "Notes on Criticism" are precisely appropriate: "The profession of criticism is perhaps the most ungrateful of all literary professions. Writers usually treat critics like drivers treat traffic police inspectors - they either respect them or fear them, but rarely love them."

Over the past five or six years, literary scholarship in the Soviet Union has been undergoing a real renewal. One only has to think how many mistakes and misconceptions, how many incorrect views have been overcome in this short time! And the timid tone, and the empirical character of Literary Criticism, and the recurrence of a narrow Rappian conception of literature, and the intolerable backwardness of aesthetic and literary-theoretical thought, and often blatantly lowered aesthetic criteria. It seems as if the times were long gone when collections of current literary-critical articles and monographic essays on Soviet writers could be counted on the fingers; when there were no comprehensive studies of new Russian and Soviet literature, and no generalizing works on realism and socialist realism were written. The books that were published did not cover all literary phenomena, the more complex ones were overlooked, and entire periods of the history of Russian literature - for example, the late 19th and early 20th centuries - remained insufficiently illuminated. A number of circumstances prevented a more objective view and a more understanding assessment of even such a phenomenon as the proletarian poetry of the first years of Soviet power, not to mention the poetry of Blok and Yesenin or the satirical work of Ilfi Petrov. Writers who had played a significant role in literary life at the time were excluded from literary development. And as a natural result of all this, along with clever and serious books, illustrative, primitive-sociological writings began to appear one after another, flooded with an abundant number of quotations, behind which hid the lack of independent creative thought, of the ability to subtly and inspiredly penetrate artistic phenomena (which is associated with a natural gift, with a vocation), of truly profound knowledge.