Книжка-3

1961 Book 3 Contents

As can be seen from the planned events and from the very agenda of the current scientific session, the importance attached to the anniversary year in honor of the 700th anniversary of the Boyana frescoes is great, and this is completely understandable. Like all the planned events, the scientific session with its rich and important agenda poses a number of extremely complex and extremely timely questions to all of us. This will be seen from the very content of the reports. Here I will allow myself to dwell a few words on the significance of our session and in general on the anniversary celebration of the 700th anniversary of the Boyana frescoes. The entire celebration and especially the scientific session have the task of clarifying some issues of general ideological and political importance. These include, first of all, the question of our past and present attitude towards the Byzantine cultural heritage and, in particular, towards Byzantine art from the time before and after the Boyana frescoes. Two essential mistakes can be made here - one of a cosmopolitan and national-nihilistic nature, the other of a nationalistic-chauvinistic nature. There have been, and still are, historians, archaeologists, art critics who claim that the Boyana frescoes and our painting of that time in general had an essentially Byzantine character, developed along the path along which the art of the Byzantine Empire of that time developed. Insofar as some of these authors are forced to speak of a certain originality, originality, specific national character of our art, and in particular of the Boyana frescoes, they still do this as additional reservations. In this way, they essentially underestimate everything that our people and artists have brought to the common treasury of the then and later fine art and of the then and later culture in general. No matter how such views are motivated, no matter what evidence is sought in their defense, the fact remains that they essentially mean a denial and underestimation of the creative originality and value of our native art, and in particular the Boyana frescoes. From the content of almost all the reports, as well as from the film that we will see, we will have the opportunity to convince ourselves that such a view is incorrect and cannot be accepted as a guiding methodological principle in our further historical and specifically aesthetic research and assessments of our native artistic heritage, and in particular the Boyana frescoes.

In recent years, we have witnessed a positive phenomenon in our literature. This is the active participation of a number of fiction writers and poets in the construction of our socialist-realist dramaturgy. Dimitar Dimov wrote "Women with a Past" and "Who is to blame", Iliya Volen - "Wolf Times", Ivan Peychev - "Every Autumn Evening", Valeri Petrov - When the Roses Dance", Ivan Radoev - "The Small World" and "Justinian Coin", Emil Manov - "Conscience", G. Dzhagarov - The Doors are Closing", Kl. Tsachev - "Of Much Love" and "The Last of the Squad", Boyan Balabanov - Before the Storm", N. Fol - "Black Earth", T. Genov - Monument", M. Grubeshlieva and N. Lukanov - "On the Small Pier", P. Slavinsky and B. Danovski - the comedy "Secrets", M. Velichkov - The Long Tooth, Vl. Polyanov - "Sunny Paths", V. Neshkov "The Secret of the Doomed". Some completely unknown until recently literary workers, such as Nikola Rusev, Ivan Shopov, Ivan Ostrikov, K. Strandzhev, Leo Konforti, D. Bochev, also have good performances. Our famous playwrights K. Zidarov, G. Karaslavov, M. Petkanova, L. Strelkov - Blockade", "Ivan Shishman", "Stone in the Marsh", "Unforgettable Days" also show great activity. Without putting an equal sign in the plays of the mentioned authors, we must emphasize above all the hopeful revival. The thematic range is expanding, some of the playwrights, although still timidly, are turning to important problems of life, in a number of works they attract the noble anxiety for the fate of the contemporary, the figurative poetic system of thinking. Our dramaturgy is now freed from occasional authors and is becoming the work of the writer. We cannot but respect the new searches, the striving for independence, for diversity of stage techniques, for originality. Unfortunately, these new tendencies are quite contradictory. Next to the new, the fresh, the truly beautiful, we find alongside the manifestations of a misunderstood tradition, of noisy rhetoric and heroism and elements of mannerism, even of posturing, an ambition for innovation, which does not always harmonize with creative possibilities; and finally, a completely unjustified negligence towards the enduring laws of drama. I think that the development of our national socialist-realist theatre suffers both from conservatism of stage form, from traditionalism, and from mannerism.

"If you happen to be passing by Shtarkovtsi, and you remember the house of Grandpa Dicho's Cooperative, you will recognize it by the tall ash tree and the yellow pint of brandy, hung on the tree's peg. When you unhook it to drink, you cross yourself, like any Christian... Cross yourself, and say: Dispute and luck, good fortune and prosperity, and good agreement at home... - So say, drink as much as your heart desires! That's how Grandpa Dicho loves!" Everything that Mikhalaki Georgiev wants to instill about life, morality and man leads us to the gate of Grandpa Dicho's Cooperative. Grandpa Dicho's Cooperative is that idealized world by the writer, where goodness, labor and agreement, like three inseparable brothers from fairy tales, do not allow any human evil or evil thought to penetrate. Here one can feel completely happy and secure, because in the inseparability of good, of work and agreement is enclosed not only wealth, but also all the wisdom of life, with which grandfather Dicho, without violence and without coercion, governs his numerous family. And It would be strange if Mikhalaki Georgiev - this such a warm-hearted good-natured man, who wrote his stories mainly in the 90s of the last century - remained a stranger to the charitable spirit of populism, whose social dreams dominated during this era. Like his fellow writers, he idealized the old peasant cooperative. In it he also saw the solid foundations of folk life, on which the moral essence of the Bulgarian was formed with the sure hand of time - what the new inhuman time wants to destroy. To Grandpa Dichova's farm with the tall ash tree by the gate, Mihalaki Georgiev always returns when he seeks a way out of the vices of his cruel times.

Populist ideas penetrated Bulgarian literature in the late 1980s and mainly in the 1990s. Under the influence of the populist ideology, adopted by Russian public figures and populist writers, some writers created works that make up our populist literature. This literature is limited in scope and not particularly rich in the variety of genres, ideas and images. There are not always strictly defined "pure" populist frameworks. And with the gradual experience of populist ideas in the first decade of the new century, it ceases to be a topical issue in our literary reality. Therefore, the term "populist literature" should be accepted and understood quite conditionally and with reservations. The important thing is that the works of populist writers excited contemporaries. Created in that era when the overall national appearance of our post-liberation realistic literature was taking shape, they diversified its ideological and aesthetic wealth, contributing to the strengthening of democracy and humanism within it.

The creative development of Petko Slaveykov provides the literary historian with exceptionally rich material on the socio-political and cultural conditions under which our fiction from the period of the Revival was created and developed so rapidly. In the 1940s, when the future author of "Don't Sing to Me" and "Cruelty Has Broken Me" was developing a strong ambition to be partly useful to his people, our Revival poetry did not yet have its own national artistic traditions. Petko Slaveykov read with enthusiasm Paisius's History, the attempts of our first poets and every new Bulgarian book, he was inspired by the patriotism of their authors, which also ignited in him a passion for literary activity. His constant connection with the people, the diligent collection of folk songs, proverbs and fairy tales, his own life as a worker and teacher gave rise to many ideas in the poet, opening up to him a variety of themes and plots for artistic creativity. Slaveykov looked for examples in his native literature from which to learn; he consulted with his acquaintances and friends; he read with interest the Greek, Serbian and Russian books available to him. The knowledge he gained from his native patriotic literature happily are supplemented by that useful literary reading that other national literatures offer him, especially the Russian one. "Dear Fellow Citizens!" - he addressed his compatriots in an announcement from 1847. - The benefit of reading books is obvious, and I know the scarcity of books in the Bulgarian language. This has grieved me daily, it has prompted me to take up my pen to bring the Writer Kurganov, the eleventh printed book in Russia, without the grammar, and I have divided it, as it is divided, into two parts, because it is a very large book. And I am now publishing an announcement only for the first part, which will have, in addition to various moralizing, useful and conversational stories... some rules for poetry (k. m.) and will also be embellished with some translated poems of mine. Petko Slaveykov did not manage to publish his translation of Kurganov's "Pistol". But it is also clear from the cited Announcement that the same Slaveikov, who worked hard to master poetic mastery, in 1847 had at hand some rules for poetry. From that moment on, Russian fiction occupied an increasingly important place in his creative development.

In connection with the celebration of the 550th anniversary of the Leipzig University "Karl Marx", we were interested, among other things, in those prominent personalities who were its students. We also came across the fact that the distinguished figure of the Bulgarian revival Ivan Andreev Bogorov was a student at the University of Leipzig and we tried to get to know his activities and his life in more detail. In the material available to us on the issue that interested us the most - Bogorov's activities in Leipzig - very little is written. Only Veliko Yordanov gives some data about Bogorov in Leipzig in his book "Leipzig and the Bulgarians". We tried to find more material about Bogorov's stay in our city. But apart from the data from the register of the University of Leipzig, we could not find any other materials about him. The most important event in this period of the life of the famous enlightener is the publication of the first Bulgarian newspaper. Bogorov, who was born in 1818, had already established a reputation as a tireless fighter for the cultural progress of his people by the time he came to Leipzig, as a teacher, folklorist, and publisher of textbooks for Bulgarian schools. He was even known in scientific circles in Germany. This is evidenced by an article in the Slavic magazine Jahrbücher für slawische Literatur, Kunst und Wissenschaft on the occasion of the publication of the first issue of the newspaper "Bulgarian Eagle". In this article, Bogorov introduced himself as the author of a collection of Bulgarian folk songs and proverbs and as the translator of a geography textbook. Bogorov's most important work from the time before his stay in Leipzig was undoubtedly the publication of "First Bulgarian Grammar" in 1844 in Bucharest, with which he dealt a strong blow to the representatives of the conservative "Slavonic-Bulgarian school". Bogorov's stay in Bucharest turned out to be connected with his arrival in Leipzig. In Bucharest, he had connections with Bulgarian merchants, who probably had permanent trade relations with Leipzig as a result of a visit to the Leipzig Fair. They promised him material support and advised him to continue his education at the University of Leipzig. To determine the time when Bogorov arrived in Leipzig, we can judge from two facts that are known to us. The first is the year of the publication of his grammar. It was published in 1844 in Bucharest. In this regard, Bogorov writes in his autobiography that he personally ordered the grammar to be printed. (.... . so after leaving Veta Zagora I went to Bucharest, where I had a booklet called "First Bulgarian Grammar" printed). He used the money collected from the sale of the grammar for his trip to Leipzig. From this we can conclude that Bogorov must have stayed in Bucharest for a relatively long time after the publication of the grammar. The second fact we can rely on is an invoice from the printing house Breitkopf und Hertel, found by Veliko Yordanov, which was issued for the printing of the first issue of "Bulgarian Eagle" and bears the date April 5, 1846.

The psychology of artistic creation in general and of literary creation in particular is a field that has been relatively least developed by Marxist-Leninist art science. Until recently, in the Soviet Union, the country where Marxist-Leninist aesthetics and literary theory were mainly created, almost nothing was written about the problems of the psychology of literary creation. Moreover, for a long time these problems were not posed as tasks for scientific research. This circumstance could not but create a certain void in the science of literary creation and, in particular, in the theory of literature. The lag in this respect becomes even more obvious when we consider that bourgeois science pays great attention to the psychology of artistic creation and it is in this area that it has created the most complex labyrinth of groundless philosophical speculations. Of course, it would be wrong to say that Soviet literary studies have done nothing to clarify the problems of the psychology of literary creation. Such a statement would be incorrect. Even for pre-revolutionary Russian literary studies, these questions were of considerable interest. It is enough to mention the collections "Questions of the Theory and Psychology of Creativity", published under the reaction of B. Lezin from 1907 to 1923 in Kharkov, and the wide range of problems covered in them, to convince ourselves of the truth of this statement. These collections, as well as individual books, for example, works such as those by S. Gruzenberg (Psychology of Creativity, Minsk, 1923 and "Genius and Creativity" 1924), clearly show that even then the mentioned problems, regardless of the erroneous methodological foundations on which they were placed, were understood as an important part of the general science of literature.

In two meetings (on February 2 and 9 of this year) of the Scientific Council at the Institute of Literature, the work of Emil Georgiev was discussed - "The Flourishing of Bulgarian Literature in the 9th-10th Centuries". The work of Prof. Emil Georgiev is dedicated to one of the most brilliant periods in the development of Bulgarian medieval literature - the time after baptism and the era of Tsar Simeon, when as a result of the work of Cyril and Methodius, Slavic writing and enlightenment were widely spread and conditions were created for diverse literary activity. The author has directed his efforts towards a more complete and comprehensive study of the problems of Old Bulgarian literature from contemporary Marxist-Leninist positions. According to the reviewer Dimitar Angelov, the author has succeeded to a large extent in connecting the development of Bulgarian literature in the 9th-10th centuries with the overall socio-economic development of Bulgaria. Emil Georgiev considers the creation of Bulgarian literature as a continuous historically conditioned process. The reviewer points out some shortcomings of an ideological, methodological and factual nature. D. Angelov believes that the author has overdone his positive assessment of feudal ideology and has not paid enough attention to the role of the social-heretical movements that developed in the 10th century in Bulgaria. The reviewer lists some moments and points of view in the work that are not sufficiently proven and bear objection. In conclusion, D. Angelov noted that the work of Em. Georgiev is a serious scientific achievement, an undisputed success, and its publication will arouse great interest. The other reviewer Bonyu St. Angelov also gives high marks to the work of Em. Georgiev. The main task of the author is not only to reveal the flowering of Bulgarian literature during its “Golden Age”, but at the same time to show the images of individual writers and to connect the literary process with the socio-political life of the era. According to the reviewer, a characteristic feature of the work is that the author enters into a dispute with many other scholars and defends his point of view with arguments, consistently promotes his concept of the life and work of Cyril and Methodius and emphasizes their influence on the writers who followed them.

On February 25 of this year, the Scientific Council at the Institute of Literature reviewed the first volume of the collection "Problems of Children's Literature". The material of the collection is divided into three sections: General Questions", "Essays and Studies" and From the History of the Periodical Press". Reviewer Simeon Sultanov finds the initiative of the authors, who for the first time in our country have undertaken to compile a collection of studies and essays on the issues of children's literature, commendable. Although very late, this collection still does not cover all authors who have written for children, and does not exhaust all issues of children's literature, since little work has been done in this direction for years. Sultanov examines the three sections of the collection in detail. The first includes the articles: "Towards a Systematic and Basic Study of Children's Literature" by Krastyo Genov, "The Optimistic Character of Children's Literature" by Ivan Popivanov, and "The Educational Significance of a Fantastic Fairy Tale" by Zhecho Atanasov. The reviewer finds that Genov's article has a programmatic character and identifies a number of problems facing Bulgarian literary scholars. Sultanov points out the need for serious additions to this article, especially on issues related to our contemporary children's literature and artistic mastery. In his notes on Popivanov's article, the reviewer points out the interesting and important problem of optimism in children's literature and finds that the author does not hold his thesis convincingly enough that "critical realism cannot be spoken of in works for the youngest" and recommends not to get carried away with the analysis of some poems. Atanasov's study, which from the point of view of the educator poses the problem of the educational nature of the fairy tale, could have greater value if the author's thoughts were deepened and illustrated with more interesting examples from children's literature.

On March 2, 2011, the Scientific Council of the Institute of Literature discussed Boyan Nichev's work on Branislav Nušić. Reviewers Emil Georgiev and Kujo Kuev highlighted the merits of the work, in which B. Nichev demonstrated his research and analytical talent and ability to richly illustrate and document the creative path of the Serbian writer. In their assessments, they noted that the author successfully coped with the difficult task and that for the first time in scientific literature a more comprehensive study of Nušić's work will appear. Another, equally important feature of the work is that the author worked with inspiration and demonstrated a healthy aesthetic sense. The reviewers recommended that B. Nichev make some compositional corrections, focus his attention on a certain proportionality of the sections, analyze more fully Nušić's great comedies of recent times, highlight more shortcomings in the Serbian writer's work, which are present even in his best works, etc. Eight people participated in the discussions.

On May 10 this year, the Section of Slavic and Western European Literatures reviewed the work of Wanda Smohovska-Petrova "Two Images of Revolutionary Mothers and the Relationship Between Them". (T. T. Yezh "At Dawn" and "Mother" by M. Gorky). In his review of the work under review, Ivan Tsvetko pointed out that the author had focused her attention on a very interesting and previously unasked question. To prove her thesis, she cited all the known material. Smohovska points out that Gorky knew the novel "At Dawn", at the center of which the popular Polish writer of his time, Teodor Tomasz Yezh (Zygmund Milkowski), placed the image of a Bulgarian mother-heroine, created by him based on impressions of grandmother Tonka Obretenova. Pointing to Gorky's review of Yezh's book from 1899, Smokhovskaya finds a number of analogous situations in the process of inner growth in Gorky's and Yezh's heroines. The revolutionization of the consciousness of both women transforms, changes their emotional life. The author notes that the inner changes in them arise in the same way - they begin in both cases under the influence of their sons. Maternal love turns out to be the conductor through which the first sparks of revolutionary truth pass for them. The reviewer pointed out that analyzing the inner development of Two Images, Smokhovskaya does not show the slightest tendency to simplify or coarsen the problem posed. On the contrary, she sees it in its complexity and multifacetedness. Taking into account the essential differences between the two writers, the author only suggests that the image of Yezhov's grandmother Mokra could not fail to impress an artist like Gorky, and perhaps it was he who gave the first impetus, the first impulse for the great proletarian artist to place at the center of his novel precisely a mother who becomes a revolutionary under the influence of her son, that "in the crowded line of Russian women-mothers and revolutionaries - prototypes of Gorky's mother, headed by Anna Kirilova Zolomova", Yezhov's grandmother Mokra also occupies a peculiar, special place, whose prototype is the Bulgarian revolutionary grandmother Tonka. Smokhovska, of course, takes into account both the different ideological content and the different generalizing power of the two images. Whenever necessary, she draws attention to the fact that while Yezh is fighting against national slavery, Gorky is talking about the social liberation of the working class and the working people from the yoke of capitalism. Pointing out that the issue under consideration in Smohovska is posed quite legitimately and completely scientifically, Ivan Tsvetkov drew attention to some corrections and improvements to the work. In his opinion, one should consider whether such a detailed presentation of the image of Grandma Mokra is necessary. He also made a proposal to more specifically connect the assessment of "Mother" with Lenin's statement about the novel and to emphasize even more the expansive meaning of the image in Gorky.