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Dear readers, "Literary Thought" has established itself as an authoritative journal on issues of aesthetics, literary theory, literary history and literary criticism. The journal has received recognition not only in our country but also abroad. In the coming year, the editorial board will make efforts to maintain the high level of the journal and to illuminate a number of new issues of literary history, literary theory, aesthetics and literary criticism on the pages of the journal. Problems of our literary development during separate periods will be examined, as well as artistic features in the work of prominent representatives of our literature - Karavelov, Botev, Vazov, Slaveykov, Yavorov, Aleko Konstantinov, Elin Pelin, Smirnenski, Vaptsarov and others... The journal will feature portraits of prominent contemporary writers, as well as critical assessments of the nature and features of the more significant works of art. "Literary Thought" will continue to include research works on theoretical problems of style and artistic method, of literary movements and genres, of poetry studies, of the language of artistic creation... The editorial board's concern will be to acquaint our readers with the problems that are being discussed in socialist countries and in the West. TO "Literary Thought" will continue to fight for scientific illumination of the processes of the development of contemporary art both in our country and abroad. The magazine will be useful to anyone who is interested in issues of fiction, to high school teachers, students and pupils. It will continue to be a valuable advisor to our contemporary writers in their creative work. Annual subscription - 2.60 leva. FROM THE EDITORIAL OFFICE

A passionate warrior for justice. A rebellious spirit, filled with violent hatred and contempt for the gray human existence. A social poet, carried away by the heroic example of Botev, a poet who deeply felt the miserable plight of his people. And also: a willing bandit, ready to do anything - to lay down his head for the big or the small - as long as it once captured his spirit. Among the Bulgarian creators of the artistic word, he is perhaps the most complex, the most contradictory. Thus, he is often tormented by polar experiences. And this is both in the quests of the mind and in the impulsiveness of feelings. His mind is as penetrating as that of a deep thinker, resolving questions of existence. His emotionality is subtle, perfect. His ideas are like those of a sensitive visionary. His tendency to self-analysis and reflection is constant. It is as if he is searching through himself for the self-knowledge of the human, for that which hides the bottomless depths of the spirit. Although outwardly closed, "monotonous", silent, he is constantly in motion - with his proud critical mind, with his penetrating thought, with his bold, stormy emotionality. And this has been the case since his youth. Everything about this restless man speaks of considerable spiritual strength. His thought is boldly rebellious, fiercely driven, like lightning running across the Horizon. It is flexible, internally contradictory, complex and dialectical. It reminds of a drink that is both sweet and bitter - and corrosive, and has a wisely healing taste. This thought is always driven, as if it cannot stand still. It searches, gropes, invades spheres of ever new complexities. It knows both the dizzying rise and the pain of disappointment. That's why sometimes a sad, ironic mockery shines through it.

First impressions of a writer can be deceptive, but they are physiognomic. The idea of ​​an artist that we get after our first acquaintance with him is sometimes so strong that it haunts us for life. Because the first meeting bears the features of a first discovery. Through it we come into contact with an unexpected, primary and unknown world. Anton Strashimirov entered our literature in the 1990s in a way that is remembered. He revealed himself without prefaces, without a preparatory period: directly, loudly and boldly. At the modest table of our literature of that time, he sat down without an invitation. It was as if he had been born with the self-confidence of a person who, before all others, has the right to declare about himself: "Many are called, few are called. I am one of the few called."

When, after the tragic September days of 1923, the voice of Geo Milev rose boldly and fearlessly, many were astonished by it. That irreconcilable opponent of realism and an exalted defender of the theory of "pure" art, who tirelessly propagated modernism in our country, spoke with unsuspected passion against fascism and reaction in public life, against formalism and lack of ideas in poetry. It was as if a miracle had happened, as if from the ashes of the people's struggle and suffering, like a mythical phoenix, a completely new artist had been born - a revolutionary, a democrat, a realist. In fact, no miracle had happened. Anyone who comprehensively and directly examines the poet's ideological and creative path and approaches it without prejudice will notice that there is much greater continuity between the different periods of his development than we have previously acknowledged. Geo's path begins with civic poetry, to end with it again, but already on a higher level, more generalized, directed towards a contemporary, definite social ideological direction. " These words of Georgi Bakalov contain a profound truth, much deeper than even their author himself included in them. Because G. Bakalov has in mind only a few early civic works (the poem "On a Solemn Day", the translations of revolutionary poetry published in the magazine "Borba"), and today we can support the same conclusion with many works that the poet created even during the period of his most extreme modernist C Enthusiasms.

I vividly remember an incident from the first years after the war. At that time, the Writers' Union was located on Lege Street and had only two or three modest rooms, which could hardly accommodate even its administrative and editorial departments, which were still very small at that time. Therefore, when general meetings of the members were necessary, difficulties arose and it was necessary to seek temporary shelter under someone else's roof. Thus, somewhat unexpectedly, in March 1947, the general annual meeting was held in the large concert hall of Radio Sofia.

The Fifth International Congress of Slavists recently concluded its fruitful work in our capital city. By general recognition, this is the largest scientific congress that has ever taken place in our country. The most prominent Slavologists from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Great Britain, the German Democratic Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, Denmark, Israel, Italy, Canada, Norway, Poland, Romania, the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Hungary, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Sweden, Yugoslavia, the Union of South Africa took part in its diverse scientific work. .. For a whole week, in the halls of Sofia University "Kliment Ohridski" one could hear a variety of reports on the Slavic languages ​​and their general patterns; on the place, great role and importance of Slavic literatures in the development of world literature; on new searches in the field of poetics and stylistics; about the rich past and present state of Slavic folk poetry or about the turbulent history of the Slavic peoples. . More than five hundred scientific reports were read, accompanied by over two thousand speeches. Considering that only over one thousand two hundred foreign delegates were present at the congress, in addition to the guests and the numerous Bulgarian delegation, one can judge the great activity and liveliness of the discussions. The following sections met continuously: five sections of poetry studies - Slavic literary languages, comparative-historical and typological Slavic linguistics, Slavic dialectology, interaction of Slavic and non-Slavic languages, language unions and onomastics, descriptive and applied Slavic linguistics: four sections of literary studies - general problems, Slavic literatures until the end of the 17th century, Slavic literatures in the 18th-19th centuries and modern Slavic literatures, one section of literary-linguistic problems; one section on the problems of folk art and two sections on historical and philological problems - ethnogenesis of the Slavs, the formation of Slavic states and the development of the social thought of the Slavic peoples in the Middle Ages. The national revival of the Slavic peoples. National liberation and revolutionary movement. Development of social thought in modern times. The October Socialist Revolution and the Slavic peoples. The social and cultural development of the Slavic peoples after the Second World War and problems of Slavic ethnography.

At the beginning of our century, a great change took place in Cuban literature, due to the intervention of North American imperialism in the political and economic life of the country. The appearance of the "evil of the twentieth century" in our homeland, with its negative aspects, helped to establish in the people a higher political consciousness - a consequence of the struggle against the new enemy - which found reflection in the work of writers and poets, moved by the problems of the young Cuban nation. This change became clear in the fact that from the patriotic themes arising from the wars of liberation against Spanish Caesarism, which continued, with brief intervals of apparent lull, from 1868 to 1898, considered more with nationalist passion than with political objectivity and enveloped in the sentimental breath of romanticism, our best writers moved on to the development of a theme that had its roots in the social problems of the island nation that had just been created on May 20, 1902. That is to say: from a literature that generally reflected the outbreaks of the struggle of Creole society for liberation from Spanish domination, it almost unexpectedly entered a literature that fought in the public field and now reflected both patriotic demands and the forms of class struggle.

"The whole world is a prison, and Denmark is the worst of its dungeons." Thus, through his hero Hamlet, Shakespeare defines the state of the world, the state of modernity, the essence of his era. But the prison and the dungeons can be destroyed, blown up. Even the prison of prisons - the Bastille - can be destroyed. Not suddenly, but still people have learned such revolutionary destruction. However, the dungeon into which humanity has now fallen is hopeless. There is no entrance! There is no exit! There is no life, because it is rendered meaningless by death, which erases everything. There is no death, because only the living can die. There is no path, because none of them leads out of this vicious circle. There is Absurdity, there is Nothing, there is "existence" of the world - meaningless, endless, empty. And now people do not live, but only exist.

Poets are less fortunate than prose writers in that, due to the structure of their original speech, they are more difficult to reach for a foreign reader. The translation of a poem far exceeds the difficulties posed by the translation of a work of fiction into prose. That is why there is a great discrepancy in the popularity of poets and prose writers. While a poet of great magnitude, Alberto Moravia, has long since crossed the borders of his homeland through the translations of his novels, a Giuseppe Ungaretti is known abroad to a very narrow circle of readers, mainly poets. I believe that we can more easily imagine contemporary Italian literature without Moravia than today's Italian poetry without Ungaretti. For the author of "The Buried Port", of "A Sense of Time", of "Alegria" is a moment in the development of contemporary Italian and European poetry.

In the 1890s, at the dawn of the workers' struggles in our country, two of the first socialist magazines appeared: "Den" (1891-1896, editor Ya. Sakazov) and "Delo" (1894-1896, editor V. Blagoeva). Serving the main task of the movement at that time - the dissemination of socialist ideas among the people, the magazines published translated and our materials on economic, socio-political and cultural issues, while conducting a polemic with bourgeois ideology and populism. "Den" and "Delo" also devoted a significant amount of space to literature. Particularly valuable are the articles and notes by D. Blagoev in the columns "Social Chronicle" and "Literary Notes". The literary works are mostly translated. With few exceptions, they are subordinated to the political and literary line of the magazines. In addition to excerpts from the Greek classics, the reader was able to get acquainted with Byron's poem "Manfred", with the play "An Enemy of the People" by Ibsen, with individual works by Lermontov, Schiller, Maupassant, etc. In the spirit of a sharp critical attitude towards bourgeois society, the translated stories by N. Shchedrin, V. G. Korolenko, Paul Ezi, G. Machete, Otto Jeanne Sigo, Eliza Ozheshko, V. Garshin, etc. are very widely represented.

It is known that one of the first (if not the very first) readers and judges of Botev's poems was Petko Slaveykov. Botev sent him a notebook of poems that burned in Stara Zagora along with many other manuscripts and books by Slaveykov, as his son Pencho testifies. In his newspaper "Gayda", year III, issue 19 of April 15, 1867, page 312, Botev's first published poem "Your Mother" appears. Slaveykov's words in "Macedonia", issue 33 of July 13, 1868 most likely refer to him: "I only know one of our young men with poetic abilities..." But after going to Bucharest, Botev no longer searched the pages of Slaveykov's publications. Standing on other, social-revolutionary positions, he cannot even condescendingly welcome some of the poetic confessions of Slaveykov, who, working in Constantinople under the nose of the Turkish authorities, could not accompany his fellow writers from the Transdanubian region in everything. And he was not spared by Botev in the humorous-satirical poem "Why Am I Not?"

In his new book with the above title, Zhelyu Avdzhiev examines from Marxist-Leninist positions the aesthetic originality and place of populism and populist literature in the development of Bulgarian literature. Having correctly grasped the specifics of this characteristic phenomenon, the author invests enough energy to characterize it comprehensively and to point out its previously unexposed features, to present its most important representatives in a new light. In our country, there have been no deliberate discussions on the issues of the essence of populist literature, although these issues have interested many literary scholars, as a result of which they have been quite clarified and a considerable amount of literature has accumulated. In the work under consideration, however, the problems arising around the character and essence of populist literature are analyzed for the first time in such detail and exhaustively in a separate, independent monographic study. Until now, we have not had a comprehensive literary-historical study in which to examine the original character, specific development and unique essence of populist literature in Bulgaria. The work under consideration is precisely such a study, in which the author has set himself the task of thoroughly studying this literature, and in a newer direction.

The centenary of the publication of the collection "Bulgarian Folk Songs" and the death of its compilers Dimitar and Konstantin Miladinov gave a favorable occasion to writers, historians, folklorists and linguists to shed light on new aspects of the life and literary work of the Two Brothers, to make a comprehensive assessment of their role, place and significance in the Bulgarian Revival. Nikola Tabakov's book "The Miladinov Brothers. A Biographical Sketch" appeared one year after the celebrated anniversary. The interest shown in it, however, showed that the attention of the Bulgarian reader to the two Revivalists was not accidental and jubilee. The author of the book, as is evident from the title, set himself a modest task - to popularize the life path of the Miladinovs. However, considering that in figures like Dimitar and Konstantin the biographical in most cases intertwines with the creative individual, Nikola Tabakov necessarily had to touch upon literary, folklore and other issues. Miladinovtsi have attracted Nikola Tabakov's attention for a long time. He is one of the publishers of their works, the author of articles about their magnificent work. Some controversial issues surrounding their life and activities have occupied him for a long time. And he digs through archives and old periodicals, compares data and opinions. In this way, Long-term persistence outlines in his consciousness two images from the past, which he "shares" with the reader as he "perceives" and feels them.

Iv. Astakhov, A. Egorov and other Soviet aestheticians are at the forefront of the struggle for a truly Marxist formulation of the question of aesthetics and beauty, against the subjectivist deviations of the "socialists" - a large group of theorists who have also gained popularity in our country. Our "socialists" were recently opposed by Acad. T. Pavlov (newspaper "Nar. Kultura" from 8. VI. vol. 2001). The systematic, although not large, work of Iv. Astakhov brings more clarity to the formulation of the questions. EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT THE AESTHETIC but ... WHAT IS THE AESTHETIC? The author makes an analogy with a thought of Belinsky, who wrote about his time that everyone talks about nationality, but "few realize what nationality is, although the word seems simple and understandable." And he sets out to examine the relationship between the practical and the aesthetic in order to explain its essence. Iv. Astakhov began to study the aesthetic by revealing the essence of art according to the well-known Marxian method of searching for the specificity of phenomena in their highest forms of manifestation. The author begins by examining the broad meaning of the concept of art: "In every area of ​​human activity there is such a degree of mastery of labor habits, such a skill for their application, which best corresponds to a certain goal, plan." And he concludes that art is the ability to achieve high quality, perfection" in any activity.