Книжка-2

1964 Book 2 Contents

In recent years, there has been no conversation between our contemporaries - builders of socialism and communism - that has not touched on the prevailing thought of the time, that has not turned into reflections on that turbulent and rapid movement forward that began after 1953-1956. Now we ourselves are amazed at the frozen kingdom of dogmas and ideas, at the cold majesty with which the cult had enveloped the most human, the most earthly, the ideal of social order that radiated so much light and warmth. The most democratic, the most mass teaching was threatened with becoming an inaccessible codex of once-for-all truths that inspired more trembling and fear and less subjugating with the charm hidden in them. The words of the young Marx were forgotten, that communism and humanism were synonymous, that at the center of our teaching lies the noblest idea of ​​human happiness and well-being, of the abolition of all violence, of everything ugly and inhuman, inherited from the bourgeoisie. The harsh revolutionary spirit, the awareness that history is made without mercy, that the laws of the class struggle are something inexorable and determine the choice of means, the line of behavior of revolutionaries, was exploited, brought to a one-sidedness that began to have the opposite effect. The ideology and practice of the cult of personality repelled with its brutality, brought turmoil into souls, hindered the true revolutionary education of the masses, instilled obedience and servility - the external grimace of indifference and cynicism, of wordless obedience.

Comrades, At our current meeting in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Union of Bulgarian Writers, we started an argument with the Chairman of the Committee on Culture and Art, Dr. Petar Vutov. I asked him to give me the floor later, so that I could prepare accordingly and get into tune, so to speak. But he told me: "It is not possible, Comrade Zhivkov, because the Chairman of the Union of Bulgarian Writers, Dr. Kamen Kalchev, will also speak, and other comrades will speak, and there will also be a literary program." It seems, as I understood from Dr. Vutov's information, that today's meeting will be more difficult than your solemn meeting last night. (Merry cheering. Applause). The second issue of our argument with Dr. Vutov concerns whether I should just raise a toast or deliver a speech. I do not know why Dr. Vutov, by giving me the floor, limits me and suggests that I raise a toast. I could not imagine how you, the writers, would exist if you did not write, and how we, the political and state figures, would exist if we did not deliver speeches. After all, that is how we earn our living. (Merry cheering. Applause). Dear writers, Dear comrades, Distinguished guests, I am fulfilling a pleasant assignment from the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, the people's government and my comrades - members of the Politburo and secretaries of the Central Committee of the party, who are present at this meeting. I greet you most cordially, warmly fatherly - I mean the party, friendly - I mean our comradeship and ties, on the occasion of the glorious 50th anniversary of the Union of Bulgarian Writers. (Prolonged applause).

Vazov's "Uncles" - a long-gone world of primitive idyll and naive aspirations. A world in which the last echo of the great events of a bygone era is dying down... Here the fashion for the malakof arrived 15 years late, and the name of Bonaparte, after a 45-year journey, first became known under the form of Gunaparti. At a time when Europe already knew Balzac and Tolstoy, here tears were still shed over "Long-suffering Genoveva" and "Alexandria". In order to thunder in the patriotic song "Proud Nikifor Asked", the sounds of the Marseillaise had traveled for 72 years. Somewhere in the Balkans, Philip Totyu's detachment is fighting. Botev has already written "At Farewell". But here the heroes are absorbed in the epic quarrel over a cap and compose "satires" against each other. The subject of the story has become the most insignificant thing that can offer us in the face of the liberation reality, that which history contemptuously closes its pages before.

The bombings have long been a thing of the past. They are only a memory that awakens with a distant but disturbing echo, at some new shot fired from an ambush from afar with a sniper's scope. But the time was different at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It is shaken by dynamite explosions. Individual terror penetrates not only the circles of nihilists and anarchists, but also among revolutionary organizations for national liberation. The terrible chorus of explosions tears the atmosphere of Europe, disturbs the digestion of the calm bourgeois, disrupts his enjoyment of Straussian melodies. The epicenter of these small volcanic eruptions is hidden somewhere in Petrograd and Moscow, where emperors, grand dukes and ministers from time to time fly through the air, and fear gnaws the hearts of their deputies. And although the shadow of the eternal Azev dances like a firecracker on the embers of the explosions, although their temperature never manages to ignite a revolutionary fire, they create a specific Decor of the era.

The great creators of artistic values ​​are the few people marked by fate who outlive their time, cross the borders of many countries, attract attention, evoke the admiration and gratitude of more than one generation. The great charming power and eternal significance of these creative personalities are as significant and comprehensive as the more organic the connection between artistic achievements and social behavior, between ideological and aesthetic insights and civic and ethical aspirations. Such people, like a beacon, attract the eyes of all who live with the impulses of a more intense life, are possessed by higher ideals of social progress and moral elevation. Readers of different generations and eras turn to the work of such creators in order to relate to what they have achieved as artists and citizens. Getting to know their mental and emotional world, their trials, insights and conquests serves as a support and prerequisite for further development of national and universal literature and culture. Such a charming personality is undoubtedly the great citizen-humanist and writer-realist Aleko Konstantinov.

The 125th anniversary of the birth of Rayko Zhinzifov is a good occasion to look at him again as a poet and to indicate the place of his poetry in our literature, more precisely in our literary history, insofar as this place cannot yet be considered fully established. Our interest in our Revival, a truly important era in the development of our people, on the one hand, and our love for the literary heritage of those who created Bulgarian poetry, on the other, are a constant stimulus to return to his poetic image, to seek a living or historical meaning for his poems, to republish his poetic heritage, despite the voices of denial of his poetic gift that have been heard more than once. Assessments of Zhinzifov's poetry have been very contradictory since its appearance. While Lyuben Karavelov greeted the "New Bulgarian Collection", published in 1863, with a negative review (printed in the newspaper "Bulgarian Bee", issues 7, 8 and 9), Vasil D. Stoyanov pointed to its author as the most gifted among the young poets. This high assessment of Zhinzifov, given in an early critical study on contemporary Bulgarian literature, which remained unknown in our country because it was printed in Czech, in the central organ of Czech science and culture of that time - the Journal of the Czech Museum, is interesting. "Zhinzifov is still very young - writes here the future secretary of the Bulgarian Literary Society, which grew into the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences after the Liberation - and we can hope that in due time he will become a famous Bulgarian poet, and a lyrical poet, if Amor and the Bulgarian Villas do not abandon him. "1

It is already difficult to say anything more and original about "Hamlet". His character, ideological peace, attitude towards the world, towards others and towards himself, have long found one or another consideration in the vast literature on tragedy. Every era, with its old and its turbulent new ideas, has wanted to look into the wonderful and mysterious soul of Hamlet. It has wanted to make him its close friend, acquaintance, a fighter for what it desired, or a contemplator of what it dreamed of. Thus, many and different "theories" have arisen on Hamlet and his eternal and "misunderstood" image. The philosophical-idealistic, psychological and aesthetic concepts, which have reflected different worldviews and artistic tastes, seem to have said a lot and yet far from the whole truth about Hamlet. For many, Hamlet has been a source of intellectual exaltation or poetic experience. Hamlet is a world. And in every new effort to reveal and exhaust this world there is something "quixotic." It is an expression of the noble aspiration to approach the truth about it and about ourselves, to delve into the eternal Movement of life, into the human soul.

The problem of literary ties, of the general cultural contact between the Slavic peoples at the V International Congress of Slavists was devoted to a number of reports and scientific communications. These influences were considered on a pan-Slavic or national level, with a view to a specific writer or work. Regularities were indicated, literary phenomena and features were studied. A huge amount of factual material was presented, which will make it possible to clarify controversial and indisputable concepts. Some of the reports, regardless of their concreteness in posing and developing individual questions, point to analogies and a more creative look into the essence and specificity of the literary process.

At the 18th International Congress of Slavists, the issues of Russian classical literature were widely discussed in accordance with its role and significance among other Slavic and non-Slavic literatures. The reports were numerous, with a different range of problems and appearance, written from different ideological and methodological positions. They nevertheless lend themselves to a certain degree of classification and grading. The first group of reports includes those that treated the most general problems of Russian classical literature (D. D. Blagoi, Dr. Nedelkovich). Their main task was to reveal the reasons that conditioned the emergence of this very important stage in the general centuries-old life of Russian literature, to establish some of its basic regularities, the main lines of its development, its appearance, place and significance. A central place is occupied by the clarification of the reasons for the emergence, development and demise of literary trends in their complex interrelation. Comparison with the corresponding moments and features of Western literatures is an important feature of these reports, which contributes to their greater completeness and justification of the theses. The authors of another group of reports (F. Seely, V. Velchev, B. Kreft, L. Niro, D. Grishin, E. Krag, I. Blankoff) have focused their attention on the study of very specific issues in the work of individual Russian writers or their mutual influences. Their goal in principle is to bring new moments into the clarification of the creative physiognomy of one or another writer, to shed light on controversial or insufficiently clear problems of his individual works, to show in a new aspect some aspects of his ideological and aesthetic concepts, to focus attention on some features of his style. The existence of such reports is justified by the need to develop specific problems, without which large generalizations are impossible. The presentation of a fairly large number of such reports, however, led in this case to a certain deviation from the main problems that should have been discussed in depth at the congress. A significant number of reports dealt in detail with the relations of Russian literature with other literatures (N. Krutikova, G. Dimov, T. Gane, V. Edgerton, Alb. Kovacs, etc.). Here, an important place is occupied not by the study of direct, immediate borrowings, but by the fundamental questions of the exchange and assimilation of artistic and theoretical experience between Russian literature and a number of Slavic and some non-Slavic literatures.

The beginning of New Bulgarian poetry is usually associated with the first decades of the 19th century, with the names of Dimitar Popski, G. T. Peshakov, and others. It is also accepted that "new Bulgarian poetry arose outside the traditions of medieval literature. The writers who in the 19th century laid the foundation for modern Bulgarian poetry neither knew Slavic-Bulgarian poetry nor learned from it. Their gaze was directed towards other models - Russian, French, Greek, Serbian, Romanian poetry, on the one hand, and Bulgarian folk song, on the other".1 Of course, it is correct to believe that new Bulgarian poetry did not develop in isolation, on its own, but in close contact with the poetry of neighboring and more distant European peoples - Russian, Serbian, Greek, Romanian, French, etc., from which it was enriched both in form and content.

In the District State Archives - V. Tarnovo there is a "Diary of Panayot Vassilev Typographov" (Fund 65, archive unit 221), in which we find interesting information about the public figure and teacher Petko R. Slaveykov. The author of this diary briefly described his life and intended what was written for his heirs. He was born in Tarnovo in March 1854. He studied until the first grade and in 1866, when his father died, he left school. His mother sent him to learn the abadji craft, to which he apprenticed for 4-5 months. Then he met P. R. Slaveykov and the following excerpt from his diary tells about the connections of Panayot V. Typographov with Slaveykov in Constantinople and Edirne.

Every time I look up at the bookshelf where I keep everything without which it is difficult for me to imagine my everyday life, my gaze involuntarily falls on a small collection of poems in dove color, already faded by the years, which bears the familiar title "Birds in the Night". Miraculously surviving the bombings and the endless journeys from apartment to apartment, this collection of poems with an Art Nouveau cover, on which the bird of wisdom stands with calm self-confidence on a large letter P, contrasts somewhat unusually with its colorful young sisters and hides among them with a slightly old-fashioned shyness, not particularly characteristic of our time. Born in another era, very different from the current one, it comes with its presence not only to resurrect in my mind a bygone stage of our literature, but also to remind me of my first contact with Nikolay Liliev - one of the poets who had a certain influence on the spiritual biography of my generation.

Condemned souls have always been Dimitar Dimov's element. Even in "Tyu Tyu" they are depicted with more mastery, more precisely and in detail than the heroes, but the bearers of the new morality. In the plays "Women with a Past" and "The Guilty" the images of people from the old world are also more successful and convincing. And in "Holiday in Arco Iris" the author takes on something new, which has not been posed as a central problem in his work so far. The main dramatic theme in Dimov's new play is exactly the opposite, contrasting to that of "Condemned Souls". Again the same reality: the events of the civil war in Spain, communists, anarchists, Francoists, Catholics; a woman - haughty and beautiful, born to experience a terrible love, which must open her eyes to the world; bullets, death, etc. In "Condemned Souls" Dimov has revealed a specific side of his fiction talent: to penetrate comprehensively and fully and at the same time with great effect into the spiritual depths of characters whose social and personal fate is devoid of prospects. He sees prospects only outside them - in social reality. Now, in the play "Rest in Arco Iris" the author will fight to save every more or less doomed soul. The events in Spain come to his aid. Centuries-old relationships are being destroyed. Soul layers are being shifted. A radical change is being introduced into people's lives and understandings. The plot material is truly rich and beneficial for creating a drama with a significant social plot, bright dramatic characters and modern lighting.

The breadth of the concept of history in its present sense in itself determines the complexity of the task that confronts the compilers of works on the history of literature. Solving this task requires, above all, an exceptionally competent penetration into the spirit of the time about which one writes and into the spirit of the time in which one writes. For we can be less and less satisfied with literary histories that are reduced to stating facts and commenting on events, proceeding from literary works. We are talking about something significantly more complex: showing literature as an expression of spiritual, social and economic processes in their progressive development. This means that literary history has radically changed its role and purpose, trying to penetrate deeply to the foundations of social phenomena, creative impulses, etc. Objectivist registration can no longer be its distinguishing feature. It now aims to provide a broad panorama of the literary and spiritual life of peoples in different eras, to shed light on literary, and hence social, sociological problems from our point of view. It is true that literary history has its own methods and literary creation is examined in it with different intentions than poetics examines them. But in its current state, literary history already has a significantly comprehensive and generalizing character and connects a number of defining elements from individual literary sciences. If we decide to look for general historical works on Slavic literatures, written from such an aspect, they will turn out to be very few. And one of them, which in some respects strives to meet these requirements, is the two-volume "Essays on the History of Slavic Literatures" by Prof. Dr. Emil Georgiev.

The ever-increasing differentiation and narrow specialization of the various branches of knowledge is a well-known and widely recognized fact today. Among the literary-philological scientific disciplines - clearly separated from the so-called "textual criticism" and paleography - textology already has its own independent scientific subject. At present - and especially that part of it that studies the monuments of medieval literature - it is not only an "applied discipline", but a foundation on which the precise observations and final results of literary history are built. From this fruitful starting point, all the textological assessments of the famous Soviet literary historian-medievalist D. S. Likhachev were made in his new voluminous book, entitled "Textology" - the first systematic exposition in the USSR of textological problems as a new part of modern philology.