Hristo Nedyalkov

The letter we are publishing, owned by Dr. Lyuben Tanchev from Plovdiv, sheds light on Lora's attitude towards Yavorov. Six years have passed since their acquaintance (1906), Mina Todorova has long been deceased, and at the beginning of 1912, a friendship was established between Lora and Yavorov. But it is interesting to note that a few days after writing the letter to her aunt in Plovdiv, she sent a letter to Yavorov, full of despair and pessimism. The two letters are completely opposite in mood. While the first one exudes a healthy confidence that the friendship with the poet will end successfully, in the second Lora attacks him unfoundedly, calling him cruel and unjust. In her letters to her relatives, however, she resolutely declares that she will link her fate with Yavorov, and admires his character. She hastens to introduce him to the family circle, instructs her aunt to receive him well, to send her letters through him, etc. To confirm that she truly knew him, she compares him with her father Petko Karavelov, deceased at that time, whom Lora greatly respected and loved. It is known that P. Karavelov took great care of the education and upbringing of his children. And Lora rightly writes that he gave his soul for them. But as much as Lora had tender feelings of love and gratitude towards her father, she was as wary of her mother. She without hesitation declares that she has no intention of listening to her, accuses her of ruining her youth and, by force, forcing her to marry Dryankov. This time Lora decided to vigorously fight for her happiness. After Laura's death (1913), her mother Ekaterina Karavelova contributed too much to the accusations against the post, to his bitterness, which led him to suicide on October 16, 1914.

Poet, fabulist, feuilletonist, author of aphorisms, epigrams, travelogues, memoirs, literary and theatrical articles, works for children, Dimitar Podvarzachov is truly a complex nature, distinguished by his bright creative individuality. Having spent a difficult childhood as an orphan, nurtured with the ideals of the Narodniks, with his first poems (printed in "Na dezhda" and "Bulgarian Collection") he attracted the attention of Iv. Vazov, who assigned the young poet Nedezdi. In his literary collection "Rays of Poetry" 1901, G. Bakalov included poems by Podvarzachov with emphasized critical realism. "Among the poems of Podvarzachov's young works - he writes in the preface - they are distinguished by greater artistic endurance and originality, above all they meet the most important requirement of democratic and humane creativity." Having fallen under the influence of populist-socialist ideas at the beginning of the century, the young poet later deviated from this solid realistic beginning, his poetry became impoverished of militant thoughts and moods, and in a number of his works he sang not of the people's suffering, but of his personal woes. This is evident from the titles of the poems "Sorrow", "Without a Path", "Abyss", "Curse", "Grave", etc., printed in the magazines "Khudozhnik", "Savremennik" and in the magazine "Zveno" edited by him, 1914, written in the spirit of symbolist poetry. But Hr. Radevski rightly claims: "Symbolist motifs are not very characteristic of him. Podvorzachov is above all a humorist, an active judge of social struggles, and the poetry of symbolism is characterized precisely by alienation from public life" ("Art and Criticism", 1939, vol. 8). Podvarzachev did not close himself off in the knightly castles of solitude, did not enclose himself with icy walls, did not escape from the crowds. He lived with the anxieties of his time and established himself as a poet, humorist and satirist. When the first years of our century were at their brightest, D. Podvarzachov edited several humorous publications ("Bulgaria", 1904-1909, "Osa", 1909-1910, Smyah", 1911-1914), where he included humorous works of a markedly satirical nature. This already clearly speaks of the poet's lively connection with the people. The only book he published during his lifetime, the collection of feuilletons "How the Devil Reads the Gospel" (signed with his most popular pseudonym, Hamlet Prince of Denmark), confirms the idea that the poet valued his humorous works above all - he established himself as one of our most prominent fabulists and feuilletonists.

With "Two in the New Town" Kamen Kalchev enters the spiritual world of the ordinary person, reaches psychological generalizations, subordinated to a broad ideological concept. K. Kalchev proves that he is a writer with a wide range of creative interests, that he discovers something more in the thoughts and feelings of people of our time, presents the drama of the person from our society. His hero is placed in a contemporary setting, and this already determines his behavior, revealed in the aspect of social development. There is nothing tragic if the hero experiences his drama, the main thing is in the name of what he does this, what he is guided by. And Marin Maslarski is guided by humane feelings, by the thought of being useful, of being a person above all.

The name of Nikolai Khrelkov was very popular in the 1930s among progressive students, who revered the writer as a consistent proletarian poet. Back then, we collected donations for him and dreamed of seeing him one day. For me, this came true in 1946, when for four years I had the opportunity to visit the poet in Gorna Banya as a collaborator on the cultural page of the weekly "Fighting Tuberculosis" that he edited. Himself suffering from tuberculosis, Khrelkov waged a stubborn battle with the "heavy social capitalist legacy," as he jokingly put it.