Minko Nikolov

Existentialism, as a trend in Western philosophy after the First World War and as a circle of ideas on which a certain literary practice is based, is in its essence a typical product of a doomed social system and a crisis of public psyche. And although existentialists make desperate efforts to present their problematic as universal, dictated by the great tremors of our modernity, they cannot hide the connection of their inconsolable and nightmarish prophecies with the hopeless state of the imperialist world. In all its diversities and wings - from the Christian-philanthropic of Gabriel Marcel or the mystical Orthodox of the Russian émigré Nikolai Berdyaev to the atheistic of Jean-Paul Sartre - existentialism sounds an alarm about the fate of the individual and seeks salvation for modern man, abandoned in tragic solitude and helplessly faced with the dark and incomprehensible, destructive elements of our century. But in vain do the prophets of world catastrophe abstract the individuality of the contemporary from any public and social dependence, in vain do they isolate it in the abstract and absolute categories of fear, hopelessness and Nothingness. If we lift the veil of ghostly abstractions and nebulous, universal incantations, we will not see modern man in general, but the man of a certain social system, the crisis man of a society without economic and life security, who himself does not know how to curb the demons of atomic civilization and technology, threatening at any moment to attack him and carry him into non-existence.

The latest trends of modernism gravitate towards an ever more decisive liberation from the forms of the concrete-historical, the objective and the real. They give way to the tendency towards abstract art, which deprives them of the living colours of artistic diversity, pushes them towards the embodiment of "abstracted essences", outside their individual form of manifestation and existence. Combined with a self-serving technicalism, abstractionism ignores the "sensuous-objective and aesthetic reality" and condemns the human image in art to disintegration. It is known how wide the terrain has been conquered by the abstractionists in modern painting. From the canvases of many contemporary artists, figurativeness is defiantly banished and the artist's independent interest in his technical, optical and color problems is proclaimed, through which he establishes contact with the spirit of the times and its scientificity. The artist skips the figurative, the intermediary link between the idea and the embodiment, in order to reach directly to the hidden substance, to the abstract meaning. And then, under the incomprehensible tangles, under the chaotic color spots, lines and geometric figures, we read designations such as: "Vertical", "Strive", "Expression", "Passion". This is a leap straight into the kingdom of abstract essences, of the "thinkable" - without the old-fashioned mediation of objects. One of the clever theorists and practitioners of this tendency in literature, Hermann Broch, writes: In all isms, ultimately, a common process is evident: the empirical and accidental object is replaced by something whose ultimate roots reach back to the logical and to the Platonic idea. And since Plato in his project for the ideal state did not allocate an enviable place to artists, since they deal with the crude, empirical, sensible forms of reality, with the "shadows" of things, moving away from them from the higher and ideal essence, from the world of ideas, now his modern followers have decided to save the honor of art by freeing it from its objective language and elevating it to the rank of a medium that speaks directly to the mysterious world of essences, of ideas. But since art can hardly get rid of its "double" - the objective, the individual and the concrete, otherwise it will cease to be art - "the functions of the double" are now fundamentally rethought. The image loses its relative independence as a reflection of objective things and becomes solely. . a symbol of the subjective. It falls into the clutches of the free play of associations, of the whims of subjectivism, of a deforming architectonics. The objective-sensible receives a new tonality, since the reality of the object becomes a mere substitute for the abstract and a performer of ornamental functions. Therefore, the object can be raped and deformed to infinity" (H. Broch). In the last decade, abstractionism has increased its ambitions, spreading its tentacles to literature as well. It wants to provide a theoretical and cognitive basis for its experiments, conducting them under the sign of a newest, ultra-contemporary artistic knowledge". Its strangest creations are pretentiously defined as a cipher of the Modern Soul", as an adequate expression of modern man. Because this man represents one. "... a non-existent, formless, intangible, but suffering being" (Claude Mauriac).

Brecht's penetration into the individual socialist countries has its own history. First came the interest in the writer as an innovator who broke with the canons and opened new horizons for revolutionary art. Then - at different intervals - followed the translations and the first productions of Brecht's plays. Today, the dividing wall of some dogmatic postulates that could not fit Brecht into the framework of socialist realism has been finally demolished. The experience of the original playwright is being studied and summarized. From the phase of guesses, he passes into the phase of research, which aims to acquaint us with all the values ​​of contemporary world literature. Over the past two or three years, in-depth studies on the principles of Brecht's Creativity have appeared in the Soviet Union, along with reviews of new performances of Brecht's works in Soviet theaters. A few months ago, readers received the first comprehensive monograph dedicated to Brecht. Its author is Bernhard Reich, a German emigrant to Moscow since 1926. Reich's book, voluminous and documented, accompanied by photographic material from various productions of Brecht's plays, is distinguished by several advantages. It is an attempt at solid research and at the same time a personal memory and personal assessment of Brecht's work. Its author was among the young Brecht's entourage in Munich after the First World War. He observed his first directorial performances, and retained personal impressions of the characteristics of Brecht's individuality and method of work. Reich, however, was not tempted by the temptation to endure all his work in a subjective and memoiristic plan. He tried to study and interpret Brecht's theatrical aesthetics comprehensively, to understand both its theoretical positions and its stage realization. He did not * B. Reich Teatralnoe - Brecht, essay on creativity, ed. 1960. Society, Moscow, 124 was satisfied only with the analyses of individual works, and he united his observations in a special section on the theatrical mission of the innovative writer. Thus, the analytical exposition did not prevent the personal accent, the researcher's own voice, from sounding there too.

In the 19th century, the novel assumed a leading role in the hierarchy of literary genres. The prose of commodity relations, the businesslikeness of bourgeois daily life, demanded a comprehensive study of social mores, an analytical penetration into the social nature of the new order. The noble dreamers of romanticism, the proud and unyielding rebels, the Prometheans at odds with heaven, fell to the ground, bruised themselves, and opened their eyes. They were surrounded by a prosaic reality in which vulgarity had banished the ideal, and brazen material interest had replaced high impulses. It was the art of the epic, of critical analytical canvases, that had to give a complete picture of the new relations that had been established. The writer increasingly became a doctor of social sciences, a historian of social and public types. And since literature is called upon to explore essences, to analyze morals, to write their history - then naturally the novel will enter into its full rights. It is the most stable fortress of the "objective" in literature. Through it, the art of critical realism mastered a wide public terrain, tested the principle of the concrete-historical approach to human character, and showed limitless possibilities for a comprehensive portrayal of the individual as a product of the typical social environment. The development of the novel in different national literatures underwent a series of reversals depending on the infinite diversity of historical-national conditions and according to the peculiarities of national psychology and traditions. The literary process also proceeds with its own significant differences with the formation of the main directions, genres and styles in Bulgarian literature. The centuries-long foreign yoke, the slow and painful establishment of capitalist relations in our country, left a mark of belatedness in the cultural self-affirmation of the Bulgarian nation. When the great European literatures were already tasting the bitter fruits of disappointment, of lost illusions regarding the nature of the new society, Bulgaria was experiencing the most romantic period of its national revival, the infantile enthusiasm of the Chetnik struggle and later of the April Uprising.

The dispute over Yavorov continues. The largest - after Botev - Bulgarian post awaits its new and insightful interpreters. They will recreate his social and personal drama more deeply. They will open more shells to reveal all the pearls of his work. The disputes over the poet are not from yesterday and today. They are already entering their sixth decade. While in the past they highlighted the sharp ideological contrasts in criticism itself - from the naturalizing individualism of one pole to the sectarian narrow-mindedness of the other, today the situation is completely different. The authors who are discussing have stood on a single social platform, determined by our Marxist ideology. This does not mean that old sins cannot take new forms, that relapses of one or another passion will not arise today. However, what is new in our current literary science should be the civil and moral purity of the disputes. Even in the greatest heat of polemics, the opponent should not be suspected of impure intentions, classified in the category of "dubious elements" and "unclean forces." Otherwise, the dispute degenerates and, instead of clarifying the mature issues, it pursues other, extra-literary goals. Techniques that seek only to wound the opponent more effectively, to smear his face with more mud, to discredit him in front of society cannot be the techniques of a socialist scientist.

The innovators and seekers, the Argonauts of the march for new art, go against the tide. They teach their contemporaries the most difficult habit - to break traditional notions, to get used to the unknown and unusual. Ehrenburg congratulated the 80-year-old Picasso on his youth. The surest sign of an artist's youth are the disputes that flare up around his work. Innovation does not like the fanfare of unanimous recognition, it does not tolerate the incense of jubilee eulogies. Its ambition is different: to divide minds, to clash them and thus make new and unsuspected truths phosphoresce. Brecht is among the great phenomena of contemporary art, which are very contested and against which aesthetic inertia has long persisted. His value is affirmed through the resistance of canonical opinions and traditional tastes. Like other of his contemporaries such as Mayakovsky and Picasso, he caused aesthetic disturbances throughout his life due to his firm intention to renew the language of the centuries-old stage art, to satisfy the needs of a scientific age and a dialectical way of thinking. When Brecht's theater visited Moscow or Paris, it did not generate universal approval and recognition with its performances. The audience was far more unanimous and enthusiastic, applauding Vico Torriani's variety evenings or the numbers of the Viennese revue on ice. After Brecht, however, something else remained: the restlessness, the productive anxiety that the theater was being cleared of junk. The fools stirred, the routineists united. After Brecht, the debates began.

The "Selected Novels" library at the "Narodna Kultura" publishing house is entering its fifth anniversary. This period is quite sufficient to assess its achievements and weaknesses to date, to point out some shortcomings in the selection of contemporary novels. It is hardly necessary to emphasize how useful an undertaking it has proved to be. The best evidence of this is the great interest of readers in it. It could have been born and realized in the new and serene atmosphere after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, after which the cult barriers and stifling dogmas collapsed, in an environment of an objective view of the artistic values ​​of world literature. Through it, our reader is connected to everything good in literature, created by various peoples around the world.

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."

By some ridiculous and offensive habit, we living people usually pass each other without looking deeper into each other's eyes, without thinking that an invisible star shines on each of our foreheads. Only when we lose a loved one do we realize what a void has opened up around us, which will never be filled. This is probably why a French author wrote that the world of our dead is richer than the world of the living. The fate of poets is even stranger. During their lifetime, people often coexist with them without recognizing their true features. Even in the clichéd dimensions of everyday life, their peculiarities seem like funny oddities. However, when a true poet is gone, his image suddenly takes on a different light. Even his small oddities gain significance and his every whim carries a mysterious meaning. Then everyone is curious to solve the "enigma."

I wouldn't call Kamen Kalchev's new novel a "coup" in the writer's development, but it is undoubtedly a pleasant surprise. An author who has been visibly gaining momentum lately has reached a higher point of creative self-realization. It is hardly correct to say that he has surpassed himself. Rather, he has surpassed certain ideas of criticism about his creative possibilities. Because even in his most contemporary books in terms of subject matter, in his most noble responsiveness to the conflicts of the current day, Kalchev satisfied critical demands halfway, kept critical approvals at a very moderate level.

In the movement of Bulgarian literature there are a number of inconsistencies, a number of paradoxes, which are caused by the lateness and backwardness of our life due to the five-century yoke. In a short time, without the necessary experience and preparation, we had to catch up with what was missed, to catch up with the new in thought and in contemporary ideas, to participate in the world cultural process with our national contribution. In this haste, in the impatience to keep up with the new, to not remain provincials, a number of our writers of the past thoughtlessly put on foreign costumes, made the Bulgarians get out of their skin, to rave uncharacteristically, to repeat ready-made thoughts. In our country, some currents of European thought have taken too caricatured forms, have borne the unripe fruits of superficial imitation. These questions have found a proper formulation in G. Tsanev's report, which contains Some new clarifications about individual movements and authors in the development of our literature.

Laughter is usually the weapon of a person placed in an unequal position, it is the revenge of the defenseless. In the social hierarchy and the official table of ranks and ranks, it rushes in uninvited and unwanted, to turn everything upside down, to turn the figures of despotism and power into wax figures, puppets in a comedy theater. Laughter does not recognize respect, does not tolerate authoritarian restrictions, it is the antithesis of everything inflated, pompous, majestic. Its expansiveness acts revolutionaryly, as it equalizes magnitudes, utters hidden and suppressed truths, declares with the ease of a child that the king is naked. Laughter demolishes idols, crowns and halos, because, in the words of Herzen, "to make a person laugh at the god Apis means that he - the god - is dethroned from his sacred rank and made into a simple bull." Smirnensky's red laughter flows freely and infectiously, directed in many directions and at various addresses. In his feuilletons and zlobodnevy, the poet has created a rich gallery of comic images. His observant gaze, the rapier of his wit penetrates everywhere: in parliament and behind the scenes of political deals, in the office of the big merchant and in the boudoir of the bourgeois lady. From there he drags out the distinguished gentlemen and ladies undressed, shows them to us without makeup and disguise.

One of the paradoxes of the West is the maintenance of a mythical position of modern consciousness, and this with the simultaneous super-rational organization and centralized direction of all areas of material and spiritual production. Modern literature also develops a paradoxical state in which extreme intellectualism, and this in its most bloodless, almost mathematical forms, coexists with the unrestrained fetishization of everything primary, elementary and cave-like. Even intellectual constructions are used as a method for conscious and refined digging into the ancient, archaic layers of life. A tired civilization, a psyche torn by neuroses, an exhausted intellect seek stimulants and a transfusion of blood in order to regain lost vital energies, to be refreshed by the living water of the original sources. The modern writer - super-rational, skeptical and isolated in the chamber of his narrow specialization - creates modern myths. (The rational gaze, cooled and threatened by disastrous self-alienation, throws itself into the arms of the irrational blind elements in order to regain its lost primary vision. This is done through the great wave of modern mythmaking.)