Boyan Nichev

The paths by which a writer penetrates beyond the borders of his homeland are very different and complex. Having followed their winding paths, the artist often receives new dimensions from different eras and among different peoples, is "discovered by those who are not even aware of them in their time. There is something very characteristic of the fate of a writer in the way in which he is assimilated outside his homeland. Sometimes, having vividly expressed the trends of his time, having created a unique style and handwriting, the artist powerfully conquers the minds of his era, his work becomes a banner, a slogan, a platform, and often in the end - because the last stage of the rapid assimilation of a unique talent is almost always epigonism - and a literary fashion. Such is the fate of some great artists of the Western European classics of the last century (Byron, Schiller). There are also writers who remain almost undiscovered by their contemporaries, in order to measure their value from other eras or among other peoples. Such is the fate of Stenda Often literary fashion opens a green light for some unhealthy literary trends. The fame of such literary ephemera, the most characteristic example of which in our country is perhaps Przybyszewski, only testifies to the aesthetic level of famous circles during the era.

Everyone enters literature in their own way. Especially when they have something significant to leave behind. Emilian Stanev came to our white trist of the thirties with the tedious boredom of gray guild workdays and with the fresh breeze of dense forests, of young game and wild licorice. And in these two such different worlds he managed to find his theme in our literature, his inviolable aesthetic perimeter. And he transformed them into his own aesthetic peace. The relationship between man and nature became the main axis around which his work revolved. And in him the complex image of an original artist came to life. He is very contradictory and at the same time unified. Here, he would have been a pantheist, if he had not been too much of a skeptic and rationalist; he is a stern and cool observer of nature and a gentle, restrained poet of its beauty, a calm portrayer of the guild and a merciless critic of the guild, a skeptic by mind and a poet by heart", as one of his characters would say. The list of contradictory traits in his image could be increased. Those who know him closely present him as a constantly agitated and restless creator. But very little of this is visible behind the pages of his books. Can you imagine that the writer, who with such artistic ease masters his material and with such restrained tact always manages to maintain a distance between himself and his characters, cried when he wrote the chapter about Kolyo Rachikov in "Ivan Kondarev", in order to master a character, he needs to create an intimate, inner connection between himself and him. He is one of those artists who look for a way to his creatures everywhere - even through his own character. If Ibsen needed to see his character down to the last button of his coat in order to recreate him, Emilian Stanev is one of those writers who must see himself in this coat, feel the hero's blood in his veins, get into his skin. He experiences the character as a lyricist in order to imprint it as a strict fiction writer. He himself often likes to summarize this peculiarity of his talent in a paradox: "I could not capture anything in others that I do not carry within myself. The writer actually plays himself.

Last year, the first volume of the Brief Literary Encyclopedia appeared - a somewhat limited encyclopedic publication, the creators of which, according to their own words, set themselves the task of "giving, within the limited framework of a brief literary encyclopedia, as complete an idea of ​​the literary process as possible", paying attention not only to the established classical literatures in the history of mankind, but also to the artistic creations of a number of younger peoples. Our literature has also found its place in this publication. Over the past two decades, Soviet Bulgarian studies have achieved considerable success in popularizing our literature in the Soviet Union, as well as in independently developing some problems of our literary history. These successes are enshrined in the works of a number of famous Soviet Bulgarian scholars, such as N. S. Derzhavin, K. N. Derzhavin, D. F. Markov, K. A. Koperzhinsky, V. I. Zlidnev, I. M. Sheptunov, N. I. Kravtsov, as well as by younger scholars, such as G.Ya. Ilina, A.I. Khvatov, G.D. Gachev, etc. Given these significant traditions, it is not surprising that our literature also found a broad and faithful reflection in the "Short Literary Encyclopedia".

Until recently, there was still a popular view that the entire artistic development of mankind represented a pyramid, at the top of which stood realism. I would not say that the period of the cult of personality with its pronounced tendency to hierarchical thinking was without merit in creating such a pyramidal idea of ​​the development of art. The fact that realism is one of the most significant achievements of human artistic thinking, that it arose on the most valuable conquests of all literatures and schools before it, was turned into an absurdity by this theory, which generalized it to all the more significant manifestations of art. This impoverished the entire picture of artistic development to an incredible extent.

The interest that our literary studies show in our relations with our neighbors in the past is a proven fact. It testifies to the attention with which literary scholars in our country turn to the most beautiful and fruitful manifestations of friendship and amity between the Balkan peoples. In addition, this fact testifies to the expansion of the thematic perimeter of our literary studies; it is an expression of the aspiration of our literature to find its place in a broader literary context. Therefore, the first question that arises when we become acquainted with the recently published book on Bulgarian-Serbian literary relations in the 19th century is whether it meets the requirements of such an important and complex task. Konev's work consists of two parts. The first - "The Great Beginning" contains four chapters: 1. Literary exchange between Bulgarians and Serbs. 2. Translated and Bulgarianized works. Character and significance. 3. The creative path of P. R. Slaveykov and Serbian literature. 4. Serbian teachers in Bulgaria. Literary and cultural and educational activity. The second part, which is called "In support of realism in literature", includes the following chapters: 1. Encounters with drama. 2. Lyuben Karavelov in the development of the Serbian realistic short story. 3. Before the dawn of freedom.

There is a portrait of him, painted by the artist Nikola Mihaylov, which has always attracted my attention and brought me face to face with the "dilemma" of Petko Todorov. I would not say that it is the most accurate pictorial interpretation of his image. But it achieves a kind of balance between our current assessment and the enthusiastic ideas about him of contemporaries and admirers from the past. On the canvas, Petko Todorov, the "meek" Petko Todorov, sits with his hand resting on the back of his chair, focused, lost in his thoughts. This ascetic profile of a hermit perhaps hides the secrets of a late-born fanatic, whom new circumstances and other character traits have prevented from recognizing the extremes of spirit and thought. Perhaps. But everything else - from the kind, half-hidden gaze, to the long, relaxed, artistic fingers, speak of the soft character of a born intellectual. This is a man who, for all his ambitions, may never have been completely confident in himself, but who has always taken his work seriously - with that seriousness that is more like inner conscientiousness and dedication. Entangled in a web of greenish half-shadows that crawl over his arms and beard, growing into the surrounding landscape, in the painting, he seems to be a spiritualized and civilized Dragon from the world of his own idylls. The warm range of butter-green tones flows over his face, overflowing into the environment as a continuation of his thoughts, as a plastic symbol of his thirst for an eternal connection with his native nature. This is how he remained in the minds of his best connoisseurs from the past - with his eternal striving to penetrate the soul of his people and merge with their nature. This is how we can perceive him today, with all the sobriety and all the reservations that the obvious weaknesses of his work impose on us. The artist himself was apparently not unaware of their awareness, because he found a way to hint at them and balance his image with a few sure strokes: in the upper right corner of the painting, a landscape detail somehow imperceptibly creeps in, like a projection of the writer's thoughts, which irritates, "disturbs" the impression, because it carries something of the bad German taste from the time of the Secession. And this is Petko Todorov again, seen from a different side.