Книжка-3

1965 Book 3 Contents

There is hardly a Bulgarian poet with a more expressive appearance than that of Furnadzhiev. It contains great expressive power. His face resembles some Negro deity, primitive, crude, clumsily carved. There is something very pre-cultural, pagan in him, very much the emanation of pure "nature". A strong, earthly, vital poet, he immediately conquers you with his poetic power. All his poetry is filled with earthly aromas. Especially his early lyrics are filled with a powerful jubilation. Clearly, before us is a poet with enormous energy and great vital reserves. If he were an artist, he would certainly be from the school of Jordaens, if he were a prose writer, he would certainly model images like Rabelais, if he were a poet, he could not but be Furnadzhiev. We do not know how else this brute force of nature could have been poured out, if not in such highly dramatic, powerful, impulsive poems. He resembles a poetic spirit that constantly calls upon the earthly forces of life. Isn't he a kind of continuation of the earth, of the soil, of the stones, of the roots of trees in literature? There are no features in him that would speak of a pure manifestation of the "spiritual." And yet he is not an enemy of air and space, of dreams and reveries. But the spiritual processes in him flow through his dynamic-impulsive nature.

Atanas Dalchev introduced into Bulgarian poetry the philosophical problematic, the subject of which is the individual man and his relations with the whole rest of the world - human, earthly, universal, infinite. He created his own concept of the meaning, possibilities, goals and value of the individual human life. In the poetry of Atanas Dalchev, the abstract problems of the fate and existence of man have a very concrete, necessary life, because they are his natural interest, they are his inalienable fate and daily pain. In its entirety, Dalchev's poetry presents a psychological autobiography, a diary of the changing communication between man and the outside world, in other words, there is an element of the epic in it. This is the first and main feature. In Dalchev's poetry, only that spiritual content that is not irrevocably imposed finds a place, only that which necessarily lies at the foundations of mental life and subsequently becomes decisive for behavior, feelings, thoughts. It is one thing to know, another to understand, and quite another to feel the essence of things. An individual person reaches the essences not only through logical knowledge. Only the conditions of life, internal interests, and a peculiar combination of many factors simultaneously force or lead an individual person at certain moments of his life to what he knows, what others talk about, but which only at that moment with its essence becomes truly personal, appearing as a revelation, as a conviction - forever. These are the moments Dalchev reflects in his poetry. He knew about social injustice, from an early age he showed compassion for the poor, and yet he understood and felt social injustice with all its ugliness and cruelty only in Paris. This is prepared by the profound understanding of other fundamental truths and by the entire spiritual experience of the poet before he went to Paris. Dalchev's poetry is not a means of sharing, trusting, suggesting thoughts and feelings - it is a means of naming the most primordial. With such an approach, the poet could easily pay tribute to ambition, self-deception, or fantasy, because it is very difficult to separate within oneself only the manifestations of pure essence and avoid everything accidental and alien.

In his "Prolegomena ad Homerum" published in 1795, Friedrich Wolff, while denying the sole authorship of the "Iliad", notes that in this form the poem is unfinished and that it could be continued with a description of the subsequent events of the "Trojan cycle". Among the many protests and objections that met this idea, Hegel's rebuff was particularly sharp and categorical: "Then... the third question arises about the unity of the completeness of the epic work. I have already pointed out that this thesis becomes very important, since in recent times the notion has begun to be considered permissible that the epic can be arbitrarily completed or continue to develop further, as long as it pleases. Although this view is supported by sound-minded scholars-researchers, e.g. F. A. Wolf, it remains crude and barbaric, since this view actually amounts to denying the best epic poems the true properties of works of art" (Hegel's quote). One hundred and fifty years later, in his study "The Origin of the Novel-Epic," A. V. Chicherin 3 argued that works belonging to the great epic types (e.g., Tolstoy's "War and Peace") were not completed and could not be completed, since the wide scope of artistic reality, the large number of characters, the large number of problems

The works that we usually understand under the name "poems of Ivan Vazov" are united not only by their external genre features, but also acquire a broader meaning in the process of the author's growth as an artist. Created in the short period 1879-1884, they are closely related to a certain stage of Vazov's poetic biography, expressing the regularities of an important moment in his creative development. At the end of 1879, when Vazov's first poem was published, he was already the author of three collections of poetry. Collections of poetry in which he experienced the full force of the ecstasies and sorrows of his people. But the days of upsurge and despair, of georism and ecstasies have already died down. Amid the idyllic silence of his Berkovo solitude, the turbulent feelings and pathetic outbursts in the poet's soul calm down. And those invisible processes of artistic rethinking of life experience begin, from which his future works will crystallize. What until recently was a heated atmosphere of the present is now transformed in consciousness into the past, into a memory, subordinated to the sense of historical perspective. After the period of immediate emotional reactions, the time of broad artistic generalizations and calm historical assessments comes. "Epic of the Forgotten", "Unloved-Unloved" and "Under the Yoke" could not have appeared immediately after "Pryaporets and the Gusla", "The Sorrows of Bulgaria" and "Deliverance". Between the one and the other lies the border of a historical era and crossing this border meant for the author a process of new ideological creative maturation. The transformed living environment asserts its rights, the radically changed ideological atmosphere leaves its mark. Disappointment comes in place of enthusiasm, naive faith is replaced by skeptical irony. And from this dramatic interweaving, new faith and new optimism are born... Freed from the black shadow of slavery, life shines with all its multi-huedness. The artist's outlook becomes broader and wiser, his poetic perception of the world - more complex and richer.

"Sholokhov and We" - this was the name of the international symposium convened by the Institute of Slavic Studies at Leipzig University on March 18 and 19 this year. The occasion was the writer's 60th anniversary, which falls on May 24. Probably, it was this connection with the approaching anniversary that made us completely calm and not expect stormy events or sharp clashes of opinions from the symposium. No matter how much we talk about discussions - they still require not only subjective desires, but also objective conditions - in their most general and decisive form. Habits of discussion are needed, and they are inherent in a newer way of thinking, a nobler mind, a sharper and clearer view that is not afraid to penetrate all the really existing problems and contradictions, that is not tied posthumously to the withered tree of scholasticism, is not deprived of the spark of God to seek the truth. I think this is extremely important, because there are people and minds that quite naturally do not feel any need for discussions. They do not perceive them as a normal atmosphere in which scientific thinking, scientific search and knowledge take place. They are supporters of encyclicals, of the indisputable, of strictly delineated zones - from here to there. Their task is to fight heresies, deviations from Holy Scripture. This is more important than developing science. Although they are very similar to that diligent, but seemingly not very considerate shepherd who protected his flock from the wolves so much that when he turned around, there was not a single sheep in his fold. The bad thing, however, is when these shepherds hold the chairman's bell and do not give the floor to anyone but themselves. When they want to turn their lethargy, infertility or simply incurable mental illness into a rule, into the highest dignity, into an iron respectful principle.

Twenty years ago, very little was known about Bulgarian literature in the Czech Republic. The older generation might still remember the translations of Vazov's works (mostly published towards the end of the 19th century and before the First World War), as well as something from the 1920s and 1930s, when one could read something by Elin Pelin or Kiril Hristov, whose articles, poems and stories often appeared in the press in Czech and German during his stay in Prague - later, readers and critics only knew a few names from the scattered individual poems in Bulgarian literature or forgotten books. Hardly anyone connected these names with specific works. After all, Botev was more of a legendary national liberation hero for the Czech cultural community between the two world wars than a poet and publicist, and of his works, only the poem "Hadji Dimitar" and the article "Funny Cry" were known at that time, which was reprinted several times. Bagryana's poetry collection "The Eternal and the Holy" ("Ta věčna a ta svatá", 1931), archaized by translation to the Parnassian poetry of the late 19th century, failed, Strashimirov's poorly translated "People" ("Svatebni rej", 1928) was met with no success - and conversely, the poems of Lyuba Kasyrova, a poet completely forgotten in Bulgaria, found a response in the critics. The set of ideas about Bulgarian literature with which one entered the forties was insignificant. Apart from the usual folk literature, the stories of Elin Pelin, the prose of Yordan Yovkov and the small book "Once Upon a Time" ("Dávno", 1938) by Dora Gabe translated by Vitezslav Nezval, born from the moments of the first child's perception of the big unknown world, like much of Nezval's work, it is difficult to find another translation from Bulgarian until 1944 that is somehow more deeply connected to Czech literature. After the liberation of Bulgaria and after the liberation of Czechoslovakia a year later, the blank field in the knowledge of Bulgarian literature came to the surface very plastically and clearly.

I don't know if it's true now, but once upon a time, high school students had albums, on the colorful covers of which was printed Poesie, or Pour souvenir, or simply Album, and inside were all sorts of wishes, thoughts of great people, sometimes transcribed without indicating the author and directly signed by someone who liked them; they also wrote poems, most often prose poems" and all sorts of confessions or just: "my signature is modest, keep it as a souvenir... The graduates of the Svishtov Commercial High School were businesslike young men. The serious practical work for which they were preparing perhaps protected them from the sentimental passions inherent in their youth. Many of them, as is known, including the sons of wealthy parents, were already thinking about the imperfections of the social order, reading socialist books and newspapers, dreaming about the future, preparing for the struggle that was to come in order to reorganize society. Nikolay Liliev ended up at the commercial high school by chance and by a misunderstanding, which remained fateful in his life, because he was weak to remove it, and it was imposed on him with power later on. In Svishtov he already stood out among his classmates with his penchant for poetry, they remembered him as a reciter of Botev and Polyanov. But he studied his lessons diligently and read not only poetry, but also philosophical and political-economic literature in Bulgarian, Russian and German. We cannot know what part he took in the disputes on the then vexed political issues, especially on the disagreements between narrow and broad socialists. How much he was withdrawn may or may not have manifested himself in them. But it is very indicative that when in January 1903 his friend and classmate Tsonyu Stoyanov Gerganov from the Dryanovo village of Kereka presented him with his album with a request to write something as a souvenir, Nikolay Mihaylov did not use the nice paper to leave some of his own work there, nor did he copy other people's poems, but shared thoughts that really moved him and which it was very appropriate to point out to a student, obviously dedicated to his preparation to become a business activist:

One of the most characteristic features of Dr. Krastev as a person is his civic virtue. Nurtured by this civic virtue and repeatedly expressed during his activities as a literary critic and public figure is his sincere concern for the fate of Bulgarian science and culture. Among the numerous articles by Dr. Krastev dedicated to issues of public life, perhaps the most interesting are the articles concerning educational work or spiritual life in Bulgaria in general. In these articles we encounter thoughts and characteristics of individual social groups, which often surprise us with their progressiveness: the lack of prospects for the bourgeois intelligentsia, deprived of any social ideals and "cultural aspirations", the indifference of the monarch to Bulgarian art and science, the question of the actual emancipation of women in the field of education. Dr. Krastev developed many times the thesis of the freedom of the worker of science and culture. It was sharply stated in the response to the letter of the Ministry of Public Education of 25. IX. 1896, by which Dr. Krastev was dismissed from the university for the second time. Dr. Krastev's opinion on all these issues is most fully manifested in his behavior during the university crisis of 1907. "Baptism of the university", which should be an "awakening of consciousness" and "a government act - an incomparable disgrace for a "cultural state" - This is his two-sided assessment of the events that took place on January 3-4, 1907: the youth demonstration, the booing of Ferdinand at the opening of the National Theater, the dispersal of the demonstrators with the police and, as a result, the issuance of the decree to suspend classes at the university for six months and to dismiss the members of the professorial body. Considering the energy of Dr. Krastev and the thoughts expressed in his other articles on the issue of the university crisis: "The Beginning of the End of the University Crisis" and "The University Question and the Class School", as well as the memories of contemporaries, he was obviously one of the inspirers and organizers of the determined resistance of the professorial body against the lawlessness of Ferdinand and his lackeys and one of the compilers of the two appeals "To the Bulgarian Society" and the third appeal - "Message", with which the negotiations between the professors and the government were terminated.

The two-volume collection "Art, Science and Culture in the Service of the People" by Dr. Todor Zhivkov, published on the initiative of the Union of Bulgarian Writers, is in the hands of readers. They will read in both volumes excerpts from program reports, excerpts from speeches, individual articles, interviews, congratulations and numerous statements on the most mature and current issues of literature, theater, cinematography, science, technical progress, education and the cultural revolution in our country, on the unresolved and important problems of propaganda and agitation, ideological work, the press, communist education, etc. The materials were written at different times and cover the period from the end of 1942 to the beginning of 1965. The two-volume collection opens with the article "On the Fight", published in the first illegal issue of the newspaper "Fatherland Front". This article reveals the author's positions and the great, fateful tasks that faced the people and "our suffering fatherland" at that time. The call for struggle and nationwide resistance is imbued with the characteristic revolutionary enthusiasm of that unique time, which nurtured a galaxy of patriots and heroes who created the anti-fascist epic. This is a call for national victory, a call for revolution, "so that the sun of freedom and happiness may finally shine over our tormented fatherland."

I first encountered the name Toncho Zhechev on the pages of Rodna Rechi. The articles he published had nothing to do with the then widespread method of theses, simplified presentation of facts. And yet, it was difficult to predict the author's literary-critical development from these articles. Rather, they suggested a future appearance in the field of aesthetics. The author possessed the ability to think about the aesthetic essence of literary works. But he was still far from the ability to respond with heightened emotionality to the works he analyzed. He lacked what we usually call literary-critical nerve.

Recently, Alexander Nichev published a monographic study dedicated to the work of Aleko Konstantinov. Much has been written about the life and literary work of the citizen and writer Aleko. "Bai Ganyo" and "To Chicago and Back" are classic works of Bulgarian prose, a lasting artistic document against a denied world. A document that does not preach despair, doom and fear and, despite the denial of an ugly and deformed reality, has a purifying and ennobling effect. "The Lucky One" is a figure that attracted not only the writer's contemporaries, but still has a charm on us today.

The temporary ebb and flow from the field of contemporary literary criticism is gradually being experienced. A number of our prominent literary critics are increasingly appearing in operational criticism, and the problems of contemporary literature are becoming the subject of their works. The efforts of our criticism not to lag behind the contemporary development of literature are becoming increasingly tangible. Yako Molhov ranks among this group of critics who have focused their attention entirely on the problems of contemporary literature. His recently published book "Contemporary Fiction Writers" is another testimony to these interests. The first part of the book includes two voluminous articles - an essay on the novelistics of Dimitar Dimov and a survey of the novel in 1960.

In book 2 of the journal "Literary Thought" the article by V. Smohovska and B. Nichev "On Bulgarian-Serbian Literary Relations and on Some Issues of Comparative Literary Studies" was printed. In fact, it was conceived and carried out as a review for my book "Bulgarian-Serbian Literary Relations in the 19th Century (Until Liberation)". It does not specifically raise or resolve a single question of comparative literary studies on material from our or any other national literature, although at its very beginning a few words are said about "the most beautiful and fruitful manifestations of friendship and amity between the Balkan peoples". That is why I will not dwell here on the problem of comparative literary studies - a very important problem that cannot and should not be resolved incidentally. This area of ​​modern literary studies is attracting the attention of an increasing number of specialists in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, in our country and elsewhere. It is desirable that similar articles appear on the pages of the journal "Literary Thought", that a creative conversation be held on the fundamental and so complex questions of comparative literary studies. In this way, the path of the unauthorized presentation as an original thesis of opinions already known in science or of insufficiently verified and dubious thoughts will be blocked. Every book can be viewed from a variety of positions, and in it one can find successfully written pages, acceptable solutions, or findings that do not meet certain requirements. Even with its positive sides, it often suggests new possibilities, directs the specialized reader to new moments in the problem under study that were not previously noticed. It may even be that unsuccessful solutions prevail in a given book, but even in this case, scientific criticism is obliged to resist them with arguments in order to contribute as much as possible to a more comprehensive clarification of one or another issue, to proceed from the tasks that its author has set for himself. And when this is the case, any insinuations, rude epithets, etc., which inevitably replace the analysis with subjective preferences and qualifications, become completely inappropriate. And unfortunately, this is exactly what happened with the article by V. Smohovska and B. Nichev.