Книжка-2

1966 Book 2 Contents

In the spiritual biography of Pencho Slaveykov presented here, the most important and most often emphasized thought is that he grew up and prepared himself for life and art under the influence of his father - a Bulgarian folk poet and democrat-fighter, an exponent of a wisdom and an ideal that once inspired the Bulgarian guildsmen, peasants, and workers as a rallying revolutionary slogan: "Everything that is done for the people without the people is not righteous, is not legal." The son wrote a wonderful essay about his father; the main character in "Bloody Song," Mladen, is a bearer of the ideas of the old democrat:

The poetic legacy of Pencho Slaveykov is a fruitful topic for the study of the creative process. To clarify the psychic functions of Slaveykov's poetic personality in view of the artistic text, letters, documents, memories, etc. - this is one of the main problems facing our literary critics. These functions determine the main psychic units of his creative system, they clarify the psychomotorics of the poet, his creative psychogram. The explanation of Slaveykov's poetic work cannot be achieved only within the framework of the most general findings and with the means of a terminology, in whose basic linguistic structures-definitions in most cases there is not enough scientific content. The poet's creative system, explained in a number of studies and articles, needs, in my opinion, a revision.

"Tears of Lily" - pale and in many cases clumsy imitations of the sentimental direction in Heine's lyrics - Pencho Slaveykov wrote in his hospital bed in 1886-87. He himself repeatedly pointed out the weakness of this poetry of his, in order to highlight "Epic Songs" as the mature beginning of his work. But in Slaveykov, as in our poetry at its beginning (until Karavelov and Botev), we can notice that where this beginning is in the spirit and form of written poetry, it is still clumsy and inept - and once the poet has touched the living source of all poetry, folk poetry, his verses resonate with the power of a fresh artistic image. Thus, even before he had modeled his literary experiments ("Momini Salzi") on a book model, Slaveykov in 1885 was inspired by folk-poetic images and wrote his poem "Lud Gidiya". It is no coincidence that when he later collected his poems for "Epic Songs", he put "Lud Gidiya" in the first place in this collection... For several centuries, the people have created the image of the cheerful man of art, who plays the tambourine with intoxication from aesthetic pleasure. This image is picturesque: the young Stoyan hung this empty tambourine on his belt" and as he played, "the brides broke the robbery - the old hurks crushed" - and even the judge, to whom the people complained that they could not do their work because of the "empty tambourine", was carried away by the power of art. Instead of judging the young gypsy, "they became kadiyas to play - you're a furley binish in a chamber - you're a furley hat on beams"....With such a relief-shaped and elaborate folklore image, the young poet, barely 19 years old, wrote a poem inspired by it. The verse, close to the folk-syllabic, easily succumbed to him.

The interests of our great poet and cultural figure Pencho Slaveykov in Russia, Russian literature and Russian culture appeared in his earliest years, and deepened and developed throughout his life. At different times and on different occasions, he gave not quite the same assessments of individual writers, poets and literary critics, and even expressed contradictory thoughts. But this is the fleeting, episodic aspect of his work, of his life. Characteristic of his entire creative development, of his literary and aesthetic views, of his mature artistic taste and preferences, is his understanding and deep conviction that Russian literature is leading, that Russian writers utter new truths, that their work is original and unique, that the path to great art leads through Russian literature. Pencho Slaveykov received the correct direction of his interests in Russian literature first from his father, and then from other of his predecessors, writers and poets: Karavelov, Botev, Drumev, Vazov. It grew and took shape in the first years after the Liberation, when the atmosphere in our country was filled with the influence of Russia, an influence represented in many ways by progressive-minded Russian specialists and public figures working in Bulgaria.

After Stambolov came to power, the former head of the liberal government, Petko Karavelov, who had been expelled from the political arena, was forced to engage in cultural and educational activities. He founded a society in Sofia for the dissemination of useful knowledge among the people and the development of their taste, which began publishing in 1888 the magazine "St. Clement Library", named in honor of the oldest enlightener, Kliment Ohridski. During the period of acute book famine in Bulgaria and the flooding of the book market with low-quality literature, the magazine sought to provide the general reader with exemplary works of world literature. Russian writers occupied a predominant place in the magazine. Its pages were dotted with the names of Pushkin, Nekrasov, Turgenev, Lermontov, Tolstoy. Readers get acquainted with little-known or completely unknown authors: with the poems of Batyushkov, Koltsov, Pleshcheev, I. Kozlov, with the stories of Shchedrin, Korolenko, Garshin, Karonin-Petropavlovsky. "The St. Kliment Library managed to become a conduit of Russian socio-literary influence in Bulgaria during the developing Stambolov reaction, when the official newspaper Svoboda carried out unbridled Russophobic propaganda and insisted on selecting special literature by Western authors for the younger generation. The populist writer T. G. Vlaikov, in his memoirs of the 1980s and 1990s, spoke of the magazine as very good and valuable for its time. "1

Even during her lifetime, Svetoslava Slaveykova managed to find and collect memories from numerous relatives, friends, writers, artists and public figures with whom Pencho Slaveykov was in contact. Most of these people are now deceased and their memories, which seemed insufficiently interesting to us ten years ago, today far from correspond to our then-present view. On the contrary. Although not written quite "literarily", the spirit of the times lives in them, they speak the language of the era. Particularly interesting are those of them that concern the native environment and atmosphere in which the poet lived, the interesting image of his mother - Irina Slaveykova, the last years of his father's life, the house and their everyday life in Tryavna, Tarnovo and Sofia. What was left by Ekaterina Karavelova, who characterizes the poet's mother with only one word - a good Bulgarian woman, is irreplaceable. And this really seems to be her most typical quality. She is Bulgarian in everything - in her proud patience, in her persistent work capacity, and in her unyielding character. Unfortunately, however, the memories that we are publishing here from Karavelova are only a draft excerpt from one of her articles, intended for the collection that was to be published on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the death of Pencho Slaveykov. The collection never saw the light of day. The memories were lost. After some time, when Svetoslava Slaveykova visited Karavelova with a request to tell her something about her grandmother's life, she, who was already nearing the end of her life, replied: "I can't remember anything anymore, I wrote everything back then." We report this, in the hope that it is still possible that Ekaterina Karavelova's memories may be found accidentally forgotten in some archive or editorial office.

On my first visit to the Slaveykovs' house, a short, plump woman stood before me, very neat, with a round face, heavily graying hair, and a low forehead. Strict brown eyes stared at me, short sentences came out of her small mouth. She was not talkative. When I asked Petko on my first visit to the Slaveykovs' house: "What is Grandma Slaveykova like?" He only replied: "A good Bulgarian." Few knew the "good Bulgarian," the wife of grandfather Slaveykov, and even fewer took the trouble to understand what was hidden behind her reticence and silence. I have rarely met a hardworking woman like her. The morning was devoted to cooking, because the Slaveykovs, led by grandfather, loved to eat, and they ate like heroes. I have never, anywhere in my life, eaten more delicious meals prepared by mother Irina and my own mother. And I have been to rich tables with the most exquisite dishes, but nothing has tasted as good as what was prepared by both mothers. Oh, the banitsa! In "Bloody Song" the Pench elder Divisil - in his image, speech and worldview, is strikingly reminiscent of grandfather Slaveykova, and the banitsa at the feast in honor of the Voivode was copied from the product of mother Irina, who was an incomparable craftswoman...

I have heard that Grandpa Racho's father was also a coppersmith. He went around the villages repairing coppersmiths and took his son Racho with him. When the son later came to Tarnovo, he was already an orphan - without a father and mother. The conspirators of the Velcho Conspiracy gathered in the house of Racho Kazandzhiata. The neighborhood had already begun to talk about these gatherings. Grandma Todora shouted to her husband: - What do you think? We have so many children. Don't gather here anymore! People are already starting to talk... It was Sunday. Racho Kazandzhiata, together with his wife and children, were at church. Their servant ran up to tell them that they were looking for the conspirators. Grandpa Racho rode his horse and left the city. On the way, he met Velcho, who was coming to Tarnovo from his braiding shop at the mouth. Racho told him that they were looking for them and advised him to return, but Velcho said: "Whatever happens, I will go to Tarnovo" - and continued on his way.

The school was on the square, the same building is now the municipality. As he remembers, Pencho was short and very naughty as a child. At that time, only Grandma Irinka and Donka, Pencho and Penka lived in Tryavna, Grandpa Slaveykov was in Constantinople, and the other boys were in Constantinople and Russia. Grandma Slaveykovitsa was a middle-aged woman at that time, pretty, Raykov, with a headscarf, wide-brimmed hat and a fur coat. She was mostly in her father Ivancho's house when it was next to the school. There was a gate on their fence that led directly to the churchyard. When the eldest son of a teacher Petko returned from Constantinople, he came to the school, all his feet, and the teachers surrounded him.

When we moved to Sofia, I often went to the Slaveykovs' in the old house on the square. We played with Pencho's little sister, Penka. He was already sick. I listened to him with difficulty, how he could barely speak. When he started walking with a cane, he came home often. Then I got married. He still visited us often. For a long time I knew nothing about his feelings for me. My mother-in-law, who had come from Sliven, once said to me: - This man comes very often. It seems that he loves you very much. - Of course he loves me, he is my cousin, - I replied. One day he brought me his collection "Mom's Tears" and told me that it was dedicated to me. I thanked him.

My memories of my relatives from Slaveykovtsi are very vague, because they are from about half a century ago. As a student, I was at their place almost every day, because our high school was housed in the "Kovachev Building" - named after Yanko Kovachov - today's Slaveykov Cinema building. Especially on winter days, I was almost there, because we lived quite far away, and we always had something to do in the afternoon.

I lived with my aunt Todorka for two years. I finished high school with her, because they lived in Kyustendil. This was in 1906 and 1907. Her husband had passed away. His house was in the same yard of Grandpa Slaveykov's small house, where Slaveykov, from Bolgrad, lived. Kosta Atanasova, niece of Pencho's daughter-in-law 62 Slaveykov, Todorka Ivanka Slaveykov, lived with Pencho Slaveykov, on Slaveykov Square. Our windows looked out onto Pencho's windows. Here at my aunt's, I saw him for the first time. A tall, handsome, black-eyed man with a cane. He made a strong impression on me, especially since he moved with difficulty and used it slowly, slowly. He came very often, usually after lunch for coffee, and on Sundays at around 10 in the morning. From afar I could hear his stick on the cobblestones when he came to my aunt's. He would come down to the dining room and talk to my aunt. As soon as he came in, I would jump up and down, ready to hand him this or that, to help him with something. My aunt would tell me that this embarrassed him - not to sit so alert and not to show that I noticed his disability, because it bothered him. One day he came over and told my aunt:

Her sister, Tochka, was with our family to help with the household. They took her from Tarnovo and took her with them to Plovdiv. Grandpa Slaveykov's brother, Panayot, was a poor man, and Grandpa Slaveykov wanted to help his children study. Tochka stayed with them the longest. My grandmother treated her like a servant and constantly grumbled at my grandfather for taking her brother's children home. At one time, three of them - Tochka, Mariyka and Racho - were with them. My grandmother didn't want them. Tochka told her sister that on a very cold winter day (in Plovdiv), Pencho went out in the morning and didn't return home all day. His brother Ivan had told him that the day was very cold, not to go out. He went to Maritsa on skates and only came back in the evening. He got up at night and fell. That's when his illness began. "I remember him, I was a year-old child, how my sister and the maid dragged him through the yard, he leaned on their shoulders, paralyzed. This must have been in 1884, when he later told how much they had treated him. - They burned me, they hanged me, they did everything to me! So he sat paralyzed in the attic of the old house. I was a 6-year-old child. He gave me a bunch of grapes. "Don't let mom see you!" Grandma Slaveykovitsa asked. I put my hand behind my back and as soon as she approached, I dropped the grapes in the grass." He also told an incident, somewhere in the west:

On 5. IV. 1919, a fatal accident took the life of the prominent Bulgarian literary critic and long-time editor of the magazine "Thought" - Dr. K. Krastev. Returning home unwell, he swallowed a poison pill instead of medicine. Thus ended the life of the last of the famous "four" - not long after his three comrades: P. P. Slaveykov (1912), P. K. Yavorov (1914) and P. Yu. Todorov (1916). Since then and until now (and even during his lifetime) his work has repeatedly been the subject of high praise and unwavering denials. This is not about the principled struggle of the Marxist critics (D. Blagoev, G. Bakalov, T. Pavlov, G. Tsanev, P. Zarev, P. Danchev, St. Karolev) against the views of Dr. Krastev. He was also sharply attacked by representatives of bourgeois criticism itself, and these attacks expressed the internal differences within it, its striving to affirm and deny one or another name, the irreconcilable enmity between the individual groups and schools. Moreover, some bourgeois critics have sought most fiercely to destroy and liquidate Krastev's entire work without appeal. Read the book "Critics" by Y. Marinopolski (1910) or the surgical article by S. Radev (magazine "Khudozhnik", 1905), or the essay "The Work of Dr. K. Krastev" by A. Balabanov (magazine "Filosofski pregled", 1939) and you will see how much passion was invested in the attempts to liquidate the critic without a trace, so that there would be no need to rummage through the countless furious attacks against him in the yellow pages of the bourgeois press. But what to do - such is the fate of a critic: he is forced to endure the attacks of those he has denied, their friends, those wounded egos, about whom he has never written and who are considered neglected, and finally all the enemies of those whom he has affirmed with his articles. Dr. Krastev is also honored with greater attention. He is the main character of Vazov's story "Doctor Jan-jan", of "Japanese Silhouettes", and his close friend Kiril Hristov later dedicates bitter verses to him in the epigram "Doctor Stavri":

Bulgarian-Croatian literary and cultural relations in the past represent a very significant component in the national development of the two peoples and in their so diverse and rich in content connections with other literatures. Already in the second half of the 18th century, the work of the Croatian poet and educator Andrija Kacić Mišić "A Conversation Pleasant to the Slovenian People" gained wide fame not only in Croatia, but also in Serbia and Bulgaria, creating important prerequisites for the activation of literary and cultural relations between the peoples of these countries. Together with "Slavonic-Bulgarian History" by Paisij Hilendarski, copied in Serbia, and "History of Various Slovenian Peoples..." by Jozan Rajić, this work of Kacić enriched the cultural development of Serbs, Croats and Bulgarians, created new traditions of reciprocity between them, increased their national self-esteem, and activated their literary life at the dawn of their national revival.

So far, in our scientific literature, the Praise of Metropolitan Cyprian of Kiev and later of All Russia (1376-1406) by his younger contemporary and relative, Grigory Tsamblak of Tarnovo, has not been subjected to a more thorough literary analysis. However, all researchers who have dealt with it to one degree or another note that this work of Tsamblak is one of the very interesting works of our old literature. For example, Bonyu St. Angelov, who recently reprinted the Word, points out that he is doing this because, in his opinion, Tsamblak's glorification of Cyprian possesses "great literary and historical value." Professor Peter Dinekov, making a general assessment of the Word, finds that it - like the rest of Tsamblak's works - is a vivid manifesto of his great literary talent, especially as regards the depiction of mass scenes; One such moment is the welcoming of Cyprian in Tarnovo in 1379. In describing this holiday for the people of Tarnovo, Tsamblak managed to convey the excitement of the crowd (and) to color his story emotionally.

Unexpectedly for myself, about a month or a month and a half after the meeting at the Royal aperitif, a not very pleasant change occurred in my life. Since I had to prepare for a state exam, which more than any other exam implies better working conditions and less occupation with side pursuits, I thought about what to do and, finding no other way out, decided to return temporarily to the province. Thus, no matter how unpleasant it was for me, I distanced myself from literary circles and for a while lost track of Khrelkov. However, what I learned later alarmed me. It turned out that Khrelkov had suffered a hemorrhage and, at the insistence of the doctors and people close to him, had finally agreed to be admitted to a sanatorium. And indeed, I heard afterwards that he had gone for treatment in Iskrets, later, I think, in Plovdiv and some other places, and in the summer of 1937 I quite unexpectedly found him in Chepino-Banya at the home of my classmate and friend Vasil Sotirov - an unusually kind-hearted and generous man, with whom he had come into contact through some unspeakable means. As a result of these efforts, the acute attacks of the disease were stopped, but his health still remained irreparable. There was no way he could even think of returning to normal life, so with the help of close people Khrelkov had settled in Gorna Banya - at first only for treatment, and then as a permanent residence. It was here, precisely with his behavior and his intransigence, that he moved from literature, where he had already made a name for himself, to another field, which I would call a literary legend.

This is the tenth book in a row by Efrem Karanfilov and is yet another proof of his diverse literary interests. This time, the subject of study is only Bulgarian authors - poets from different eras and generations, from Paisius to our contemporaries. In Paisius's story, the critic is struck by a twisted revolutionary passion and an unquenchable, eternal youth, which captivates him with its irrepressible drive. It forces him to express in one breath the fascination of the immortal Paisius' work over the modern reader. This work sounds to him like a heroic poem, it carries him with the violent strength of the Hilendar monk, it ignites him with his patriotic flame. He writes about Paisius in an uplifting manner, with a romantic coloring in the style and diction. Efrem Karanfilov is most strongly and sincerely moved when he discovers fighting moods in the poets. The deepest experiences and immediate excitements in his soul are awakened by the fanfare of the martial lyre, the revolutionary flight of poetry sparkling with youth and vitality.

The Bulgarian periodical press, whose beginnings date back 124 years in the city of Smyrna by Konstantin Fotinov with the appearance of the trial booklet of the magazine "Lyuboslovie", has an important share in the political, cultural and literary history of the Bulgarian people. The unpretentious beginning in the distant and isolated from our people region of Asia Minor over the years ignited the spark of the people's struggle for universal Bulgarian education, church autonomy and political independence. The Bulgarian periodical press before the Liberation was an important factor for the national awareness of our people, for its cohesion in a whole nation, for the manifestation of the people's ideals, in the name of which a merciless struggle was undertaken. After the Liberation (1878-1885) periodical 1 Georgi Borshukov. History of Bulgarian Journalism. 1844-1877/1878-1885. Sofia, 1965, p. 578.8°. Ed. of Science and Art. 149 The Czech press supported the implementation of the Unification and the consolidation of the Bulgarian state.

Until a few years ago, the 17th and 18th centuries were considered among the least studied periods of our literary development. Ignorance of the true state of literary life during these centuries led to an underestimation of one of the most interesting phenomena in our literature during Turkish slavery - the Bulgarian damascenes. Appearing as translations of the collection "Treasure" by Damaskin Studite in the second half of the 16th century, they gradually occupied a central place in literary practice in our country in the 17th and especially in the 18th century. Their compilers, initially translators and compilers, began to show creative daring, most clearly expressed in Paisius' contemporary - the damascene maker Joseph Beardati. Damaskin1 Al. Burmov. Was there a central revolutionary Bulgarian committee in Bucharest in 1769-1872? Historical Review, 1961, vol. 3, pp. 34-47. * Donka Petkanova-Toteva, The Damaskins in Bulgarian Literature, BAS, Sofia, 1965. 52 The literature of the Damaskins played an important role in the spiritual life of our lands and helped to speed up the emergence of the Revival consciousness in the lowlands. On its pages, along with the first enlightenment appeal, a critical and denunciatory attitude towards a number of phenomena of slave life appeared. From collections with a moral and instructive direction in the spirit of Christian virtues, they turned into works that were directly or indirectly related to the problems of the then reality.