Книжка-5

1966 Booklet 5 Contents

The purple flag of the 9th Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party has been raised over the homeland. It is red and fluttering over the huge buildings and high furnaces of Kremikovtsi, over the oil and gas towers of Dolni Dubnik and Chiren, over the quiet and sunny buildings of the Semiconductor Plant in Botevgrad, over the dozens of construction scaffoldings, over the thousands of machines and looms, tractors and combines, everywhere where the hearts of the many millions of working people beat. Our people, with joyful excitement and confidence, are rallying even more closely under this flag and with increased strength are moving towards the new five-year plan. The grandiose successes of our country in the years since the 8th Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party, which adopted the prospects for our development until 1980, are recognized by all. Our people have walked a difficult, tense path, transforming our homeland into an advanced state. When we imagine our native landscape, dotted with the huge buildings of factories, our fields, furrowed by machines and adorned with the fruits of abundance, cities and villages, the products of industry and agriculture, the people who do everything like the most caring owners, we cannot help but feel a sense of pride in our socialist system - the basis of all our successes, in the foresight of our leading Bulgarian Communist Party. For all our conquests are the implemented plans and programs of the party, they have been transformed by the people's hands, their ideas with intelligence, love and enthusiasm. And the fact that under its care and guidance we have conquered so much fills us with high self-confidence and human dignity, with confidence in the future, which will be outlined at the upcoming congress.

Two years ago, when the various sections of the First International Congress of Balkan Studies were being outlined and a general outline of their issues was being drawn up, one could only assume the great interest that some of the planned reports would arouse. At that time, there was still no clear idea of ​​the wide boundaries of the issues that the individual branches of Balkan studies have - a complex science of the history, culture, literature, language, art and folklore of the Balkan peoples, of the historically created and increasingly intensively enriched relationships between them, of their lasting ties with other peoples and other national cultures. Now, when the congress has successfully concluded its work, we understand well how many more significant problems and questions (some of them only raised in the reports or discussions) are yet to be resolved and illuminated from modern scientific positions, in order to correctly outline all the common moments in the centuries-old development of the Balkan peoples, by overcoming the erroneous concepts and findings accumulated in the past. One of the undoubted positive results of the First International Congress of Balkan Studies is that it gave a serious impetus in this direction. And one more thing: in the days from August 26 to September 1, 1966, the congress turned the mutual collegial respect between the individual delegates into a tradition that should be strengthened by all as the main necessary condition for our further research and creative meetings. For if now, when we are at the very beginning of the more intensive and joint study of the problems of Balkan Studies, this atmosphere has ensured a calm and businesslike discussion of various, sometimes very specific, issues, tomorrow it will certainly give us the opportunity for unprecedented mutual acquaintance and study of the individual Balkan literatures and cultures.

Among all the arts, literature is distinguished by having both a very unlimited and a very limited character. Unlimited, because its intellectual content tends to spread, to go beyond the framework in which it was created, or, conversely, to come from outside - to be assimilated, transformed within the boundaries of a new environment. Limited, because its means of expression, language, is not perceived directly, but presupposes the introduction of a new expression in connection, undoubtedly, with the depicted object, but nevertheless different from it and on another plane of contact. "The shackles of idiom, said one critic (F. Baldensperger) prevent literature, so to speak, from crossing the threshold of its own home." These two opposing aspects, inherent in the literary work, are manifested especially clearly when the literary historian proceeds to make comparisons. Comparative literary studies is actually more a method than a branch. And perhaps that is precisely why it gives us the opportunity to grasp the nature of literary phenomena particularly well. Every work, no matter how comprehensive, no matter how radiant it is, remains the fruit of an era, a country, an environment, as well as of an author. With its content, reflecting the environment, the country, the era, it can represent a document, a testimony, useful both for compatriots and foreigners. It can also be an attempt by the author to break away from his environment and tradition, to become a messenger calling for innovative creativity. The literatures of Southeast Europe give us many examples in this regard, especially if we focus on their development from the end of the 18th century to the present day in relation to other European literatures and, first of all, to those of the West. Thus, to the historical aspect in the study of literatures, the comparative one is added - and here the problems of parallel development are intertwined with those of influence. The reports presented below, written by specialists in each of these literatures, primarily reveal the specific features of the works, as well as the conditions under which they arose, but they also allow us to establish some connection between literary phenomena in different countries.

The emergence, development and legacy of ideological and artistic movements, of literary genres during the different stages of literary development, as well as a number of other phenomena in the history of Albanian literature, contain a whole series of differences that can be elucidated, taking into account the specific conditions of the national and historical development of Albania. Albanian literature has developed in conditions of national oppression and the long dominance of feudal relations. The ruling feudal class, intimately linked to the Ottoman Empire not only politically, but also culturally and ideologically, the lack of a national church of linguistic tradition, the existence of three different religions and, consequently, belonging to contradictory ideological movements (Christianity, European bourgeois culture and Islamism), the lack of a single economic, political and cultural center - these are, in broad outline, the historical factors that have made it more difficult than in other countries to achieve a synthesis of a modern national culture. In the 18th century, the old literature of a confessional nature continued to exist in Albania, whose main representative was the Albanian Catholic clergy. This literature found its right to exist and support in the resistance of the mountain population against the Ottoman rule. Its tradition of that time was continued by G. Kazazi, who in 1743 published a catechism in which he expressed his concern and love for the mother tongue, a feature common to all old Albanian authors. However, the ebb of the wave of uprisings against Turkey erased its importance in this literary production as well. With its narrow, confessional and regional character, the old Albanian literature could no longer satisfy the requirements of the new era, which heralded the rise of the bourgeoisie. But this spirit of resistance against Turkey, which was characteristic of it, continued to be preserved: it would develop as an element embedded in later Albanian literature.

Due to centuries of foreign oppression, the Bulgarian nation underwent a peculiar socio-historical development. Our national revival began only in the second half of the 18th century. However, cultural and historical processes have become particularly intense since then. In just one century (1762-1878), national creative thought went through several stages, only to soon rise to great heights. Continuing the traditions of the Revival, literary science from the beginning of our century quickly expanded its problematic, adopting reliable principles for a more comprehensive interpretation of cultural and aesthetic phenomena and processes. Both the great writers and critics of the Revival, and the few academically educated literary scholars after the Liberation, demonstrated a number of correct understandings regarding the diverse prerequisites for the formation of the Bulgarian national culture and literature, regarding the interrelationships and interdependence of the ideological and artistic phenomena of the individual peoples. Directing their research gaze towards the problems of our national revival, the first great Bulgarian literary historians realized that they could not be comprehensively and truthfully illuminated if one did not take into account similar processes and phenomena in neighboring countries - Greece, Serbia, Romania, Russia, with which our people communicated in different ways, through diverse forms.

The last decade of the century of the Enlightenment constitutes an important moment in the development of Greek culture. During these few years, manifestations of every nature (directly related to spiritual life or marking reflections on it) represent such a density that it could be said that they include within themselves the entire history of future Hellenism. From year to year we follow the withering away of religious humanism, the stagnation of reactionary doctrine, the formation of the liberal spirit and the progressive liberation of secular thought. These intellectual movements were influenced to a great extent by the development of international politics and the cultural life of the West. The strong impetus that Catherine the Great (Russia) gave to her policy regarding "philosophy" conditioned important changes in the activities of the Orthodox Church of Constantinople. Indeed, until 1791, the Patriarch of Constantinople was under the sway of two opposing forces: on the one hand, the need to maintain legal ties with the Ottoman Empire, on the other, the desire not to weaken the ties of the Greek Church with the Russian Empire, which belonged to the same faith and was officially considered the protector of paradise. The Patriarchate had to adopt a soft attitude, as little opposition as possible, in order not to arouse the discontent of Russia, but also to take into account the demands of the Sublime Porte.

The geographical, ethnological and historical coordinates of the Romanian people are, of course, known. The end result of the Romanization of the local Thracian-Dacian-Moesian element and of the later assimilation of the Slavs in the last centuries of the first millennium of our era, in the lands of the European Southeast, north of the Danube, as well as on both slopes of the Carpathians, the Romanian people has developed under special conditions, between East and West, between North and South, on the crossroads of famous nations and destinies, almost always antagonistic. The firm guidelines of culture and literature reflect in turn, as is natural, all these coordinates. Creating its own national structure, which was in constant evolution, the culture and literature of the Romanian people have maintained at the same time numerous and lively links with the cultural manifestations of the Slavic world, as well as with those of Byzantine culture, and also with the culture and literature of the Romance and Germanic peoples of the West. Before moving on to the subject of the present report, which aims to present the development of Romanian literature, starting from the end of the 18th century, we consider it necessary to make a brief introduction, designed to recall the phases preceding the modern era, which has adopted - as we will see - certain positions towards the literature of the feudal past.

The business plan recommended by the International Association for the Study of the European Southeast also includes comparative studies in the field of Balkan literatures. Although the idea of ​​this is very fortunate, it seems to me, however, that the task will be difficult for researchers if certain preliminary measures are neglected, which are necessary to take, in the haste to arrive at conclusions that would obviously be too approximate. It will be necessary, in my opinion, first of all to establish the methodology in the order of the searches, in order to leave nothing to chance, by eliminating from the very beginning the possibility of falling into errors, a possibility that would be, I think, incompatible with the aim pursued by this type of work. It is needless to say that any researcher who would embark on such an activity faces enormous difficulties. For it can be asserted without exaggeration that the literatures of the Balkan peoples existed and developed in a closed circle, without obvious relations between them. The difference in language, religion and culture often raised insurmountable barriers that prevented free exchange between the "intelligences" of the ethnic communities of the Balkans. The empires that succeeded each other over the centuries were unable to melt into a single crucible the heterogeneous elements of these peoples, who, although they sometimes lived under the same political power, developed in the direction of their own destiny. Especially since the beginning of the 19th century, the national awakening that marked the life of every Balkan people and the struggles that followed, carved a deep chasm between the intellectuals of this part of the world; the Balkan literatures therefore saw themselves as very distant from each other, I would even say, in some cases fiercely opposed to each other. This explains why the elite of the Balkan countries did not know each other, and with rare exceptions, no Balkan country showed any interest in getting to know the literature of its neighbor. We must also add that the attention of Every country was attracted by the brilliance of the great world literatures, which served as models for writers.

The historical figures whose names we have united in the title of this work have linked their destinies in the history of the Serbian and Bulgarian peoples almost a hundred years ago, thus embodying the unified process of the emergence of their modern history and culture. Everything that occurred in the Balkans in the sixties and seventies of the last century is so significant for the modern history and culture of the Balkan peoples that considerable scientific efforts must be made to fully study the given historical events, to understand their internal laws and to find ourselves in the channel of those invisible, repeatedly intersecting currents that then organically connected our peoples and determined their subsequent historical destiny. In the numerous attempts undertaken so far to clarify the events of that time and to characterize the individual personalities who in one way or another determined these events, there is a certain tendency towards isolation and an aspiration to consider the facts in their significance, detached from the pan-European processes, limiting them within the narrow Slavic framework and thus reducing, I would say, their general significance. In this case, the authors have often fallen into pathos and nationalism, have been uncritical and have themselves succumbed to ecstasy. By the way, there have been researchers, alien to such affectation and excessive enthusiasm, who have managed to suppress their own excitement, which necessarily accompanies any research, especially such, carried out in a very restless and exciting time. Naturally, such researchers have achieved larger and more significant results.

Returning to Yovkov - after Vazov and Elin Pelin - always awakens a keen sense of his unique character as an artist. When we compare Vazov and Elin Pelin, it is natural to deal with similarities and differences, to speak of a natural step forward in the development of the short story. When we get to Yovkov, all this starts to sound too general and approximate. The step forward is present here too. But with him it is not only a step forward, but also a step "aside". The similarities and differences here turn out to be more indirect and deeper, precisely because they are intricately mediated by Yovkov's artistic individuality. Indeed, Yovkov also relied on Vazov - at least to the extent that Elin Pelin also relied on him. And Yovkov, although he writes stories about ten years after Elin Pelin, strictly speaking, has no other national school and no other heritage behind him, except the Vazovs, and no other example alongside him - except Elin Pelin. And yet Yovkov stubbornly, centimeter by centimeter, for twenty years in a row, breaks his artistic path further and further away from the Vazov-Elin Pelin highway. And the reader feels that the separate comparisons between them and him would yield even less than between Vazov and Elin Pelin, if they had not gone through the understanding of the whole; that before being decomposed into similarities and differences, - precisely Yovkov more than anyone else - must be felt in his peculiarly secluded, in comparison with the first Two, almost closed artistic system.

In the concluding part of his study "The Birth of the Poetic Work," Jean-Paul Weber makes the following self-confident and significant declaration: "In our thematic readings there is nothing reminiscent of the rigid generalizations of psychoanalysts or stylists, of their Oedipus complexes, oral, anal, and genital stages, or of their baroque, classical, romantic, and so on styles."1 Self-confident because, as we will see below, Weber's results differ little from the Freudian ones and because the positive aspects of the "stylists'" concepts are also lightly rejected. Significant because a representative of the latest bourgeois literary criticism is attempting to break with, or at least declaring that he wants to break with, the two most characteristic trends in art and literary criticism's non-historicism in the first half of our century. The stylistism of the formalists and "philologists" and psychologism with all its orthodox and schismatic tendencies are the two poles between which the many nuances of this non-historicism move. What polarizes them is the stylists' transcendence of artistic development beyond the will and peculiarities of the creative personality and the psychoanalysts' complete closure of the determining factors of development within the individual or "collective subconscious." And what connects them is the isolation of artistic development from the class-economic and ideological development of society. In this environment, the French literary critic and psychologist Jean-Paul Weber announced that he had achieved an approach that overcomes the limitations of both stylists and psychoanalysts.

The image of the writer Clement of Ohrid still remains incompletely outlined. Clement's literary work has not been collected, has not been published in a more complete scientific edition. There is no unity on the issue of what this work includes, there is no complete list of Clement's "words". Clement's literary heritage has not been evaluated either from a literary-historical point of view or from an ideological-aesthetic one. The study of this heritage, which began in the last decades of the first millennium after his death, was not continued in the first decades of the next millennium. Perhaps a more significant impetus for research work on this heritage will be given by the 1050th anniversary of his death, celebrated this year. Clement fully deserves such research work.

The name of one writer almost always points us to the name of the other - so much so that we feel connected in time and in the nature of their work. Elin Pelin and Yovkov are almost the same age: the former is three years older than the latter and lived twelve years after him. Both were born and raised in a village, but in different Bulgarian regions that are not similar. Elin Pelin is from Western Bulgaria, a child of a stubborn Shopian environment, among which he built his basic worldview and character, although after his twenty-third year (1900) he lived only in the capital, while Yovkov has longer and stronger roots in the village. The latter was nursed and spent his childhood in the wilderness of the Balkans - Zheravna; - and his adulthood - in flat Dobrudzha, near the border, where he taught until the Balkan War, so that he spent about thirty years of village life.

Anton Strashimirov met Vera Balabanova, née Bozhkova, in 1932. During the last five years of his life, Strashimirov maintained regular creative contact with Balabanova, who showed a keen interest in literature and writing. When she was in Sofia, she regularly met the writer in person, and when she was on leave for a longer period in Kardzhali or Haskovo, they maintained written contact. Previously, Vera Balabanova had lived in Germany for many years and after her return she devoted herself to literary life. She collaborated in "Literary Hour", "Literary Voice with Stories and Articles. She published the novel "Nick", 1937 and the story "Ancheto Pishe...", 1959, awarded by the Ministry of Public Education and the Central Committee of the Komsomol. Balabanova's home was often visited in the past by prominent Bulgarian writers Stefan L. Kostov, Anton Strashimirov, G. P. Stamatov, Teodor Trayanov, Ivan Radoslavov and others... Balabanova owns the interesting correspondence between Ivan Radoslavov and Teodor Trayanov and preserves her personal correspondence with Georgi Stamatov, Teodor Trayanov, Ivan Radoslavov and others.

Every time I think of the great artist, the silhouettes of his numerous heroes are clearly outlined in my mind. And along with them, the image of the unforgettable Beshkov is resurrected. I don’t know why, but his translucent, sinewy and long, very long fingers are most clearly outlined. I met such graceful and flexible fingers, strong and mobile fingers for the first time in Iliya Beshkov. There was something noble and refined in them, gallant and gentle, exceptional and powerful. These fingers played with equal skill on the round holes of his countless whistles, duduks, dvoyanki and tsafari, which he took out of the inside pocket of his jacket. With them he held the remarkable blade of the pen, which knew no rest. With them he drummed on tambourines, drums and random objects and, when it got boring, he replaced the drum. These fingers have long held the pencil with which he wrote his original essays about the Equal-to-the-Apostles Cyril and Methodius or about the folk song, about Paisius of Hilendar or about the deacon Levski, about the God-fighter Hristo Botev or about the fiery prophet "Georgi Dimitrov", about Stamboliyski or Kolarov, about the duel Aleko - Bai Ganyo or about his numerous friends - Nikola Marinov, Ivan Milev, Pencho Georgiev, Konstantin Petkanov, Alexander Bozhinov, Ruska Marinova, Alexander Stamenov and many others... Beshkov has written down many of his ideas about art, maxims about life, aphorisms about human existence, his "jokes", which contain so much wisdom, sorrow and pride.

The name of Georgi Tsanev is so inextricably linked with the history of our Literature that whenever we talk about its most prominent manifestations, we somehow connect them with the activity of criticism, and when we think about the man and the writer Georgi Tsanev, we see in his person one of the most active figures of critical thought in our country over the past few decades. A penetrating critic and historian with rich erudition, G. Tsanev has been working tirelessly in the literary field for more than four decades and Georgi Tsanev, Writers and Others. Ed. Bulgarian Writer, 1965 problem 6 makes his contribution to solving the great questions of our literary history and operational literary criticism. It is difficult to say where his merits are greater. The efforts of both the critic and the historian are equally noble and the results of them equally significant for our literature. Because the manifestations of both. and on the other, no matter how unnatural this division of the single essence of the creator-literate person may sound, are related to the most current, most difficult and neuralgic problems and conditions of our literary life.

In the first half of the current year, the Scientific Council of the Institute of Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences decided to award the scientific degree "Candidate of Philological Sciences" to the senior lecturer at the Faculty of Slavic Philology of Sofia University "Kliment Ohridski" - Georgi Mitrev Markov and to the full-time postgraduate student at the Institute of Literature - Atanas Vassilev Slavov.

On June 2, the Scientific Council of the Institute of Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences discussed and approved for publication a collection of studies that the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Sofia State University prepared on the occasion of the 1050th anniversary of the death of the outstanding Bulgarian and Slavic educator, teacher and man of letters Kliment Ohridski. It includes 24 studies by Bulgarian authors-historians, literary critics, linguists, specialists in the history of Bulgarian fine arts and music, as well as a bibliography of Bulgarian literature on Kliment Ohridski for the period 1945-1966.

On June 23, 1966, the Scientific Council at the Institute of Literature also discussed the work of senior research fellow Ganka Naydenova "The Romantic Image - a Symbol of the Creator". In his written review, Professor Stefan Stanchev made a detailed description of the work. According to him, Naydenova's work represents an original scientific study with a contributing character. The author's concepts are built on rich material from all of Western European literature. The material is treated originally with a view to the author's thesis. During the discussion of G. Naydenova's work, the following spoke: Professor Emil Georgiev, Professor Stoyan Karolev, senior research fellow Minko Nikolov, academician M. Arnaudev, senior research fellow Krastvo Genov and the director of the institute Stoyko Bozhkov. The speeches emphasized the importance of the topic, the richness of the material on which the work is built and the original analyses and author's concepts. It was emphasized that the work has contribution. The speakers made some recommendations: greater unification and stretching of the material in view of the central theme; greater precision of some formulations; the chapter on Bulgarian literature to be dropped because it feels artificially attached. In his closing remarks, the director of the institute, Stoyko Bozhkov, recommended that the author take into account the wishes made and unify the material in view of the topic set, to direct her attention to the concepts she deals with and which characterize phenomena that are different in their genesis.