Ivan Slavov

A book that respects the scale of spiritual synthesis! Thirty years of condensation of the author's thought into one Main goal: relief compaction of the contours of the aesthetic sketch bequeathed by Marx and Engels. Double and triple casting and polishing of each fragment with theoretical significance for art and its precise incorporation into the logical structure of Marxism. Historical and conceptual analysis of the basic aesthetic concepts - from the idealistic formulation to the Marxist synthesis of their real content: theoretical substantiation of each aesthetic principle in view of the internal logic of Marxist philosophy. This approach elevates Friedlander above the narrow interpretation of the aesthetic ideas of Marx and Engels as an expression of their personal artistic judgments, devoid of theoretical significance; replacing them with the general principles of historical materialism or using them to confirm the statement that "we have yet to create a Marxist theory of artistic creativity" (M. N. Pokrovsky). Friedlander convincingly proves that the aesthetic theory of Marxism, although not formally completed and systematized, is one of the aspects of the overall revolutionary worldview of K. Marx and F. Engels, inextricably linked to their common principled party position" (4).

Marx's monumental style was admired by people of the rank of Engels, J. Marx, P. Lafargue, W. Liebknecht, Lenin, F. Mehring, and others. In their memoirs and notes, one finds extremely important observations and assessments of Marx's style, but without any attempt at analysis. Mehring merely sets the task: "The language of Karl Marx deserves a detailed study; this would be an important contribution to the study of Marx's personality and his work." 1 Exactly sixty years have passed since then, but the question still remains open. Why is the problem of style unanimously overlooked among the countless studies of Marx's literary heritage? Of course, as Mehring points out, this is not a primary task compared to propaganda and the further development of Marx's ideas. And although it is true in its essence, this explanation is already outdated and incomplete. According to Engels, when a new teaching is spread, for the sake of ideas, at first they do not pay attention to the form or attribute it to accidents, to the peculiarity of the creative personality. Later they begin to identify the thinker with his teaching, evaluating them as a whole. Finally, they reduce the ideas to the scale of the work, and the personality to the sum of the qualities necessary to carry it out. And so in the final stage they remain: Marxism as a revolutionary-proletarian teaching, Marx - the founder of scientific communism, and Marx the man - drowns in biographies. Therefore, the return path from the personality to the immanent features of its creativity encounters exceptional difficulties. But not so much because of a lack of biographical data, but as a result of the systematic underestimation of the principle of dialectical unity between the personality and its creativity. And they do not complement each other, but exist through each other. Marx did not construct his doctrine speculatively - the objective premises were prepared by history - but he created it. He is its creator. But not only with his genius and colossal erudition, but also with his will, his heart, his love for the proletariat, his contempt for the bourgeoisie, with his whole personality. On what grounds then is a titanic personality reduced to a function of intellect and class struggle?

Despite the "conspiracy of silence" towards Marxism on the part of official bourgeois science, in the middle of the last century it was already a respectable reality. But his aesthetic theory was "rediscovered" only in the 1930s-1940s by Soviet scientists. This temporarily limited the perimeter of its impact on world aesthetic thought; slowed down the formation of Marxist aesthetics; exacerbated the international controversy over the theoretical significance of Marx's aesthetic concept. And the prejudices towards it, the doubts about its very existence and even about the possibility of building aesthetics on the principles of historical materialism, are more peripheral than the traditional bourgeois skepticism towards Marxism as a whole. At first glance, the late discovery of Marx's aesthetic heritage is a simple anomaly. In fact, a complex of reasons of a scientific, social, ideological, aesthetic and bibliographic nature intersect here. Together, they determine the unique fate of this heritage. Their study is the subject of this article.