Книжка-3

1968 Book 3 Contents

The establishment and development of the Institute of Literature is a result of the successful implementation of the socialist revolution in our country. For the first time, research work on the thousand-year-old Bulgarian literature became a state affair: through systematic and purposeful study, its riches are made available to the widest layers of the people in the interest of their cultural elevation and spiritual enrichment. The Institute is called upon to develop literary science in its diversity, to improve its capabilities and, more actively, to support the flourishing of our contemporary fiction and to raise the artistic consciousness of the builders of socialist society.

With his creative work, Lyudmil Stoyanov fills more than six decades of the history of new Bulgarian literature - he published his first poems at the age of 19 in 1905 in the magazine "Artist", and even today, in 1968, he has not interrupted his writing work. Some will say: the long life of a writer inevitably covers several periods in the development of a literature. The difference with Lyudmil Stoyanov, however, is that he is not only present in these periods, but also most actively participates in them as a citizen and artist. The historian of Bulgarian literature in the 20th century will seriously struggle with which period to place him: Lyudmil Stoyanov cannot be absent from the development of our literature in the first decade of the century and the eve of the wars; in the period after the First World War he is one of the most active participants in literary life, and in the 30s he develops his enormous anti-fascist activity; The defeat of monarcho-fascism and capitalism brought him to his literary post, and for the third decade now he has been taking the most active part in building our socialist culture.

There is a verse in "Faust" that can be translated as: "Our first step is free, with the second we are slaves!" This thought is all too appropriate for the artist, who, having once given free rein to his own imagination in "inventing" a new composition, soon becomes dependent on it. Should the same be said of the writer and art critic? How far does his freedom of choice extend? Is he not a slave to his own, previously preferred or subsequently guessed method? Such questions go so far in today's literary and art studies that they cast doubt on the possibility of a scientific interpretation of the work of art, or at the very least - treat this interpretation as something not quite as certain and expedient as was previously thought. Some contemporary authors believe that the methodological basis of artistic interpretation is only just being formed or is yet to be formed; others are convinced that a scientific analysis of the work is possible only insofar as it does not feed interpretative claims, i.e., insofar as it renounces interpretation in the traditional sense of the term. All those who today argue for "modern" literary studies and art studies, however, mercilessly attack attempts to reveal the meaning of artistic images by establishing historical, biographical, etc. facts. This was yesterday's word for dubious knowledge.

In the short period of victory and disappointment in the struggle for spiritual independence, between 1870 and 1873, Petko Slaveykov wrote three poetic works that became the crowning glory of his poetic work - "Don't Sing to Me", "My Cruelty Has Broken", and "The Spring of the White-Legged Woman". During these years, he wrote other poems, but they repeat the motifs known until then in his poetry, they do not carry the dazzling novelty of the aforementioned ones, both in spirit and in expression.

Botev's feuilletons are the highest achievement in the development of Bulgarian feuilleton until the Liberation. They are closely related to Karavelov's feuilleton. Botev undoubtedly learned from Karavelov, set out on the path outlined by him, adopted the main genre and style features of his feuilletons. The general, principled attitude of Karavelov and Botev to the factual basis of the feuilleton, to the artistic image, to the journalistic essence, power and pathos of the feuilleton denunciation, to the great revolutionary tasks that the feuilletonist solves and to which his work also serves, are very close in both authors. The deep connection and continuity in their creative work of great masters of the feuilleton is undeniable. At the same time, however, Botev takes a significant step forward. His feuilletons are one of the peaks not only in the history of Bulgarian feuilleton, but in the development of our literature in general. Despite the great proximity and undeniable continuity with Karavel's feuilletons, Botev's feuilleton legacy has its own independent place and significance, and is subject to its own laws. The great proximity is accompanied by deep and essential differences. The more we delve into the structural and generally artistic features of Botev's feuilleton, the more clearly its peculiar world emerges.

In the history of Old Bulgarian literature, the Tale of the Zograf Martyrs currently occupies a modest place. It is usually noted as one of the works of our historical literature of the 13th century, written on a historical theme - the massacre in 1275 in the Bulgarian Zograf Monastery of 21 Bulgarian monks and 4 laymen. It is assumed that the appearance of the Tale is directly related to the existing during the Second Bulgarian Kingdom our chronicle tradition, of which the Tale is a small fragment that has come down to us with its specific, dictated by the theme and the time of its emergence, anti-Latin tendency. Both Yordan Ivanov and Petar Dinekov are of the opinion that the Tale was written almost in the wake of the events and insofar as it contains hints about the external dangers threatening the Bulgarian people, they relate to its political and state relations at the end of the 13th century. 2 As can be seen, the Tale was not left without attention by our literary historians. Yet, what has been written about it so far is relatively small, so that the true place of the Tale in the Old Bulgarian literary process can be outlined on its basis. The reason for this state of research is that this medieval historical work of ours is considered anonymous, and the question of its more certain or possible authorship has not been raised.

The advent of the Belarusian novel in the first half of the 1960s stimulated aesthetic and literary-critical thought in the BSSR. Numerous articles, reviews and monographs were written about the novel. Not only colleagues from the Institute of Literature and the Faculty of Philology in Minsk, but also novelist writers themselves showed a strong literary and scientific interest in this genre. More general studies also appeared, and first of all, volumes I and II of the History of Belarusian Soviet Literature, where a significant place is devoted to the novel. And literary Slavic studies in Soviet Belarus, having already shown a number of creative initiatives, intensively introduced comparative analysis, so rarely found in Belarusian literary studies.

Although it has long traditions, comparative literary studies has attracted in recent years an increasingly wide circle of representatives of historical-literary, critical and theoretical-aesthetic thought. In the efforts to study the general and specific laws of literary development, to illuminate artistic phenomena from more sides, both as a result of national, concrete-historical conditions, and as phenomena in the fabric of which we find much similarity, resulting from the constant relationships with what was conquered by other peoples, comparative interpretation is proving to be increasingly effective. An indisputable contribution to this direction is made by Marxist literary studies, which, overcoming the limitations of bourgeois comparative studies in the past, in dispute with contemporary idealistic concepts and methods, places the comparative consideration of artistic processes and works on a broad socio-historical, cultural-sociological, philosophical-aesthetic basis. In this way, not only are the prerequisites and driving forces for the development of national literatures revealed, but on the basis of their study, a more complete illumination of the general processes characterizing the literary life of many countries and peoples is achieved.

Although partially surviving, the legacy that has remained to us from our old literature is great. Valuable monuments in many respects have been preserved - purely church liturgical books, philosophical treatises, encyclopedic collections of readings, linguistic and orthographic treatises, legal monuments, chronicles, lives, stories, damascenes, etc. These monuments are an invaluable source for the history of our language, of Bulgarian literature, of Bulgarian social, legal and philosophical thought, of Bulgarian art throughout the centuries. And despite their great and multifaceted importance, little work is done in our country on the publication and study of these monuments, especially on their publication. A large part of the previous editions of Bulgarian medieval manuscripts are the work of foreign scholars, mainly Russian.

Georgi Markov's new book presents the author to us as a well-oriented literary critic, who makes conscious and in-depth efforts to reveal the specific laws of literary creativity, to penetrate the secrets of artistic mastery, into the world of the writer. The fruit of theoretical thinking, the book has a close proximity to the sphere of art. It does not give abstract logical interpretations and analyses, but rather approaches them concretely, in connection with the artistic features of literary works. The author's growth is evident. 1 G. Markov, Life Truth and Artistic Truth, ed. Narodno Prosveta, Sofia, 1968. A few years ago he published the book "Questions of Literary Analysis". If we compare it with the current one, we will see many common problems and at the same time - a big difference in their development. A manifest aspiration towards a complex research approach, towards a modern scientific level. Georgi Markov's theoretical interests are directed primarily towards the problems of ideology and artistic analysis, towards revealing the complex relations between literature and reality. These issues, which have a fundamentally important methodological significance for clarifying the essence of artistic creativity, have always been little developed so far, and there are many unresolved problems in connection with them. In the past, a considerable tribute was paid in this area to schematism and simplification, to vulgar sociology. To this day, many theorists are often satisfied only with general definitions and formulations, without detailing and arguing in essence. However, in his new book, G. Markov approaches the problems from different aspects, seeks the root causes of the phenomena, connects theoretical issues with examples from various literary works, mainly by Bulgarian poets and writers.

Vitaly Ozerov's new book has a clearly defined addressee - the mass reader, and an even more specific task - to show how Soviet writers depicted in their works the main stages of the half-century development of Soviet society. As a rule, the critic's attention is focused on novels, and by Russian Soviet authors; representatives of other nationalities are present more as "decor", from the posts only V. Mayakovsky, S. Yesenin, N. Dementiev, A. Surkov, P. Antokolsky, M. Aliger, A. Kuleshov, A. Akhmatova and others are mentioned with individual works. Through chronologically arranged essays, V. Ozerov achieves his goal: by analyzing individual works, he at the same time strives to reveal their place and significance in both literary and social life. Of course, as the critic emphasizes, in a small book it is hardly possible to cover the huge, multinational process in the history of Soviet literature. Here, it is necessary to bring individual authors and works to the forefront in order to highlight even more clearly what is an undoubted contribution.

Arnaudov, Mihail. Ballad motifs in folk poetry - vol. I, S., BAS, 1964, 400 p. Dinekov, Petar. Bulgarian folk poetry. Notes - S., Science and Art, 1949, 180 p.; II revised and supplemented edition, S., 1963. Arnaudov, Mihail. On the question of the creators of the folk song. A gifted folk singer from Sofia - Izv. of the Institute for Literature, vol. IX, 1960. Dinekov, Petar. Folklore and the history of Bulgarian literature - Lit. thought, 1967, vol. 6. Petkanova, Donka. On the question of the connections of folklore with Bogomilism - Izv. of the Institute for Literature, vol. VI, 1958. 81-100. Chaika, Henrika (Poland). Some artistic features of Bulgarian folk songs - Lit. Misal, 1967, vol. 4.