Lyudmil Stoyanov

What poems did I write before becoming fascinated with symbolism? What was my youthful poetry like? Like every beginning poet (1903–1904), I had not one but several notebooks filled with poems. These were poems in the spirit of folk heroism, written under the influence of Botev, Vazov, and P. R. Slaveykov. I was able to restore a small part of them in the 1954 collection Poems. In 1905, I moved from Plovdiv to Sofia with the intention of studying and supporting myself with my own work. I stayed with a classmate I knew, who later took these poems with him, and for a long time I saw some of them printed in provincial newspapers under his name. In 1905, I was greatly impressed by Pushkin's poem "Vechny Oleg" in Pencho Slaveykov's translation. Pushkin and Lermontov became my favorite poets. Their poetry was of such high quality that it could not be imitated. I began to translate it, clumsily at first. In 1907, I read my translation of Lermontov's "The Demon" to a student audience. The impression was encouraging. I usually translated Pushkin and Lermontov under difficult circumstances (in prison, at the front, in hospital, in exile), with a feeling of love and gratitude for their genius. This raises the question: why did I not remain faithful to my love for the poetry of Pushkin and Lermontov? How can my enthusiasm for symbolism, shared by other Bulgarian poets of that period (1905-1915), be explained?

When we met with Todor Pavlov in his office in the first days after September 9, 1944, among the many conversations I said: "How wonderful it is when justice prevails. ... Indeed, justice was triumphant in those days: the partisan detachments came down from the mountains after a long and hard struggle, adorned with pine branches, ivy, and geraniums, the prison doors were opening to release the fighters for social justice, the victorious Soviet army was marching westward and sweeping away the remnants of the brown plague... It was also just that he, Todor Pavlov, on behalf of the party, was at the helm of the state. He raised his hand with his characteristic gesture and said in a tone that brooked no objection: "Justice - that is our goal."

N. Rozov. A strange thing! We have been arguing for an hour now, and I still cannot penetrate the essence of your "fictional thinking." D. Dame. Ask yourself - why? I know critics who handle ready-made formulas inherited from ancient philosophers, and cling to them like blind men cling to their staff. Therefore, any slightest touch on dogmas and traditional phrases throws them into bewilderment and anxiety. They begin to wonder: is there not a deviation from the dogmatic canon here, which is for them one of the seven deadly sins?

Fifty years ago, on the day of Leo Tolstoy's death, I wrote an article that defined my attitude and admiration for the life and work of the great writer. And then, as today, Tolstoy is for me a poet and artist, a great painter of the human soul, an interpreter of events and history, a subtle describer of nature. His novels of that time, the article says, "are epics, just as immortal as the poems of the blind Theosophist". In Tolstoy's work from beginning to end we see one, great loving soul, melting with grief for the sufferings of the poor earthly inhabitant - the wronged man". The article says: "The human race had one comforter - that was Tolstoy. With his death, it was as if some old high mountain had collapsed, which protected us from the cold winds and snowstorms of the era". When we read Tolstoy's novels, stories, and short stories, we have the feeling that the stormy ocean of life rages beneath us, which he tames like some all-powerful magician. Throughout his long life, Tolstoy fought for the truth that Others suppress, against power, public opinion, church fanaticism, and tsarism, so that the truth he reveals turns out to be stronger than anything. Questions about art dominated Tolstoy's thoughts from the early to the last years of his life. He rejected the idea of ​​art as a metaphysical play of beauty, a mysterious divine revelation and inspiration, as a means of pleasure - he considered art a way to bring people, humanity, together, uniting human souls in common feelings and aspirations.

The literary historian who would undertake a more fundamental examination of the development and significance of proletarian and anti-fascist poetry in the thirties of our century will be confronted with a number of unexplained problems and contradictions in the work of individual poets, as well as - on the other hand - with the great revolutionary upsurge of this poetry, with its contribution to the revolutionary education of the new generation in the midst of the great historical events that were brewing. It is necessary, first of all, to clarify the driving forces of the era that led humanity to the Second World War. The rise of Italian fascism and German Nazism, the strengthening of the reactionary course in Europe,

What are the main conclusions you draw from your creative path so far? - Without taking the question lightly, I can say that when a writer has tortured the innocent white paper for nearly six decades, something has surely fallen into the literature basket that would give people a reason to say two nice words about him. First - age - it has two sides. One is that for the most part, life has passed and many of the joys and good feelings, creative delights, impressions of youth remain in it, until the day when a person has to take stock and see what is left for him in the future. And then he realizes - and this is the second side - that he has not completed too many things and regrets that perhaps he will not complete them. - What do you personally put into the first part and what into the second? - The river of life passes before us, passes spontaneously, but few look into the thousands of features, nuances, colors, into earthly and heavenly reality, into the existence of people and their struggle for their self-development as individuals, into getting to know the springs of social development. However, without some impetus, without a random and unexpected coincidence of circumstances, similar to the awakening of his consciousness of the diversity and beauty of the world described by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, it is not possible to direct the human spirit to the source of Creativity. - Perhaps this is a natural phenomenon, but how has it been reflected in your work? - I am mentally going back to draw examples of the influence of life (in the broadest sense) on the development of a whole series of writers, from the closed world of individualism to the wide horizon of life's phenomena, of suffering and human dramas, of people's struggle for a better life, to remember my personal experience on this issue. This experience covers the period from 1905 to the present day. - You place the emphasis on reality, as if it were what makes the writer? - It often happens that the events of historical life act on the writer in one direction or another, and if he is not prepared to reveal their meaning, he would hardly be able to find his creative path. We discover similar hesitations in many writers, which either keep them in the stream of tradition and conservatism, or open up a wide path for them to the heights of their era.

A wide library hall in the House of Culture. The left side is occupied by shelves with books, carelessly stacked in various positions. On the right - wide windows that cover the entire wall and make the hall bright and conducive to peace and reflection. In the corner, a ceiling-high philodendron, whose wide leaves seem to have consciously turned towards the sun to remind them of their distant tropical homeland. At an oblong table, the two opponents sit and leaf through books and magazines. They have left the neighboring hall, where a report on poetry is being read. Yankov. (With a smile). We are completely calm here. No one will disturb our conversation. As you know, writers are afraid of the word "bibliotheca". For them, it is something like a book museum, a tomb of names worthy of respect, but suffocated by literary incense. Gorano v. (With bitterness). How easily a writer can fall behind the times! His era opens its doors wide, and he has grabbed hold of some dogma and clings to it like a blind man to a stick! I recently came across the court case of Giordano Bruno before the court of the Inquisition. As a faithful son of the Catholic Church, Bruno recognizes the dogma of the "Trinity of God", recognizes it "a priori", as a verbal exercise, but, he says, it has nothing to do with the infinity of the universe and the innumerability of the worlds". He calls the holy fathers "a constellation of pedants who, with their ignorance, arrogance and rudeness, would drive Job himself out of patience". Scholasticism is for him a "shell for souls", instead of a "grain of knowledge". Yankov. (Laughs). What is to be done! The great man is always ahead of his time. Goranov. No. There is something else here. Such is pedantic thought. It is lazy, sectarian, and lacks flight. That is why I divide writers into two types: sectarians and artists, i.e. creators. Sectarians cannot be creators because of their sectarianism, they lag behind in their development, they arrive at the airport of history when the jet machine of time has long since taken off.

The Great October Revolution not only changed the public consciousness, thinking and spirituality of millions of people in the world, but also created for them a clear and precise answer to the agonizing question of a way out of capitalist slavery. The victory of October became a worldview, a significant page in history, a complete system of ideas and feelings, of perception of life phenomena.

and for me, civic poetry is an inseparable part of national poetry, simultaneously party, patriotic, heroic, expressing the excitement of the people in moments of victory or danger, through images of individual heroes or an entire era. Such is the poetry of Botev ("Farewell", "Hadji Dimitar"), of Vazov ("Epic of the Forgotten"), of Mayakovsky ("Vladimir Ilyich Lenin"), where the excitement of the people's soul, the dictates of the time, the struggle for a new life are embedded.