Книжка-4

1969 Book 4 Contents

Habit nullifies surprise. However, there are comparisons that never cease to surprise us even when we should already be used to them. On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the September 9th People's Uprising, these comparisons are inevitable. After all, the meaning of every anniversary is to tear us away from the myopia of everyday worries - to raise us to a height from which the path we have traveled is embraced with a glance: to provoke us to reflect on near and distant prospects. And then repeatedly repeated statements begin to amaze us with their truthfulness. Things that we are used to surprise us again - by the way, also with the fact that they have become commonplace for us so quickly.

I believe it will interest Bulgarian readers, who have long appreciated Ibsen, to know that his thoughts were, among other things, directed towards Bulgaria when he wrote "When the Dead Rise". The main female character, Irena von Satow, bears the surname of her second husband, a Ruthenian, owner of gold mines in the Urals. And her first husband was a South American. "A senior diplomat", says Ibsen's final version. But in the first draft it is said that he was a "Ruthenian", and in an intermediate version that he was a diplomat, a senior Bulgarian diplomat. "Why Bulgarian"? My theory is that Ibsen originally intended to allude to the Bulgarian Insarov from Turgenev's novel, "On the Eve." But Irena, who may be a "Turgenev" woman, is more of a femme fatale, like Irena in "Smoke," than a "strong" woman, like Elena in "On the Eve." That is why Ibsen ultimately dropped the term "Bulgarian." (I deal with this situation in more detail in a major study, "Turgenev in the Spiritual Life of Norway," which I have just finished.)

Rapid growth - with these words I would characterize the development of literature and literary science in the People's Republic of Bulgaria. Before our eyes, with each passing year, Bulgarian literature conquers new and new ideological and artistic achievements. What attracts me personally to it is the expansion of the subject matter, the depth of the struggle, the sense of historical optimism, the understanding of dramatic and life-affirming pathos. It was precisely such a feeling that overwhelmed me, a layman, but sincerely loving Bulgarian art, when I read and reread the books of D. Dimov and E. Stanev, of G. Karaslavov and K. Kalchev, of D. Talev and A. Gulyashki, of D. Fuchedzhiev, N. Khaitov and many other talented prose writers. What I am saying clearly does not apply only to prose. In May of this year, Days of Bulgarian Culture were held. E. Bagryana, L. Stefanova, M. Isaev, N. Zidarov read their poems at the Central House of Writers. Their poetry captivated the listeners with the power and brightness of the feeling associated with deep philosophical thought.

Generally speaking, the value of the spiritual culture of humanity is measured by the great European languages. Unfortunately, this is largely the case today, and often the names of great creators remain under the dust of oblivion or, at best, are brought to light with a rather significant delay.

A quarter century - this is, one might say, the minute hand of history. Especially for a people like the Bulgarians, whose history and culture have existed for so long. And at the same time, the last twenty-five years are an entire era in the social life and consciousness of this people, saturated with a huge and diverse historical experience. The desire to make sense of this experience, to understand its roots and meaning, is a characteristic feature of contemporary Bulgarian literature. Bulgarian writers with remarkable intensity develop the dramatic events of the September Uprising of 1923. For the first time in Europe, the dawn of anti-fascist battles flared up. The Bulgarian people took the front lines of the front, which had, as it soon became clear, global significance. The scale and historical meaning of this struggle are clearly felt in Georgi Karaslavov's epic "Ordinary People" and in Emilian Stanev's "Ivan Kondarev".

The artist's art is lasting when it reflects from contemporary reality what is interesting and significant not only for the given moment, but also for the future. I wrote about my personal experiences, but these were experiences of a certain time, with their own specific features, and it is no wonder that today in my poems one finds the formed features of a woman, and of a Bulgarian woman, in a long period of her development, which passed in the conditions of two different eras. Poetry for a poet is like a disease with which he was born. It is incurable, it is carried throughout life. This requires not only a lot of love and loyalty, but also mental fortitude, hard work, and sacrifices. Especially when the artist, like me, is a woman who began working in the difficult social and public conditions in our country fifty years ago. At a time when she had to fight life and death for her right to have talent, to express it with her work, to win and pave the way for the gifted women who come after her. This was, for its time, and I can say it now without undue modesty, a true feat and Amazonianism.

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.

Elin Pelin once said that everything said about love is true. This thought of the writer can also be transferred to the field of poetry. Everything said about poetry by those who are excited by it is true. Although no one has given an accurate, clear, short and acceptable to all formulation of the concept of poetry. However, it exists as the immortal soul of humanity, every day it is reborn in a different way through the muses of its individual creators. And no pessimistic theories and vulgarizations can cancel it. It exists and will exist as long as there are people. When flowers bloom and birds sing, they obviously enjoy life, glorify existence. And the silent and incredible in variety sounds of colors and the inimitable trills of birds aim at communication, their meaning and continuation of the genus, overcoming death. Although both inanimate flowers and animate birds are hardly aware of their impulses.

Bulgarian civic poetry has a relatively long and glorious tradition. It began at the beginning of our national revival and continues to this day. The brightest works of our poetry from Hristo Botev to the present day bear a clearly civic character. Of course, every era has its own peculiarities, its own problems. Some were the problems of the time of Botev and Vazov, others are the problems that excite our contemporaries. After the October Revolution, our civic poetry marked a rapid rise. In the work of such colossus of our poetry as Hristo Smirnenski, Geo Milev, the poets of the 1930s with the brightest representative - our national hero Nikola Vaptsarov, the great excitements, thoughts and dreams of our people find vivid expression. Our revolutionary poetry of the twenties and thirties with its best achievements was civic lyrics in the best, I would say, in the noblest sense of this concept. Socialist humanism was the soul of this poetry.

Poetry, if we look at it as a device that measures the displacement of the social and internal psychological layers in the human psyche, we will have to decide that it is, above all, the most sensitive device suitable for such measurements. It may not give the full and profound picture of the event, as a novel will, but on the other hand it will react first, it will react immediately, remaining closest to the authenticity of human, I emphasize human experiences. They will not have found a convincing comparison on the scale of the overall movement of causal connections, but they will always have the freshness of a direct tape recording. This "device" can thus be considered the most accurate on the scale of science, because by capturing most accurately the state of a collected person in one collected moment, it will be able to approach most accurately the true picture, the continuous movement of the world, its ideological integrity, projected as freely interpreted art.

How it is written I do not know and will never know. But I am beginning to guess one thing: who is writing on the blank sheet in front of me? It is not I who am writing. If I were writing, I would somehow be able to cope with myself, regulate my day and night, tune myself like an old, well-studied instrument. But there is the sorrow that someone else is writing, unknown, elusive, who does not obey either my will or my desires, least of all my plans. Who is he? Where does he come from? And will he ever come again? I wake up in the morning in a bad mood. Not a trace of a poetic atmosphere. The telephone, the intruder, rushes into my mind with a stare like a drill and confuses my whole day. Everything falls apart. I leave with a sour face as if I had a toothache. My world is crooked. And on top of all that - around the corner an unpleasant meeting. I try to avoid looking at the annoying face, I say that I'm in a hurry, that I'm late, that they're waiting for me to put out a fire... The man insists on at least a moment to have his say. I listen to him with a quarter of my attention, I move away a step or two so that it becomes uncomfortable for him to hold me any longer. And he approaches and, at a breathless pace, rushes to explain some trifle to me to the end, as if someone is chasing and whipping his tongue.

Let me begin with an observation of my own. As editor-in-chief of the literary magazine "Obzor", which is published in foreign languages, I came across a significant fact. A serious positive response, a particularly pronounced interest are aroused abroad by those of our poets who possess a precious sense of the new, who are authors of civically significant poetry and achieve their artistic independence. This poetry, specific in its address, with a greater political sound, communicates much more closely with the foreign reader than poetry closed within the framework of very personal and unclear experiences. Despite the difficult-to-overcome barrier of translation, this poetry carries the artistic truth about us, about life in a socialist country, and that is precisely why it has its attractive power even in countries where poetry is a prisoner of completely opposite trends.

I think that many Bulgarian poets could rightly take part in this conversation. With the wealth of their literary experience, they would enrich our conversation. I will try to answer the questions posed, based not so much on my personal creative practice as on some observations on our poetry.

For me, civic poetry is above all a revelation, above all a confession. If we have to tell the whole truth - that which is not a confession and revelation in the work of a poet cannot bear the sacred name of "the poet's sincerity". I admit that these thoughts can be attacked from many positions, but it is time to start calling things by their true names. In this sense, I am not afraid of any replicas and opponents, as long as there is no desire to distort what I said in this conversation. I have always been impressed by the attempt to mechanically distinguish civic from other themes in the poet's work. There is nothing wrong with this, especially when we consider the existing genre specificity. The bad and condemnable thing is that once the civic position of the artist is separated as a theme, it is often approached as a "special" theme, a "special" theme that can be built with other types of expressive means. You see, some try to assert, this topic is close to the concerns and aspirations of the people, of society, of the party, it cannot be approached intimately, secretly. And because it cannot be approached intimately and secretly, expressing one's own thoughts and feelings, it is approached thesesically, loudly, often dryly and unconvincingly.

I start with the last question, because I think it is very important. Is there a difference between intimate and civic poetry? As much as we would like not to see a difference, it does exist. I do not agree that every poem that is imbued with intimacy should be called intimate poetry. In "Fight" and "Farewell," Hristo Botev is intimate, but hardly anyone would dare to include these poems in intimate poetry. When we talk about intimate poetry, we mean that poetry that is born in the sphere of personal relationships. Mother and beloved, relatives and acquaintances, friends and comrades - these are the ones who cause intimate excitement in us. For all their significance, they do not affect other people or society. Perhaps I will be clearer if I cite as an example the poem dedicated to A. P. Kern by Pushkin. It is addressed only to her and to no one else. Here the world is closed between two people. Civic poetry is something else. When Pushkin wrote "To the Slanderers of Russia," he was not thinking only of his beloved, or even of his narrow circle of friends and acquaintances, but of all the people of Russia, of the entire nation, of the state, and of his fatherland.

In recent years, some literary theorists in the West have begun to suggest that we should abandon the method of socialist realism because it has already exhausted its possibilities. They have created their own theories and schemes for socialist realism, which, of course, have easily been exhausted because these theorists ignore the history of the emergence and development of socialist realism. Art in slave society has been created over millennia, in bourgeois society over centuries, and in proletarian society over barely a century. Indeed, the pace of the construction of socialism is unheard of in comparison with the construction of other societies. But socialism is constantly under pressure from capitalism, and we are still forced to wage a fierce class struggle in the international arena. This, of course, cannot but affect the pace of the development of the new, socialist art.

The strong emphasis on the moral moment, revealing the revolutionary essence of the spiritual atmosphere of our time and days, inevitably led to a certain didacticism in dramaturgy. The socialist ideal, expressed in the concrete idea of ​​the work, as the norm of life, i.e. as its driving and determining force and the reverse process - the revelation of life, from which the idea is logically derived, determined part of our newest dramaturgy.

Our historical fiction underwent qualitative and quantitative changes after the people's victory on September 9, 1944. It became a leading genre in our contemporary literature and rose to previously unknown heights. Following the sound realistic traditions, carried out by such masters of the artistic word as Ivan Vazov, Zahari Stoyanov and Stoyan Zagorchinov, contemporary authors of historical works assess and make sense of the past through their contemporary understandings, seek in it similarities with our time, fight for the complete triumph of socialist ideals. The development of the historical theme throughout the entire twenty-five-year period yielded rich and fruitful results, and for this, of course, there are profound objective-historical and aesthetic-literary reasons. The new time imposed the need for a new, Marxist reassessment of the historical past, especially of the recent revolutionary events. Thus were born some of the most significant works of our contemporary literature: the historical tetralogy of Dimitar Talev, "Ordinary People" by Georgi Karaslavov, "Ivan Kondarev" by Emilian Stanev... all large, widely developed reflections of life that summarize the panorama of a given historical era, introduce its regularities, trace the trends of social development through the development of bright individual human destinies and deeply dramatic life situations, and solve contemporary ideological-educational and literary-aesthetic tasks. It is in this area of ​​our fiction that the artistic achievements, achieved thanks to the unlimited possibilities that the method of socialist realism provides to contemporary artists, are most obvious. They possess the surest compass for penetrating the dark depths of the past, for understanding the hidden meaning of historical events: a harmonious and vital philosophical system that organizes and interprets the artistic material, spiritualizing it with deep contemporary thought. At no other time have Bulgarian authors of historical works been so close to the tasks of today, to the spiritual needs of modern man. In no other period of the development of Bulgarian literary prose have so many and so significant works on historical themes been created. It is difficult to outline even the most cursory individual characteristics of the galaxy of historical contemporary authors, to reveal the originality of their writings, of the original interpretation of historical events and characters - so rich is their diversity.

One of the interesting facts that characterizes the development of our national literature in the period after September 9, 1944, and especially in the last two decades, is the growing interest abroad in the work of our writers and, along with this, the increasingly active exchange between the People's Republic of Bulgaria and other countries - socialist and non-socialist - in the field of culture.

When in 1926 the name of Georgi Karaslavov was noticed, it was difficult to guess how the young talent would shine. He was heading towards the village that had been plunged into sorrow and angry silence after the April days of 1925. He also wrote about the lives of children from the outskirts of the capital, who, with the loss of many human dignity, resemble the Gavrosh family from Smirnensky's "Winter Evenings". He also told about the moral resilience of the fighters from the construction proletariat in the vicinity of Prague, led by a conscious political avant-garde ("Spor Zhilov"). He also created quite a few images of urban intellectuals - folk teachers, dreamers and realists, who died at the stake of the revolutionary struggle. However, Karaslavov's main personal theme gradually became clear and it remained the village until the end. The village with its transparently serene natural pictures, spring and winter moods, the village with its cruel possessive ambitions, with the drama of the sharpened class struggles. It, this post-war, already changed village, different from Elin Pelinovoto and Yovkovoto, sounded like a constant melody - restrained, but strong and noble. Two terrible forces rage in it: the power of property, which gradually, mechanically destroys humanity; the power of its negation, inspired by the tenderly embraced world of the desire for liberation.

At first glance, the fate of Hristo Radevski and his poetry is clear, but difficult to understand. A revolutionary poet in spirit and expression, Radevski's fate is not like the fate of Bulgarian revolutionary poets. They usually leave before life has begun to clarify or make sense of their pathetic symbolism, before life has begun to unravel the exact, real meaning of their words. Stalked on Okolchitsa, felled at the military shooting range or caught by a ridiculous accident, they have ignited the imagination of subsequent generations with the painful and sweet theme of the place of their fiery souls in the other times that have come. Radevski is one of the few who can see the full unfolding of the forces whose soothsayers and conjurers they were, to see with joy and surprise the new world that lived in their dreams, and which they fearlessly and loudly called. Some are inclined to see in such a confluence of life's circumstances a silent passing of Fortune. Why? Does the encounter with the lasting truths of life require less courage, manliness, and strength than death for them?

What, in fact, does Vezhinov write about? About the anti-fascist movement, which has its historical coordinates, its documentary basis and its heroes, immersed in its everyday life? Or about man in the infinity of the world, the longevity of history? Doesn't the writer shake off the concrete excitements of the struggle too energetically? Doesn't he leave the heroes of the battles in the shadows, carried away by the desire to encompass the great contours of the human spirit? How many authors have begun and ended by showing shootings, by describing actions, by the picture of the September 9th rally? Why isn't Vezhinov absorbed in the visible? Why didn't his grandfather Shtilyan stay with his medical bag, and we hear him persistently say: "Surely something remains of us in this world - a frog, a nightingale... Otherwise, what would be the point?" Why didn't Viktor die heroically in battle, but fell ridiculously, uselessly? Why don't we hear in his dying sigh that historic "Death to fascism. Long live...", but rather the feverish: "Can you imagine a sky without stars?... You can't, of course... The stars are within us, our destiny."

The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences occupies a paramount place in the cultural life of our country. Its membership includes the most prominent representatives of Bulgarian science, it has organized scientific institutes in all fields of modern knowledge, its members and associates participate not only in the most important research within the country, but also in scientific life abroad, numerous international congresses, conferences, symposia, etc. To this must be added the enormous publishing activity that the academy carries out; this activity began with its very beginnings - as the Bulgarian Literary Society in Braila, founded in 1869, but the dimensions to which it has reached today represent an exceptional phenomenon in the history of Bulgarian science and culture. We do not always appreciate this fact enough. If we go back to the years when the foundations of the future Bulgarian Academy of Sciences were laid, we cannot fail to note one important circumstance: it is a product of the Bulgarian national revival. Its creation is not the result of a decree issued by a single authority, but of a long process, expressed in numerous reflections and proposals, in various projects and actions. The idea of ​​a Bulgarian Academy of Sciences was born in the great aspiration of our people towards enlightenment and cultural progress: already during the Renaissance era, it should embody the enlightened ideals of the people and also give a strong impetus to their cultural development. In this respect, our country repeats the history of academies in Europe - they arose in the 15th century, in the era of the Italian Renaissance ("Platonic Academy" in Florence, "Accademia Antiquaria" in Rome, etc.).

The program of the "Bulgarian Literary Society", founded in 1869, is multifaceted: to make efforts to develop the Bulgarian language and literature, to spread education among the people; to study the way of life of the Bulgarians and their neighboring peoples; to collect and publish folklore, ethnographic and other materials, to arrange exhibitions, to encourage every more serious manifestation in the field of art, science, etc. Many of the tasks formulated in the society's statute remain a project. But one of them - the publication of a "Periodic Magazine" - it manages to implement. The organ of the Bulgarian Literary Society was conceived as a monthly publication with three sections: literary, for original and translated works of art; scientific, for "articles on various branches of science" and critical, for reviews and critical analyses" on the occasion of newly published literary and scientific works.

The participation of representatives of the revolutionary Bulgarian emigration in Romania and other Renaissance figures in the establishment of the Bulgarian Literary Society is well known. Nevertheless, some new documents point even more specifically to their contribution in the preparatory stage of the Society's establishment and in its further development.

After reading "Dramatic and Dramaturgical", one cannot help but think that the title that Atanas Natev chose for his book actually suggests quite approximately its actual content. And the fault for this lies not in the title, but in the content itself, the richness and diversity of which simply do not lend themselves to a somewhat precise and exhaustive formulation in a few words. The concepts of "dramatic" and "dramatic" prepare us to expect that we will be transported into the sphere of "pure" theory with its problems that assume specific scientific interest, and such an expectation will not remain unfulfilled, but despite its strongly theoretical character, the exposition in the book does not remain with abstract general considerations, but also touches on current issues of living dramaturgical practice, the illumination of which turns Natev's temperamental pen into a fascinating read even for the reader who is inexperienced in theory. Natev's attention, focused primarily on the development of some basic problems of drama theory, which focus on the problem of the "dramatic", also extends to the specific analysis of a number of famous works by foreign and domestic playwrights, and this gives the book a scope and diversity significantly greater than those implied by the short title.

The appearance of the book "Images and Problems" is a positive phenomenon in our literary science. Its author Ivan Tsvetkov is known as one of the few best experts on Soviet literature in our country. 176 As early as 1964, the publishing house of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences released his book "Maxim Gorky and Bulgarian Literature", a solid study of some aspects of the great writer's work and of a number of problems of its penetration, distribution and creative perception in Bulgaria. Written with erudition, with a temperamental and lively pen, this work contributed a lot to the overall clarification of the issues of Bulgarian-Russian literary relations. In his first book, Tsvetkov is alien to the narrow setting and solution of problems. He does not mechanically transfer the results of one national literary development to another, does not turn the regularities in the development of one literature into a mandatory norm for another, but seeks the true creative interpenetrations, conditioned by a complex complex of social, political and cultural factors. The subject of the study is the literary-critical perception and stage adaptation of Gorky in our country, with the task of interaction with our poets and writers being set out in perspective. It has now been partially fulfilled.