Книжка-5

1969 Booklet 5 Contents

The successes we have achieved over the past quarter century in building the economic power of Bulgaria do not make us happy in themselves. The Bulgarian Communist Party has always placed and places man above all else; caring for man has always been and is its primary concern. There are many dimensions that characterize the increase in the standard of living of our people. Let us take, for example, the real income per capita. In the period 1953-1968 alone, it increased from 341 leva to 933 leva (at 1952 prices), or nearly three times. The line of gradual wage increases and reductions in the prices of consumer goods is consistently being pursued in our country, an expression of which is the decree of the Central Committee of the Party and the Council of Ministers for further raising the standard of living of the people, published a few days ago.

In the recently published article by the prominent Soviet researcher, an excellent expert on Old Russian and Old Slavic literature in general, Professor D. S. Likhachev, a whole series of general and specific questions in the field of medieval Slavic literature are put forward for consideration, which deserve the greatest attention. The author first of all makes an attempt to introduce into literary studies some new concepts and definitions, which is, above all, the concept of "system of literature", that is, "a certain relationship of its parts to each other: the types of literature (translated and original, church, historical, natural science, journalistic, etc.), of its genres, of its individual works". At the same time, he points out that the system or structure of a given literature is subject to continuous change, and differences are discernible in it according to individual historical periods. Professor D. Likhachev sets himself the task of examining the most ancient period of this development, namely the period from the 9th to the 13th centuries, and this concerns the emergence and initial development of literature among the southern and eastern (that is, Russian) Slavs. His attention is directed primarily to Old Russian literature: in his opinion, it presents "an example of those phenomena that are also characteristic of other Old Slavonic literatures." These general considerations represent for the Soviet specialist in Old Slavonic literature only an introduction to the consideration of several partial questions of particularly great interest. First of all, this is the question of the influence of the medieval literatures of the eastern and southern Slavs.

We have always admired the remarkable generalizing thought of D. S. Likhachev and his broad erudition, which allow him to look in a new, extremely original way at a number of problems in old Russian literature - to a large extent problems of Bulgarian literature as well - and to express convincing new views, directing scientific research to unexplored areas. However, his article "Old Slavonic Literatures as a System" (Literary Thought, vol. 1, 1969) particularly excites us, because, as is known, it specifically addresses problems of Old Bulgarian literature and a number of fundamental questions that relate in general to the character and development of Old Slavonic literatures. A large part of the thoughts expressed by D. S. Likhachev are the result of insightful observations and cannot be ignored by Slavic scholars in their scientific research work on their native literature. Other opinions disturb with their categorical generalization or prompt reflection, as they subject traditional concepts and understandings to reassessment. The article by D. S. Likhachev invites a thorough and comprehensive examination of Old Bulgarian literature on the level of modern science.

The topic "Blok Mayakovsky, Milev" is relatively often considered, especially in Soviet and Bulgarian literary studies. But so far, no aesthetic analysis of this topic has been made, something that two researchers, one Bulgarian and one Hungarian, presented in their contribution to the sixth congress of Slavists in Prague in 1968 - Ekaterina Daskalova "Alexander Blok in revolutionary-proletarian poetry in Bulgaria" and Endre Boitar in "Some problems of East European socialist poetry between 1914 and 1929".

"Life is not about happiness, life is about searching" - these words can be used to characterize the lives of many people - many poets, artists, musicians, politicians, scientists. Perhaps for each of them they will sound like the truth, as the only correct ones, although for a life, for a burning in the name of a great idea, in the name of people or art, it is very difficult and in some respects too superficial to give such definitions. And despite everything, I would like to say that our poet Geo Milev completely justifies, proves the correctness of Bruce's thought, shows all its complexity and richness, with his behavior as a poet, a person, a citizen until the end of his life.

Boileau, in his "L'Art poétique", enumerating poetic genres, mentioned the fable, taking away the right to be counted among poetry. But perhaps he did not intend to deny the fable as poetry, but simply forgot it or considered that it belonged more to prose. Boileau may have been wrong, but are all our and foreign textbooks, dictionaries and reference books wrong, which define the fable only as some kind of didactic form and nothing more? One dictionary says that the fable is "a short moral story or poem" that emphasizes the rules of morality. Others define the fable as "a story that aims to give some moral maxim", or which "gives an allegorical interpretation of certain rules of life or morality", etc.

Art is a specific type of knowledge, which is significantly different from any other type: sensory, scientific (theoretical and historical) knowledge. Some authors characterize artistic knowledge as emotional, i.e. as knowledge formed and developed in the emotional sphere of the subjective reflection of reality. According to some of them, aesthetic feelings themselves and directly appear as sources of certain knowledge about the external world and about man, and according to others - within the framework of this specific subjective phenomenon, a process of continuous "overflow", "transformation" of emotional into cognitive information takes place. However, whatever the differences and nuances, what unites the mentioned views is the thesis about the possibility of aesthetic feelings playing the role of independent cognitive subjective reflections, on a par with perceptions, representations, concepts and judgments.

The most significant part of our fiction is dedicated to the Bulgarian village, to its sad past and its radically transformed socialist present. It is difficult to list all the names of those of our writers whose work is closely connected with the life of the village: Anton Strashimirov, Todor Vlaykov, Mikhalaki Georgiev, Elin Pelin, Yordan Yovkov, Georgi Raichev, Georgi Karaslavov, Iliya Volen... Among them, the most prolific is undoubtedly Stoyan Daskalov. By his sixtieth birthday, he has already authored about forty books, ten of which are major novels about the life of the new, socialist Bulgarian village. He has tried his hand at all genres of fiction, achieving the most significant successes in the field of the short story, the novel and children's literature.

When more than three decades ago, the unknown village teacher Krum Grigorov made his literary debut with his story "The Border", few could have guessed that these were the first sprouts of the future storyteller of the Bulgarian village. The small stories that soon appeared on the pages of the progressive periodical, written with a vivid sense of life's injustices, began to attract more and more attention from the reader. In them, the persistent efforts of the village teacher towards an artistic expression of his ideological anxieties and social aspirations stand out more and more clearly. And quite naturally, he soon found his place among progressive writing circles, joining the ranks of the anti-fascist literary front, which in the 1930s was rapidly growing and setting the tone for artistic life.

The anniversaries of the birth or death of great and notable personalities, connected through their work with a certain era in the history of the cultural conquests of humanity, are a good occasion to put us in a "dialogue with the past", as the prominent French literary historian Professor Jean Pomier titled one of his works, and to allow us to look at their ideas, concepts, and influences from the standpoint of our modernity, with a view to seeing the place they have in the panorama of their national literature, as well as in the general panorama of world literature.

Vladislav Grammatik is the most prominent representative of our literary life in the 15th century, and especially in its second half, when the roar of weapons had already subsided and when the Turkish attacks were directed west of Bulgaria. Although a number of articles and studies have been written so far about the life and work of Grammatik, there are still many unresolved or incorrectly illuminated questions. On the other hand, all this has not been collected in one place and thus the image of the writer has not been outlined more comprehensively. In this situation, it was necessary to proceed to writing a more comprehensive study, in which not only would the previous achievements of science regarding the life and literary heritage of Vladislav Grammatik, scattered in various publications, would be collected, but also new material would be attracted, certain issues would be reassessed, etc. In the light of these circumstances, the appearance of Georgi Danchev's work is fully justified.

Krastyo Genov's book "Romanticism in Bulgarian Literature" was published in 1968, and a year before that it was defended as a doctoral dissertation. The author has consistently defended some of the fundamental positions expressed in it in recent years in a number of his publications in the field of Bulgarian Renaissance literature, and most fully in his work "From Paisius to Botev", published by "Nauka iizkustvo", 1966. When evaluating his new book, one must take into account the fact that in our country there is almost no generalizing or more comprehensive research on the main trends and methods in Bulgarian Renaissance literature, in particular on the manifestation, scope and specificity of Romanticism in it. Apart from some of the more famous studies by Ivan Shishmanov and Boyan Penev in the past, the well-known article by Petar Dinekov "The Problem of Romanticism in Bulgarian Literature until the Liberation", written in connection with the Fourth International Congress of Slavists in Moscow, Pantelei Zarev's work "Panorama of Bulgarian Literature" and several other smaller publications, the bibliography of special studies on the subject offers almost nothing else original and significant. Of course, this does not mean that other studies on the issue of Romanticism in Bulgarian literature have not been conducted in Bulgarian literary scholarship on the Revival; the studies on Chintulov and Rakovski, on Drumev and Botev are well known. However, the conclusions in the relevant studies from the past are too general, and in the more recent ones - contradictory. Even in the second volume of the academic history of Bulgarian literature, different opinions on this fundamental issue have found expression.

When reviewers want to pay a big compliment to a critical or literary book, they say that it is "a pleasure to read" or reads like a novel. I do not believe that this is one of the main qualities that the author of such a book claims. Here the reviewers simply make a logical error - they exchange the places of our interest in a given issue with the slight pleasure that we can get from some fascinating reading, they translate a new concept into an older language. Therefore, I will not say that Georgi Konstantinov's book "An Extraordinary Friendship" (I have already heard such an opinion) is read easily, as a work of fiction. It simply reads as an interesting documentary, and in no case would I replace its content precisely as a documentary with the most skillful fiction construction. Incidentally, Georgi Konstantinov has also shown a certain fiction dexterity - he has arranged the documents at his disposal in such a way that the sequence of events and facts, their logical and plot connections, can be traced. But that is not what is important. It is important for us that we can feel the unique breath of authenticity, of personal testimony in history. The taste for the documentary, accurate, factual reproduction of historical events has been increasingly imposed in our country lately. It seems that we already prefer a letter, a memory of a living participant in events to any romantic imagination. Fiction seems to be starting to lose in a competition with history; History is increasingly imposing itself and dominating our consciousness, it seems to us more extraordinary and more fantastic than the greatest flights of fantasy, it seems to have the ambition to displace art, philosophy, and "mythology". Haven't you noticed that recently the memoir is the most sought-after, most preferred reading material? Of course, in the world historical process, and especially in our development since 9. IX., we will find many explanations for this "demythologizing", for this striving to unveil, deheroize, "historicize" history, for this desire to see how it was made, but these reflections would take us too far.