Ivan Tsvetkov

Over the past five or six years, literary scholarship in the Soviet Union has been undergoing a real renewal. One only has to think how many mistakes and misconceptions, how many incorrect views have been overcome in this short time! And the timid tone, and the empirical character of Literary Criticism, and the recurrence of a narrow Rappian conception of literature, and the intolerable backwardness of aesthetic and literary-theoretical thought, and often blatantly lowered aesthetic criteria. It seems as if the times were long gone when collections of current literary-critical articles and monographic essays on Soviet writers could be counted on the fingers; when there were no comprehensive studies of new Russian and Soviet literature, and no generalizing works on realism and socialist realism were written. The books that were published did not cover all literary phenomena, the more complex ones were overlooked, and entire periods of the history of Russian literature - for example, the late 19th and early 20th centuries - remained insufficiently illuminated. A number of circumstances prevented a more objective view and a more understanding assessment of even such a phenomenon as the proletarian poetry of the first years of Soviet power, not to mention the poetry of Blok and Yesenin or the satirical work of Ilfi Petrov. Writers who had played a significant role in literary life at the time were excluded from literary development. And as a natural result of all this, along with clever and serious books, illustrative, primitive-sociological writings began to appear one after another, flooded with an abundant number of quotations, behind which hid the lack of independent creative thought, of the ability to subtly and inspiredly penetrate artistic phenomena (which is associated with a natural gift, with a vocation), of truly profound knowledge.

With the plays "Guilds" and "At the Bottom" a new stage in the work of Maxim Gorky begins, connected with the growing revolutionary upsurge in Russia with the first rumblings and the approach of the 1905 revolution. During this period, the author of the romantic hymns about the madness of the heroes" and about the flaming heart of Danko, the realist writer, revealed the tragic fate and spontaneous protest of the barefoot people against the corrupting influence of the guild, proprietary morality - he becomes more and more closely associated with the revolutionary movement, intervenes in political struggles against the Russian autocracy and gradually connects with the Leninist wing of Russian Social Democracy. He becomes a stormtrooper, the herald of the revolution, the first proletarian writer of world significance in whose work the principles of socialist realism are formed. It was at this time that he fully realized his long-standing dream - to create art that arouses heroic emotions, reaching the widest circles, calls for the reorganization of the social order. In the play "Guilds" Gorky for the first time in world literature created the image of a proletarian fighter - the train driver Nile with his optimistic life-affirming philosophy, which acts like thunder over the troubled guild swamp. In Nile's words "The owner is the one who works", "Rights are not given - rights are won", "There is no such train schedule that cannot be changed" speaks of a new proletarian class, which has gathered strength for decisive political battles. Gorky takes stock of his early work and in the play "The Bottom". He frees himself from any romanticization of the free and protesting barefoot people; now they are already unfortunate victims, having lost everything that can be lost, but remaining sensitive to the call for human dignity, for the greatness of man. The famous words "Man - this is magnificent! Man - this sounds proud!" spread with incredible speed all over the world and shake the packed theaters in European capitals. They are spoken by some pitiful fragments of the human race, sunk in rags, from the darkness of their pit - this temporarily emphasizes the active humanism of the play even more strongly. At the same time, as an outlet, Gorky rejects passive compassion, the comforting lie of heavy suffering, exposes the philosophy of powerlessness, which seeks reconciliation with reality as a means that helps the masters of power to plunder their victims even more cruelly.

I would not have undertaken to write a review of V. Velchev's study "Turgenev in Bulgaria" if I had not been interested in the numerous and promising reviews about it. They made me think that I had missed a very important study that has enriched our native literary studies and even gone beyond its narrow framework. I was particularly surprised by the insistence with which the inscrutable Soviet literary studies were suggested that the newly appeared work was a huge achievement for them as well. Even this seemed modest to one of my predecessors in review, so he (or rather - she) linked V. Velchev's study with the tasks of the seven-year plan in the USSR... Moreover - it is quite seriously claimed that not only is Soviet Turgenev studies enriched with new data on the political views of the writer-democrat, but general patterns in inter-national literary relations are revealed through the analysis of individual facts. The upcoming V International Slavic Congress in Sofia - 1963 is not forgotten either. After recalling V. Velchev's participation in the previous congress in Moscow, it is specially emphasized that this work is dedicated to the main issue of the congress-Slavic literary relations". "From the reviews of all three reviewers it follows that this is the first study of its kind in our country, that while earlier studies in this area were mainly of a bio- or bibliographic popular nature, now this study is distinguished by "a wide scope of the topic and the depth of the problems studied", that for the first time the influence of an individual writer on the socio-historical and literary process in our country is being studied so comprehensively and comprehensively. The harmonious composition of the work and many, many other of its merits have not been overlooked.

It is not surprising that it was precisely after the 20th and 22nd Congresses of the CPSU, in the relaxed atmosphere of the literary front, that the problems of humanism in contemporary literature were raised broadly and insistently. These problems became the subject of a several-day discussion in Moscow, organized by the Union of Soviet Writers and the M. Gorky Institute of World Literature. While in the West art is experiencing a rapid process of dehumanization, which Jean-Paul Sartre also spoke about in one of his interviews, in our country, in the socialist countries, the humanistic tasks of literature and art are growing. The construction of communism - the highest and most complete ideal of humanism - must be ensured in a moral attitude. The highest goal of our social development is the all-round and harmonious development of the human personality, the creation of such conditions in which the abilities and talents, the best moral qualities of a free person, fully blossom and are revealed. And this undoubtedly enriches our art, develops humanistic ideas in it.

The "Selected Novels" library at the "Narodna Kultura" publishing house is entering its fifth anniversary. This period is quite sufficient to assess its achievements and weaknesses to date, to point out some shortcomings in the selection of contemporary novels. It is hardly necessary to emphasize how useful an undertaking it has proved to be. The best evidence of this is the great interest of readers in it. It could have been born and realized in the new and serene atmosphere after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, after which the cult barriers and stifling dogmas collapsed, in an environment of an objective view of the artistic values ​​of world literature. Through it, our reader is connected to everything good in literature, created by various peoples around the world.

Whether a foreign writer will be welcomed as an expected and beloved guest, as a spiritual interlocutor and comrade, whose work fertilizes and enriches the native literature and public thought with new ideas, or whether he will be rejected as an uninvited stranger, alien to public morals and literary traditions, depends on many factors. First of all, on the writer's own work - on its scale, on the depth of its social content, on the nature of the ideas and the degree of its innovation. Then on that absolutely necessary contact and affinity with the social and aesthetic needs of the country in which he has entered, on his ability to satisfy mature ideological searches and quench the thirst for new ideals, i.e. to become one's own, to flow as an organic element into progressive culture and thought. This, in turn, depends on the historical moment in which the encounter with the writer takes place. In the national Literary development there are moments that are extremely favorable for the perception of ideological and artistic values ​​that have come from outside. Usually these are years of transition from one era to another, of ideological fermentation and boiling, when the national consciousness works hard to free itself from old idols and set out on new paths. At such a time, a great artist from outside can invade as a desired conqueror and in a short time conquer the minds and hearts of thinking people in society, become a spiritual ruler for the intelligentsia and youth. He suddenly gives the long-sought directions of progressive thought, accelerates spiritual processes, helps to shape new social ideals. Therefore, his merit is invaluable, his share in the mental development of the nation, in its spiritual maturation is undeniable. And precisely because of this, he ceases to be foreign, but is revered as close and native.

No one in Bulgaria has contributed as much to the affirmation of the true image of the artist Maxim Gorky, to the correct interpretation of his revolutionary work, as well as to its translation and dissemination, as Georgi Bakalov. From 1901, when he translated and published in Varna the first booklet with Gorky's story "The Pitiful Turk and the Woodpecker", until his death in 1939, he remained a tireless researcher and popularizer of Gorky, and did this with the greatest awareness, breadth and insight. His activity in this field is a true feat. It is enough to recall the case of the translation and dissemination of the novel "Mother" and the translation of almost all of Gorky's plays. I think that in his own development as a Marxist critic and theorist of new literature, his articles on Gorky, along with those on Smirnensky, stand out as the most creative, the most free from vulgar-sociological impurities and sectarian extremes. In both cases, G. Bakalov maintains the creative line, advocates the broad Leninist view and fights against primitive dogmatic concepts. Gorky, as well as Smirnensky, was one of the springs from which Bakalov drew life-giving water for his method, for his critical activity. They helped him to break away from rectilinear ideas and be more artistic, to rely on his critical sense and taste, on his direct contact with art. In addition, Gorky's aesthetic views - his numerous statements about the Russian classics, the cultural heritage and the new Soviet literature - helped Bakalov to free himself from some narrow and sectarian stratifications, from the Plekhanovian mechanistic view and to perceive literary creativity, the historical-literary process with all their dialectical complexity, diversity and specificity. The importance of constant contact with Gorky for the evolution that Bakalov underwent in the 1930s, after overcoming sectarianism, especially for his new attitude towards heritage is undeniable. It is no coincidence that in his famous program article in the second half of the 1930s "Depict the Heroic", most vividly reflecting his new thinking and the decisive urge to break the sectarian shackles, he referred to Gorky, to his call for the creation of heroic art and to examples from his work.

Every touch of Lermontov's work brings us face to face with his titanic spirit, entered into a "proud enmity with heaven", rebellious and freedom-loving, with the raging and restless passions of a heart that has been swinging between love and hate all its life, yearning for freedom, but suffocating in the atmosphere of slavery and lackeys, thirsting for faith and a high purpose, but is forced to writhe in disbelief and despair, to tremble with anger and tremble with rage before the picture of the Russian autocracy. His amazing personality has the ability to draw us closest to him, to make us suffer with his sufferings, to rise with his impulses, to feel his anger towards the cold external brilliance and internal nothingness of secular society, which, like the ancient anchar tree, poisons everyone who touches it. He had the misfortune to be born in the valley of horror and despair, to breathe the decaying breath of defeat after the fateful year of 1825, to live through the years of deaf groans, of broken flights, of mercilessly trampled faith, when evil and vulgarity triumphed unhindered, when informers and renegades became the heroes of the day. Years when only blue uniforms were visible before the eye, when in the monstrous empire of Russia every police officer was a tsar, and the tsar was a crowned police officer. In this valley of slavery and torture, of silent anger and hidden unrest, Lermontov's muse was born. From her first days she experienced the freezing cold of the autocratic empire and came to the bitter, terrifying conclusions that the closest person to everyone was himself, that everyone was doomed to proud solitude. Herzen says of this era that "you had to know how to hate out of love, to despise out of humanity, you had to possess boundless pride, so that with chains on your hands and feet you could hold your head high." And although the adolescent and young man Lermontov is surrounded on all sides by evil, he does not bow his head before it, although he sees how they are destroying the wall between good and evil, how the masters trade with their people, and the people with their freedom, he does not fall into disarming reflection, into passivity and inaction, but chooses the path of manly purposeful struggle. It does not matter that this struggle leads him to death - it is as if he remains undefeated. He is not at all to blame for having fallen into "a bottomless abyss into which the best swimmers sink," where even the greatest talents disappear before they have reached what they are fighting for. The storm of his feelings, the power of his fiery word survived an entire century and reached us and his descendants, who have settled the enmity with heaven by conquering its heights, who know the price of courage and a proud mind.

There is a motto of Marx, which in Russian sounds like this: "Be yourself and go your own way!" There is no more appropriate motto for a person and an artist with firm and unshakable convictions, for a complete personality that is always organic in its manifestations and does not deviate from the chosen path. Sometimes this striving for fidelity to oneself can cost extraordinary efforts, great moral endurance and readiness for sacrifice. The upheavals of time, surprising tremors and storms can confuse the weaker and break the susceptible to insidious temptations, break his resistance and turn him from a subject into an object of events. However, the stronger will not submit to circumstances and will not give up his essence. For me, this motto radiates nobility unclouded by time, apostolic selflessness and consistency in his convictions. He has no relation to those who play in life as on a stage, and after each intermission they put on a new costume, after each act they take a higher note. We know from history that all revolutions and the eras that followed them had their knights and silent heroes, but also their inevitable grimaces - I think a German poet said this back in the last century.

I want to start with the not-so-stunning paradox that the most beautiful tradition is innovation. It is in the very essence of Marxism as a doctrine, it is the most permanent and most rejuvenating tradition of our society and of our art. The history of humanity and of human thought, the history of art have always been the history of innovators and never the history of epigones, of frozen traditionalists. The first are movement, the urge towards the unknown future, the second are stagnation, attachment to the proven and comfortably furnished present. The first are flights, the second - crawling. The first beat their chests and make revolutions - in science, art, society and open the way for all of humanity or for their people; the second keep their peace, their goods and welcome or carry out the return. They are the knights of inertia. In their fear of the new, they are ready to banish any innovation and theoretically justify its uselessness. That is why we say that communists are the greatest innovators, the most convinced opponents of stagnation, routine, mold, rust. Because let us not forget that in addition to pseudo-innovation, which discredits true innovation, there is also pseudo-tradition, which is already a buried tradition. To break recklessly with the established tradition and to adhere blindly to it - is the same thing. The second is no less harmful than the first. To write henriads and petriads in the 18th century is indeed pseudo-tradition, but to write an epic about Krali Marko in the middle of the 20th century is simply a curiosity. No one is able to restore that artistic consciousness that created the folk epic and the needs that made it necessary.

"Sholokhov and We" - this was the name of the international symposium convened by the Institute of Slavic Studies at Leipzig University on March 18 and 19 this year. The occasion was the writer's 60th anniversary, which falls on May 24. Probably, it was this connection with the approaching anniversary that made us completely calm and not expect stormy events or sharp clashes of opinions from the symposium. No matter how much we talk about discussions - they still require not only subjective desires, but also objective conditions - in their most general and decisive form. Habits of discussion are needed, and they are inherent in a newer way of thinking, a nobler mind, a sharper and clearer view that is not afraid to penetrate all the really existing problems and contradictions, that is not tied posthumously to the withered tree of scholasticism, is not deprived of the spark of God to seek the truth. I think this is extremely important, because there are people and minds that quite naturally do not feel any need for discussions. They do not perceive them as a normal atmosphere in which scientific thinking, scientific search and knowledge take place. They are supporters of encyclicals, of the indisputable, of strictly delineated zones - from here to there. Their task is to fight heresies, deviations from Holy Scripture. This is more important than developing science. Although they are very similar to that diligent, but seemingly not very considerate shepherd who protected his flock from the wolves so much that when he turned around, there was not a single sheep in his fold. The bad thing, however, is when these shepherds hold the chairman's bell and do not give the floor to anyone but themselves. When they want to turn their lethargy, infertility or simply incurable mental illness into a rule, into the highest dignity, into an iron respectful principle.