Lazar Tsvetkov

Taking his place among the greatest humanist writers of the 20th century, Karel Čapek is still insufficiently studied. European educated and gifted with a flexible analytical mind, this "terrible child" of Slavism from the lineage of the great French rationalists-mockers often escapes the literary criticism cutter, mainly due to the deceptive simplicity of his artistic manner. Everything is supposedly in order: the images - images, albeit slightly caricatured, the plots - plots with all their criminal twists, the language - emphatically pure and clear, and then, as if out of nowhere, you are grabbed by an insidious subtext that makes you "suspicious" of the author's real intentions. The mystery "what exactly does he want to tell us", which in turn arises in each of his works, is even more intensified by his undetermined, albeit generally humane political position. If we add the aesthetic diversity of Čapek's work, it will become clear why so many contradictory opinions, misunderstandings, and even erroneous opinions have accumulated around him.

Today, no one seriously believes in astrology, this self-proclaimed sister of the exact sciences, before whose prophecies popes and monarchs once trembled. The works of the divine Nostradamus have long been only the subject of philological studies, and astrologers have become a greater rarity than both Egyptian priests and Egyptian fakirs. So it would hardly occur to anyone to look for "divine omens" in the coincidence of the twentieth anniversary of the socialist revolution in Bulgaria with the fiftieth anniversaries of some of our writers. And, of course, only in a metaphorical, and very approximate sense can the expression be used that "their horoscopes coincide", but it is precisely the deep regularity of this coincidence that gives us the right to resort to its help. And indeed. Now, as we enter a period of creative reckoning, of national celebrations and reports, the question naturally arises: what were the writers-anniversaries like before, what did they become after the people's victory over fascism and capitalism.

The history of art knows the resurrection of unknown greats from the tomb of oblivion: Bach, Hölderlin, Stendhal... But it also knows the vanished stars that once shone in the cultural firmament. One of the favorite authors of our childhood is today almost forgotten, abandoned, misunderstood. We can hardly imagine our teenage library without "Ivanhoe", "Quentin Durward" and "The Bride of Lammermoor", but today's teenagers can. It is hard to believe that today's reader prefers a history textbook to the novels of Walter Scott, but it is a fact. And it is completely incomprehensible to the mind how the idol of Belinsky, the favorite of Pushkin and Chernyshevsky, of V. Hugo and Karl Marx has become almost persona non grata for modern literary scholarship. But that is also the case. And, alas, nowadays the fame of W. Scott is spread more by Vincenzo Bellini's "Puritans" and Gaetano Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" than by libraries and printing houses. If by chance his name is mentioned as a classic of the historical novel, then this will be a tribute of respect, a formula, edifying advice. And literary scholarship has its own patterns, permanent positions. So who says that the historical novel is an inferior genre? It was Walter Scott, after all, he raised it to the level of the greatest works of his era. Who does not know the novels of W. Scott? Learn from Scott! More Scott!

And in terms of posthumous recognition, the literary critic is worse than the writer. Never particularly strong, and without the "brand" of authority - quite thin, the thread with the public breaks. New ideas appear, new assessments, new luminaries. And the work in which the most precious of the personality is realized will still be disputed, and the grains of truth obtained with no less work and talent will still pass through sieves and magnifying glasses. Descendants are not indulgent, history is rarely generous. And if he still has to show generosity, and if he still has to reach into the stingy reserve of mercy and benevolence, then here too the writer will be preferred as an infant child of nature, like a bird of God. The critic, the literary critic is always of age and is responsible for his actions according to the harshest paragraphs of aesthetic legislation. This is what obliges us to carefully examine the work of every talented critic with all the responsibility of his difficult profession, with all the seriousness of our immediate tasks. And when this critic is of the rank of V. V. Ermilov, lessons are also necessary. Not only because his work, interrupted by premature death, will not reach the heights to which he had aspired. Not only because the end requires a reckoning, and the scientific contribution - recognition. Rather, the sad occasion unties a knot of thoughts and experiences. Not every completed creative work is able to give rise to them. And this, it seems to me, is the best attestation for both the living and the dead. In the thirties, when the Komsomol writer stood at a combat post in the Soviet dailies, the artistic criterion was imposed as the main requirement of socialist literature. Works appeared that imposed them on society. But in theoretical thought, the inertia of sociological formulas, of leftist dogma, of edifying teachings continued.

Gorky is already a classic of world literature. The strict augurs of literary history are careful not to immortalize him, but they have already assigned him a place alongside Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov... It is not a question of who is greater or lesser. Here, among the mighty shadows of the past, the role in the spiritual development of humanity, the place in the literary process, is important. Gorky is a classic. In this dearly won title is both the recognition and the love of generations for the great writer-humanist. But there is also something unusual in it. This is still a "posthumous award", and for us Gorky is so alive, so relevant.

The paths in science are like the paths in life - different and diverse. Some scientists look around for a long time, measure, try until they reach their scientific terrain, the Archimedean point of their scientific vocation. And then - sweat and blood to step on it, sweat and blood to plow it. Usually the fruits fall in late autumn - juicy and large, ripe and abundant, as one should expect from a good gardener. And everything would be very good if the days of human life were not counted, if not the toughness of the organism, but the demands of the work determined its duration. But before time a person is weak and fragile... That is why the phenomena of early vocation are happier: those who immediately find themselves. At the very beginning they do not shoot down stars, they cannot jump over the difficulties of their realization. Of course, scientific truth is not given to them either without prior preparation, without painstakingly acquired research skills, without professional technique. There are no easy paths in science.

Recently, in the Smetana Hall of the National House in Prague, a closed VI International Congress of Slavic Scholars was opened. Nearly two thousand of the most famous Slavic scholars in the world and as many guests had the opportunity, over the course of a whole week, to communicate in debates from the stands or in intimate conversations on the ancient streets and parks of Prague; to exchange scientific considerations and thoughts, searching for the great truth about the past and present life of the Slavic peoples, about their spiritual closeness with other non-Slavic peoples, about their common civic quests and spiritual aspirations, about their closeness in everyday life, in language, in verbal folk and personal creativity... And this great conversation about the peculiar fate of Slavism, which began again in the same hall approximately four decades ago at the First Slavic Congress (1929), is constantly expanding and deepening. More and more participants are making their modest contribution; More and more Slavic scholars are presenting their insights and discoveries, their themes and aspirations, solutions, hypotheses and concepts into scientific circulation... Sometimes - successfully defended and scientifically argued, and sometimes without analysis and based on random signs, without a deep knowledge of the facts and based on data devoid of any scientific systematics.

Among the great Russian writers, sufferers and righteous, martyrs and saints, Turgenev seems to be the most fortunate, the most prosperous. Born under a lucky star, anointed by good fortune, it seems to you that he is not the son of this long-suffering, blood- and sweat-soaked Russian land, but the pampered child of generous and abundant France, which has for centuries cared for its spiritual talents, which for centuries has accumulated spiritual and material goods. First of all, this prosperity imposes itself in its crude life sense. Both Pushkin and Lermontov are representatives of the "golden youth", and they are chicks in noble nests", and they are "rocked in gentle cradles", but with how many thorns was their path covered from the first wreaths of glory to the bullets of the framed murderers. And Gogol crossed the threshold of recognition with the major-solemn chords of a triumphal march, but what a burdensome, hopeless requiem are the last days of his life. And Tolstoy grew up under the care of teachers and governesses, and he plucked flowers from the garden of life, and he adorned himself with the laurels of world fame, and he strove for harmony and balance in his life. But at the cost of so much self-torture, wandering, and convulsions. What can we say about Dostoevsky, who knew the anonymous greatness of the hero, of the fighter against official power, of the knight of social conscience, but again at the cost of a death sentence, of trembling before the scaffold, of nearly ten years of exile. What can we say about Chekhov, who was afflicted with consumption for life? What can we say about the cohorts of younger, perhaps no less gifted and far less celebrated contemporaries, who were cut down in an insultingly early manner by the harsh living conditions?

Recently, interest in Lermontov in the West has definitely grown. It cannot be compared with the campaign for Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, it is far from the feverish curiosity about Gogol, but it is already noticeable and emphasized enough. Lermontov is translated, read, here and there walks the theater ramp. People write and talk about him. Perhaps in this way the real significance of a great writer, comparatively less known to the Western intelligentsia, is being restored, perhaps the so-called "poet of disappointment" appeals to the fashionable decadent moods with his misinterpreted "spleen", with his deliberately accentuated and generalized dissatisfaction with life", with his clearly forced capitulation to the "demonic" forces of the world; Perhaps Lermontov is the last excavation of the modern "modern" from the unread antiquity "According to the established standard for the new as a well-forgotten old". There are many reasons for the resurrection of a great name. But, it seems to me, those listed so far do not explain an already long-standing interest, beyond simple snobbish fascinations.