Mihail Vasilev

I first encountered the name Toncho Zhechev on the pages of Rodna Rechi. The articles he published had nothing to do with the then widespread method of theses, simplified presentation of facts. And yet, it was difficult to predict the author's literary-critical development from these articles. Rather, they suggested a future appearance in the field of aesthetics. The author possessed the ability to think about the aesthetic essence of literary works. But he was still far from the ability to respond with heightened emotionality to the works he analyzed. He lacked what we usually call literary-critical nerve.

The stories "Bulgarians of Old Time", "Uncles" and "The Gerats" have preserved much of what makes up the color of our national life. The authors reproduce not only human thoughts and feelings, but also the atmosphere of the time. The stories, saturated with everyday details, have their historical conditioning. By virtue of this need for a dense transmission of the rich external world, the principle of the external plastic characteristics of the characters also plays a certain dominant role. The depiction of the circumstances that influence the life destiny of people stands out in the foreground. The character of the depiction is determined by the content of the selected vital material.

The contemporary Bulgarian short story in its best examples interprets life phenomena from the perspective of the moral, political and social requirements of socialist society. The completely innovative life truth also determines the socialist-realistic character of the artistic truth of today's short story. The realization of this aspiration is the work of the original participation of talent, which in all cases is associated with the ability to observe and the imagination of the writer. Some argue that talent is a measure of artistic truth, which is achieved through an image realized through the prism of the personal point of view of the fiction writer. It is precisely this peculiar angle of perception of reality that allows us to draw some serious conclusions about the artistic mastery of life phenomena. For us, the short story is valuable not for the literal reproduction of life facts, but more for the ability to present life phenomena in a special light, emanating from a thoughtful and suffered attitude towards people, society and reality. Any attempt to ignore talent leads to a misunderstanding of the essence and specificity of the work of art. The process of realizing artistic truth is unthinkable without the writer's effort to affirm himself by discovering his theme, his vision of the world, and his personal manner of artistic expression. In this sense, for us, personal coloring is a path to finding the artistic truthfulness of the literary work. The realization of the modern story would be impossible without the presence in it of the complex truth about life. Pavel Vezhinov has a special place in the creation of our modern story. The theme of some still living symptoms of egoism appears for Vezhinov - the writer and the person, a main theme. Vezhinov strives in the battle against the loneliness of the human personality. In fact, he began as an artist of the social environment of the past, among which a person often loses his connection with it. The individual facts of the interrupted harmony in the relationship between personality and society are the basis for the writer, on which he artistically realizes true Dramatic states.