Panteley Zarev

The freedom of the artist can be discussed in two aspects: socio-political and aesthetic. The artist is free in a socio-political sense when his work is not persecuted by the laws of society. This is the basic freedom that the great artists of the past lacked. "Genius," wrote Pencho Slaveykov, "always causes inconvenience. That is his feat." And indeed, it was a feat for the artist to preserve himself, to defend his independence against the attacks of society. Few have endured this struggle. Many artists have experienced the great sorrow of seeing harmful influences spread like poison in their souls, of seeing barely nascent ideas wither away. How much humiliation before the official authorities they have endured, how much cruel sorrow for the neglected pride of the creator. Today, we do not have the conditions that killed Geo Milev or, a little earlier, Yavorov. That is why I will not dwell on this side of the issue.

Botev is a person in whose chest burns a Promethean fire, the fire of freedom. He is guided in life by great passions - he loves and hates strongly, he always keeps us in the world of inspired revolutionary ideas. And when he writes about love longing, about jealousy, and when he expresses some life anxiety, his thought goes beyond the boundaries of the narrowly personal. His spirit listens intently to sounds other than those that attract the soul of a person in love with himself. He is lured by visions other than those that disturb the ordinary person. We can say: what is awarded by history is dear to him, what attracts him is what he represents humanity with. And his poetry took Heights unsuspected before him.

Pencho Slaveykov is one of those authors who, compared to his predecessors, discovers a completely new poetic world for us. He is not a follower of an artistic school that is fading in its development, but is himself a pioneer and herald of an original direction in art. Although with his patriotic, historical and even intimate works he reminds us of the poetry that preceded him, he conquers us with a new vision, with new ideas about morality and love for nature and man. The reader is attracted by his ethical aspirations and, despite the feeling of contradiction in his ideas, hides in his heart a warm love for his poetry. However, for a long time progressive criticism, constrained by dogmatic views, misinterpreted the legacy of Pencho Slaveykov, connecting him entirely with the reactionary ideology and with the individualism of Nietzsche. It was not only wrong in the assessment of individual works - a phenomenon that is completely possible. (It is known that even the great critic Brandes made a serious mistake by calling Tolstoy's magnificent work "War and Peace" a pile of paper.) Literary criticism misinterpreted the poet's personality, his ideals, and incorrectly assessed the direction he represented. Gradually, the ice was broken, and we abandoned the loud and superficial denials in order to live more freely with the charm of Slaveykov's personality and the beauty of his poetry.

Not even those who have studied our literary history know that Botev was an innovator for his time, a unique poet with an original spiritual view of the world. And more. That, despite the great power and originality of his talent, he follows a tradition characteristic of our pre-liberation literature: his lyrics carry something of the atmosphere of the magnificent and emotional images of folk art. But isn't this a very stable phenomenon for the time? Don't we recognize traces of the poetic world of folk song in the works of many others? Already in Nayden Gerov's poem "Stoyan and Rada", in Kozlev's heroic epic "Haidut Sider and the Black Arab", in the early lyrics and the first poems of P. R. Slaveykov, traces of coexistence between personal and folk art are visible. It is as if the poet could not spread his wings under the horizon of the Bulgarian sky without listening to the song born of the people, without drinking from its source, without perceiving its imagery, rhythm, style. No matter how much our literature has been in contact with foreign poetic worlds, the great and original art of great creative individuals is still little known. Both the content and the form carry within themselves the atmosphere of folk poetry, even in works written on a new, original, personal theme. Botev could not escape this regularity of time. And where will he escape, since he himself feels the lyric as a song, since he himself is deeply fascinated by the motifs in the poetry of the people. His contemporaries recall with excitement how he - the poet, the publicist, the thinker, who stood high above the people around him - responded enthusiastically to our folk song. He is always moved and captivated by it. And this was so, despite his self-awareness as a person who creates a new, his own art. His inspired worship of folk song comes very deeply. He has been under the influence and power since his childhood, those years of independence, when, imitating the heroes of the folk epic, he terrified the neighborhoods of the town with the games of "outlaws". It is known that his mother, a woman with a wonderful memory and a personal gift of a singer, often sang haidush songs about folk protectors who roamed the fields, mountains. She took the child's imagination from everyday life to the heights of the Balkans, to the beauty of a world filled with heroic thoughts. A person with a strong character, inclined to say things outright, in winter, she probably reinforced the idea of ​​the heroism of the C e C 16 Outlaws.

Ivaylo Petrov... So far, he has shown love for the Dobrudzha people, who build cooperative farms and carry within themselves a new ethical world, for trips through quiet towns, where the houses, the streets, the people attract him like a magnet. I have often wondered who he resembles in our literature. To Yovkov? Because with great creative courage he decides to follow him through the plains and hills of Dobrudzha, where the stud farms, the silhouettes of the inn and people with powerful shoulders are no longer visible, but there is still something left of the past that he wants to capture and transform. Or maybe to Elin Pelin and Emilian Stanev? After all, like them, he is a hunter, a wanderer in the fields, a fugitive from the stuffy city, who, hunting, kills with difficulty - but still kills, putting his humanistic heart to a severe test. He loves the shiver of the mist, the long wanderings, the fatigue from them and all those experiences, collected like pearls, that only the wanderer-hunter knows? And yet how does he separate himself from these authors, even though he follows traditions bequeathed by Elin Pelin and Yovkov or now created by Emilian Stanev? He pave his own way, because something stubborn is embedded in his own individuality. Maybe he walks slowly, as the peasant, bent over his plow, walked, but he is stubborn and unwavering in his creative pursuits like him. How persistently he defends his plots - already with his first stories about peasants from the Dobrudja cooperative world, then with the story "Nonka's Love", now with the small stories-impressions dedicated to people on the street, hotels, buses, people traveling between the city and the village. He is artistically unique - at the same time easily excitable, prone to subtle grace and patient in the realistic drawing of details. In his stories lyricism and reflection are intertwined, the "epic course" of the plot is replaced by the lightness, haste" of personal experience. These qualities also stand out in his first 114th novel. A story, do you think, for whom? - About Dobrudja. About the people who are today taking root there a new way of life, whose fathers and grandfathers Yovkov has sung. And also - about modernity. About its deep changes and conflicts. The author of "light" novels and stories has taken on the difficulties of the Novelist to portray both the people of the past and the new man who is transforming the spacious, romantic Dobrudja Land. He has not only opened his senses to new impressions of nature, everyday life, and man, but has also strained his honest mind to explore current problems, often neglected by those writers who want to be "tribunes" of the new, but do not penetrate sufficiently into its real world.

Nowadays, the call for literature and art to contribute to the construction of the soul, to the renewal of the morality of modern man is increasingly insistent, overly insistent. They must participate in the great and complex battle for the destruction of some - obsolete - moral values ​​and the establishment of others - new and necessary. Artists, musicians and poets need to be involved in the grandiose task of life in our rapidly developing century: the re-education of the individual personality. They must enrich it with ethics, which is drawn from the leading positions of life. But from art, in addition to sinking into the depths of human soul and its renewal, something else is required. It must become a free and unforced source of joy and inspiration" (Program of the CPSU). It must ennoble with its most immediate ideological, ethical and aesthetic impact. These requirements, sounded categorically, oblige us to look more closely at the complex, unified essence of artistic creativity. It is necessary to embrace it comprehensively, rejecting those ossified, didactically theses concepts that until recently did not allow art to educate and entertain, to provide pleasure, to be a bright source of human joy. The need for a more complete and more penetrating interpretation of art forces us again and again to return to the principled essence of a basic aesthetic concept, sometimes neglected: the artistic method.

Aleko Konstantinov belongs to the generation of writers from the 1990s, which has immortalized itself for generations. And that - both with the criticism of social reality and with the fresh poetics of the artistic form. The works of "the most cheerful Bulgarian writer were born in the midst of sharp social struggles. In them, an image of a distant reality stands out. But they are not history. Because their author, having penetrated the depths of humanity, has captured characters and spiritual movements that carry typical human traits, immortal, secrets" of Mammon's passion. Because in them one can see the captivating artistry of a writer with a delicately gentle, exquisitely noble spirit.

A passionate warrior for justice. A rebellious spirit, filled with violent hatred and contempt for the gray human existence. A social poet, carried away by the heroic example of Botev, a poet who deeply felt the miserable plight of his people. And also: a willing bandit, ready to do anything - to lay down his head for the big or the small - as long as it once captured his spirit. Among the Bulgarian creators of the artistic word, he is perhaps the most complex, the most contradictory. Thus, he is often tormented by polar experiences. And this is both in the quests of the mind and in the impulsiveness of feelings. His mind is as penetrating as that of a deep thinker, resolving questions of existence. His emotionality is subtle, perfect. His ideas are like those of a sensitive visionary. His tendency to self-analysis and reflection is constant. It is as if he is searching through himself for the self-knowledge of the human, for that which hides the bottomless depths of the spirit. Although outwardly closed, "monotonous", silent, he is constantly in motion - with his proud critical mind, with his penetrating thought, with his bold, stormy emotionality. And this has been the case since his youth. Everything about this restless man speaks of considerable spiritual strength. His thought is boldly rebellious, fiercely driven, like lightning running across the Horizon. It is flexible, internally contradictory, complex and dialectical. It reminds of a drink that is both sweet and bitter - and corrosive, and has a wisely healing taste. This thought is always driven, as if it cannot stand still. It searches, gropes, invades spheres of ever new complexities. It knows both the dizzying rise and the pain of disappointment. That's why sometimes a sad, ironic mockery shines through it.

There are writers who have spoken a new word, the meaning of which is nevertheless narrowly historical. They are the pioneers of a new direction in literature, without, however, leaving behind any more significant works of art. There are writers who, by perceiving the new and transforming it in their own way, in their own poetic style, create significant works of art. Karaslavov is of this second type. He works in the general direction of realistic proletarian, socialist literature. He completes the creation of Bulgarian proletarian fiction after Kirkov and Smirnensky, by entering new, previously unknown genres. A subtle observer, a precise artist with a constant striving for transparent clarity of form, he creates a domestic-poetic short story and gradually grows as a master of the novella and the story, of the novel. And his entire work is permeated by the justice of the people's struggles. For four decades now, his inspired pen has served the working class, the people faithfully.

Vaptsarov, this somewhat intrusive young man, with a casually unbuttoned collar and a lock of hair falling on his forehead, as I remember him, moved imperceptibly among the people. But this was only the external, "showy" side. Because every cell of his soul trembled with tension, excitement and businesslike drive. Because as a party functionary he was on the front line, on the firing line. But wasn't he like that as a writer too? Didn't he still modestly consider himself a "newbie" in the universally recognized literary environment, even though his success and achievements spoke otherwise? He, the still unknown, who recognized the primacy of his teachers and who did more than them, by transforming the everyday life, the pain, the suffering and the willingness to sacrifice of the working class in an original way. Here is his characteristic urban landscape:

Many of his contemporaries have left us his portrait: strong shoulders, a yellowish beard like a satyr's, strong fists, sometimes engaged in action, a Balkan nature in general. And he has established himself in our poetry as the most tender and soulful lyricist. His feeling gushes from innermost depths and pours out now in rapturous tones, now in quiet words, in a longing call for an unfulfilled, but still longed-for love. He sometimes feels joy, but he carefully conceals it due to the fear of some fatal predestination. He is tormented by a sad self-doubt, which soon, too soon curbs his bright impulses. His feeling pours out in dual ranges - both in rebellious murmur, and in impotent pity, and in a proud smile, and in gentle, noble suffering. This complex contradiction of his, this quiet drama of his, distinguishes him from Pencho Slaveykov and even from P. K. Yavorov.

The large color panel of the panoramic painting usually unfolds as a chronicle of a bygone era. As the greater and lesser artists appear before our eyes, they present to some extent the overall artistic development. However, conclusions are needed that illuminate the vast perspective of the past phenomena in more relief. The main differences, the original and distinctive features stand out best through model 1 of the literary process. On the one hand, it distances the details, avoids excessive complexity, so as not to repeat the process, on the other, by not breaking away from the broad plans, it captures what distinguishes our artistic creation from the creation of other peoples, which is our contribution to world literature. Let me say in advance that it is extremely difficult to establish the unique in a national poetics depending on the changes in the national psyche. It is easy to point out that the world in our country became different with the advent of printing or later - of bicycles and motor vehicles. It is more difficult to grasp the spirit of the times, the intimate and the special in literature that has lacked stability, since each new time has broken something of what was bequeathed. But let us also unfold this page and delve into issues touched upon here and there sporadically, without claiming to be exhaustive.

The October Revolution is not just a picturesque moment in the turbulent history of mankind. With a certain set of actions, thoughts and attitudes, it radically changed the entire worldview of the man of our time. What it accomplished once again confirmed the basic principle: one moves forward by rejecting what is obsolete, by perceiving the past through new perspectives: moral, political and artistic. With its grandiose innovation, the October Revolution erased the "greatness" of the ideas, philosophical views and moral theses proclaimed by the bourgeois revolutions that preceded it. With the brightness and fury of lightning, it illuminated the backward content of philosophical concepts, layered, processed and systematized for almost a century and a half.

Among our greatest poets who worked in the 1920s, she stands out as an exceptionally great and original phenomenon. And both with the new direction of feelings and thoughts, and with their depth and sincerity. As if from birth she has always been close to life, tame of nature, inseparable from it with bookish wisdom. As if listening to her inner voice, she is called not to deviate from her ancestral feminine nature with anything that is foreign to it. And her lyrics, having denied the abstract poetics of symbolism, enriched Bulgarian poetry with a new, healthy, earthly content.

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.