реализма

Last December, our country celebrated the centenary of its national theater. In the capital, this remarkable anniversary could have been marked more solemnly, with the most prominent representatives of our contemporary theater appearing on stage in roles dear to all of us. So many foreigners, prominent theater figures from their countries, had come! The high praise they gave to this remarkable century deserved a slightly different anniversary celebration. In the anniversary production of "Ivanko," with the exception of P. Gerganova, our greatest artists were not used. And the celebration calls for such a selection... Perhaps the current concerns of everyday theater life, when everyone is more preoccupied with themselves, inadvertently underestimated the celebration... But sometimes disappointment accompanies even our brightest days.

Until recently, the question of the beginning of critical realism in Bulgarian literature was undisputed - Lyuben Karavelov was considered its founder. Recently, however, G. Tsanev came up with an article "The Beginning of Critical Realism in Bulgarian Literature", in which he believes that "a careful examination of the facts is necessary, which would lead us to new conclusions". In this article, he reviews and analyzes Slaveykov's work, emphasizing its critical-realistic character. He also focuses on his literary-critical articles and his translated literature. Based on our social reality, G. Tsanev points to critical realism as the main trend in Bulgarian literature, and its first representative is P. R. Slaveykov. On the same occasion, P. Zarev has recently written an article - "Our Literary History and the Wealth of the Literary Process". The author focuses more on the analysis of the aesthetic views and artistic practice of P. R. Slaveykov. As a result, he comes to the conclusion that Slaveykov's work "by character, by its system of exposition, is the work of pre-critical realism and is a transition to it." 1 While trying to reveal the general direction" of his poetry, he adopts a position that is, in our opinion, erroneous, that the main feature of Slaveykov's work is his "specific interest in the intimate, in the world of the awakened personality" - his love poetry. On the other hand, he believes that since Slaveykov is a realist with a very versatile attitude to reality, without focusing on the specific conflicts and trends of the time - his realism is characterized by "completeness" and "multifacetedness" in depicting life, without a single definite and consistently expressed tendency. This prevents him from growing as a critical realist. Without agreeing with the idea that Slaveykov's work lacks a specific and consistently expressed trend, or that it lacks a focus on the specific conflicts and trends of the time, nevertheless, a number of the author's thoughts and observations in this part of the article are so interesting that they make the reader think again about these problems.

In recent years, significant differences have emerged in the assessment of the creative method of individual Renaissance writers, opposing opinions have been expressed about the beginning of critical realism, and the question of romanticism and realism in our Renaissance literature has been raised. In his study "The Problem of Romanticism and Bulgarian Literature" 1 P. Dinekov examines, along with romanticism, some other questions: the relationship between sentimentalism and romanticism, revolutionary romance and romanticism, etc. Characterizing romanticism, the author makes a number of general observations about realism, which is the only one to take shape as a literary school with its own lasting traditions", but whose "first manifestations can only be separated with great difficulty from the strongly mixed elements of sentimentalism and romanticism". In our literary science, the prevailing view is that critical realism was first established as a specific direction in the creative work of L. Karazelov, who was its founder. P. R. Slaveykov does not reach the critical realism. P. Zarev dwells on this issue in more detail. Slaveykov's work, in Zarev's words, is in principle, in character and in pictorial system a work of pre-critical realism and a transition to it. 2 The opposite thesis is advocated by G. Tsanev in his article "The Beginning of Critical Realism in Bulgarian Literature." 33 He claims that almost all Bulgarian writers, with the exception of the representatives of proletarian literature and socialist realism, as well as the predecessor of socialist realism in our country - Hr. Botev (naturally, and the representatives of decadent literary movements) are critical realists, with all their work or with a part of it. The gaze of Bulgarian writers is turned towards society, the critical-accusatory tone is inherent in Bulgarian literature. Further, the author disputes the prevailing view that L. Karavelov is the founder of Bulgarian critical realism and comes to the conclusion that the first representative of critical realism in our literature is P. R. Slaveykov. To prove this statement, the author of the essay refers to two poems - Boy, gather your wits", written in 1857 and Song for my coin - from 1861 - poems that reflect a critical satirical attitude towards "the robber and reveal the power of money, on which everything in the emerging bourgeois society depends. Critical realism before the Liberation is a reflection of reality, in which a struggle is waged not only against bourgeois social relations, but also against the national and social oppression of Turkish feudalism. "Critical realism in our country is directly, organically connected with the national liberation struggle of our people". "The object of artistic reflection also includes moments of national character and feudal nature." The above-mentioned views on realism before the Liberation are far from exhausting everything written on the subject. Our task is only to outline some basic theses and fundamental differences.

Until recently, there was still a popular view that the entire artistic development of mankind represented a pyramid, at the top of which stood realism. I would not say that the period of the cult of personality with its pronounced tendency to hierarchical thinking was without merit in creating such a pyramidal idea of ​​the development of art. The fact that realism is one of the most significant achievements of human artistic thinking, that it arose on the most valuable conquests of all literatures and schools before it, was turned into an absurdity by this theory, which generalized it to all the more significant manifestations of art. This impoverished the entire picture of artistic development to an incredible extent.

Vakhtangov as a fully developed artist with his own concept of the art of theater can be spoken of mainly in connection with his two last masterpieces - "Khadibuk" by A. N. and "Turandot" by K. Gotsi. Here he already reveals his understanding of the tasks of the new Soviet art, of the place of the director and the actor in it, of the relationship between the playwright and the theater, of the need to reach new social and psychological depths. It is quite natural that with these productions Vakhtangov managed to immortalize himself, to remain a symbol of a unified theatrical revolution, of a renaissance in Soviet art. Therefore, it is precisely these two performances that give us the right to examine in a generalized manner a number of more general questions of the art of theater, closely related to modernity.

In the last quarter of 1966, the Scientific Council of the Institute of Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences decided to award the scientific degree "Candidate of Philological Sciences" to the regular graduate students at the institute, Stefana Tarinska and Docho Lekov.

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.