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This concerns the psychological characteristics of characters in fiction. For a long time, these issues were neglected by both critics and artists. But recently there has been a revival, mainly in fiction. This came naturally, as a reaction against the simplistic understanding of socialist realism. In the recent past, we often repeated that in order to artistically recreate contemporary life, which is in constant motion and transformation, it is necessary for characters to be depicted in motion, in action, and not as Oblomov in bed. And this, generally speaking, is indeed the case. But we often forgot the old truth that art is the study of human nature, i.e., that it deals primarily with the human soul. And if the fiction writer fails to open up the souls of his characters to his readers, if he is content to describe their actions empirically, if he skims over the surface of the events in which they participate, he will deviate from his artistic goals and tasks and even risk falling outside the boundaries of art. There are many who have indeed found themselves there with some of their works. And after they got stuck, they began to remember the old truth.

What poems did I write before becoming fascinated with symbolism? What was my youthful poetry like? Like every beginning poet (1903–1904), I had not one but several notebooks filled with poems. These were poems in the spirit of folk heroism, written under the influence of Botev, Vazov, and P. R. Slaveykov. I was able to restore a small part of them in the 1954 collection Poems. In 1905, I moved from Plovdiv to Sofia with the intention of studying and supporting myself with my own work. I stayed with a classmate I knew, who later took these poems with him, and for a long time I saw some of them printed in provincial newspapers under his name. In 1905, I was greatly impressed by Pushkin's poem "Vechny Oleg" in Pencho Slaveykov's translation. Pushkin and Lermontov became my favorite poets. Their poetry was of such high quality that it could not be imitated. I began to translate it, clumsily at first. In 1907, I read my translation of Lermontov's "The Demon" to a student audience. The impression was encouraging. I usually translated Pushkin and Lermontov under difficult circumstances (in prison, at the front, in hospital, in exile), with a feeling of love and gratitude for their genius. This raises the question: why did I not remain faithful to my love for the poetry of Pushkin and Lermontov? How can my enthusiasm for symbolism, shared by other Bulgarian poets of that period (1905-1915), be explained?

The life of a genius is not measured by the average duration of human existence. Every passing day expands the boundaries of his immortality. The works of contemporaries give us the opportunity to better understand the greatness of genius. Genius is contemporary even after millennia. But one is the contemporaneity of Aristotle, another of Shakespeare, a third - of Marx. And hardly has the history of mankind known such a complete manifestation of Man with a capital letter, such penetration into the depths of the future, without leaving the real basis of the present, as was manifested in the work and personality of Lenin. 90 years have passed since his birth and only 36 years since his death, and the ideas of Leninism, the ideas of communism are increasingly becoming ideas of all working humanity, marking the path to the future.

In world literary history, there are artists whose historical significance becomes more and more evident with the passage of time, who push for reflection, for new quests of the mind and heart. Such a notable personality is V. G. Belinsky, 150 years since the birth of whom today the progressive public from all countries marks with gratitude, making new efforts to delve into the rich heritage of this great son of the Russian people in order to establish the impact of his revolutionary-political, theoretical-philosophical, literary-critical thought on and later generations. contemporaries Having passed an instructive path of ideological and creative development, Belinsky stands on the most progressive positions of his time, understands the needs and tasks of the era, strives for new revolutionary concepts of social, ethical and aesthetic values. Many of the principles he established still resonate today with undiminished force, have lost none of their vital relevance, and serve as the basis for further research. Belinsky's multifaceted and rich work seems to embody the comprehensive spirituality of the great Russian people, as if the socio-political, moral-philosophical, and literary-theoretical problems of the era are gathered. The insights of the great thinker cut through the gloomy atmosphere of bourgeois-landlord Russia like lightning - groaning and struggling against oppression and injustice, against the Nicholas monarchical dictatorship, and outline the radiant horizons to which human thought has been striving for centuries. What excited and worried his contemporaries, what flashed in the minds of honest people, disturbed the squeamish consciences of all sorts of oppressors of the human person, manifests itself in Belinsky with astonishing power, to charm and inspire the wronged, to frighten those in power. His articles take up the most pressing issues of the time, are met as a revelation. In them one feels the bubbling of an immense energy, the daring of a penetrating thought, the rebellion of a restless civic pathos of a loving heart.

As a poet and fiction writer, Vazov is deeply engraved in our consciousness. He entered as a playwright. But we are not at all accustomed to thinking of him as an audience and critic. Not only because the great growth of his artistic works overshadows the other aspects of his activity, but also because for years his literary and journalistic work has been consciously or unconsciously underestimated. The idea had become established that no matter how great he was as an artist, Vazov was weak as a thinker. Some could not forgive him for his fight against the circle of "Thought and the Sharp Expression of the Symbolists", others - for his unfortunate study of Hristo Botev. That was all that was known. Everything else was a vague idea of ​​some unimportant, uninteresting and largely accidental facts from the writer's life. A not very popular self-confession for a few fiery articles" against the Battenberg coup, a widespread opinion about the superficial, most often condescending-encouraging nature of the literary reviews written by the poet and a not entirely critically compiled bibliographic list, 1 in which, among other things, a number of introductory articles and anonymous newspaper notes were attributed to Vazov - this is almost all that literary scholarship of the past had noted. And it had remained in the circle of specialists. The interesting part of Vazov's literary and journalistic work - his political articles from the first decade after the Liberation - was completely ignored. None of the bourgeois writers took the trouble to leaf through the dusty pages of the newspaper Nrodniy Glas to extract from them the memory of those years when the poet was young and ardent, when he kept the great ideals of the revival intact in his heart and, with the temperamental pen of a journalist, served the same "terrible goddess of Freedom" that he sang about with youthful enthusiasm in his poems. Whatever reasons we may list, it seems to me that this silence was not accidental. The bourgeoisie needed a Vazov - polished, paraded and... weakened. It had no interest in emphasizing the full depth of his democracy, the full breadth of his patriotism, the full sharpness of his love of freedom. It was hard enough to swallow some of his poems to have a desire to create additional ones for itself. about the difficulties and with his journalism. She seemed to vaguely sense the dangers that Vazov's political articles from the first years of her reign concealed and, in any case, left them in oblivion. The progressive literary scholarship of the past was not interested in them either - it was also hindered by the prejudice that there was nothing interesting to expect from the political articles of a bourgeois writer.

What are the main stages in the development of the mutual relations between the Slavic Literatures? 2. What does comparative Slavic literary studies contribute to the development of literary theory and practice? 3. What are the main problems of the comparative study of the South Slavic Literatures? 4. What are the forms of influence of one literature on another (based on material from Slavic literatures)? 5. What is the role of the assimilation of foreign literary works in the periods of formation of Slavic national literatures? 6. What is the role of the Russian revolutionary democrats in the emergence and development of materialist literary thought in Slavic countries? 7. What phenomena from Slavic literatures have had an impact on the development of non-Slavic literatures? 8. Can some common typological features and common stages in the development of satire in Slavic literatures be identified? B 9. What is the significance of the study of the relations between Slavic literatures and other arts? 10. What is the role of the creative individuality of the writer in the general process of literary development (with regard to Slavic literatures from different eras)? 11. How to create a unification of literary terminology? 12. When did literature for young people arise in the individual Slavic literatures?

The interest in the issues of Bulgarian-Serbian and Bulgarian-Croatian literary, cultural and ideological-political relations in the past is conditioned primarily by the rich content of these relations, by their scientific significance. Not only neighboring, but also with a relatively equal political fate, Bulgarians, Serbs and Croats followed very similar directions and traditions in their spiritual development for nearly a century. Even in the conditions of their political slavery they managed to use each other's experience and achievements in the field of culture to create original artistic values. The informed reader knows how characteristic in this respect is the literary activity of writers such as Konstantin Ognjanović, Petko Slavejkov, Ljuben Karavelov and Hristo Botev, Jovan Raič, Dositej Obradović, Vuk Karadžić, Jovan Sterija Popović, Ivan Kukuljević-Sakčinski, Petar Preradović, August Harambašić and others, whose works penetrated all South Slavic countries, accelerating the process of the formation and development of South Slavic literatures.

Georgi Dimitrov's statements on literary issues represent not only a very interesting and important page from his multifaceted and rich life as a communist revolutionary of global significance, but they are also extremely valuable documents, the in-depth study of which makes it possible to clarify and resolve some of the basic problems of our literary development.

During the time of the cult of personality, quite a few significant works were written, which are the pride of contemporary Bulgarian literature. And the senseless nihilism that existed among a certain part of the youth in relation to the previous period must be resolutely rejected. At the same time, it cannot be ignored that these successes could have been even greater if it were not for the conditions of the cult, which instilled dogmatism, stereotyped thinking, and hindered the normal development of literature. According to the words of Todor Zhivkov, "dogmatism as a theory and practice introduced stiffness, schematism, patterning, and stagnation into creative work."

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.

At the 18th International Congress of Slavists, the issues of Russian classical literature were widely discussed in accordance with its role and significance among other Slavic and non-Slavic literatures. The reports were numerous, with a different range of problems and appearance, written from different ideological and methodological positions. They nevertheless lend themselves to a certain degree of classification and grading. The first group of reports includes those that treated the most general problems of Russian classical literature (D. D. Blagoi, Dr. Nedelkovich). Their main task was to reveal the reasons that conditioned the emergence of this very important stage in the general centuries-old life of Russian literature, to establish some of its basic regularities, the main lines of its development, its appearance, place and significance. A central place is occupied by the clarification of the reasons for the emergence, development and demise of literary trends in their complex interrelation. Comparison with the corresponding moments and features of Western literatures is an important feature of these reports, which contributes to their greater completeness and justification of the theses. The authors of another group of reports (F. Seely, V. Velchev, B. Kreft, L. Niro, D. Grishin, E. Krag, I. Blankoff) have focused their attention on the study of very specific issues in the work of individual Russian writers or their mutual influences. Their goal in principle is to bring new moments into the clarification of the creative physiognomy of one or another writer, to shed light on controversial or insufficiently clear problems of his individual works, to show in a new aspect some aspects of his ideological and aesthetic concepts, to focus attention on some features of his style. The existence of such reports is justified by the need to develop specific problems, without which large generalizations are impossible. The presentation of a fairly large number of such reports, however, led in this case to a certain deviation from the main problems that should have been discussed in depth at the congress. A significant number of reports dealt in detail with the relations of Russian literature with other literatures (N. Krutikova, G. Dimov, T. Gane, V. Edgerton, Alb. Kovacs, etc.). Here, an important place is occupied not by the study of direct, immediate borrowings, but by the fundamental questions of the exchange and assimilation of artistic and theoretical experience between Russian literature and a number of Slavic and some non-Slavic literatures.

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.

The interest that our literary studies show in our relations with our neighbors in the past is a proven fact. It testifies to the attention with which literary scholars in our country turn to the most beautiful and fruitful manifestations of friendship and amity between the Balkan peoples. In addition, this fact testifies to the expansion of the thematic perimeter of our literary studies; it is an expression of the aspiration of our literature to find its place in a broader literary context. Therefore, the first question that arises when we become acquainted with the recently published book on Bulgarian-Serbian literary relations in the 19th century is whether it meets the requirements of such an important and complex task. Konev's work consists of two parts. The first - "The Great Beginning" contains four chapters: 1. Literary exchange between Bulgarians and Serbs. 2. Translated and Bulgarianized works. Character and significance. 3. The creative path of P. R. Slaveykov and Serbian literature. 4. Serbian teachers in Bulgaria. Literary and cultural and educational activity. The second part, which is called "In support of realism in literature", includes the following chapters: 1. Encounters with drama. 2. Lyuben Karavelov in the development of the Serbian realistic short story. 3. Before the dawn of freedom.

The issues of aesthetics have always been of great interest to both science and artists. This interest has obviously grown in recent times, thanks to which a lot of research has appeared. Despite this activity, however, there is still no unity among scientists on a number of issues. One of the reasons for this state of affairs is the fact that theoretical generalizations are not always connected with the direct study of the artistic mastery of the individual artist-writer. If this statement is true for modern fiction, how much more so for medieval Slavic literature, especially for old Bulgarian literature. Of course, today it is no longer possible to maintain the view that this literature is purely religious-dogmatic, dry and uninteresting, that it has primarily cognitive significance, helping us to more fully reveal the relevant historical era. To deny any artistry in Old Bulgarian or Old Russian literature is not justified either historically or factually. Because in different centuries there was a different idea of ​​artistry, and when assessing the degree of artistry of a particular monument, we should not take our own point of view, we should not come up with our own claims to artistry, but take into account the understanding of artistry in the society of that era, monuments". 1 which was contemporary to each of these On the other hand, old Bulgarian literature, like Serbian and Russian medieval literature, possesses undoubted artistic merits: it holds the attention of its reader, satisfies his aesthetic sense, acts on his imagination and reason, elevates thoughts and feelings, and gives knowledge of a diverse nature. The stylistic and linguistic form of the works unconditionally corresponds to the appropriate cultural preparation of the reader, so that he can perceive them, be moved by them. Here it is absolutely necessary to observe a certain ratio between the creator and the reader. When this ratio is violated, the impact of the book is insignificant, a reaction begins against it, an opposite movement appears.

Two years ago, when the various sections of the First International Congress of Balkan Studies were being outlined and a general outline of their issues was being drawn up, one could only assume the great interest that some of the planned reports would arouse. At that time, there was still no clear idea of ​​the wide boundaries of the issues that the individual branches of Balkan studies have - a complex science of the history, culture, literature, language, art and folklore of the Balkan peoples, of the historically created and increasingly intensively enriched relationships between them, of their lasting ties with other peoples and other national cultures. Now, when the congress has successfully concluded its work, we understand well how many more significant problems and questions (some of them only raised in the reports or discussions) are yet to be resolved and illuminated from modern scientific positions, in order to correctly outline all the common moments in the centuries-old development of the Balkan peoples, by overcoming the erroneous concepts and findings accumulated in the past. One of the undoubted positive results of the First International Congress of Balkan Studies is that it gave a serious impetus in this direction. And one more thing: in the days from August 26 to September 1, 1966, the congress turned the mutual collegial respect between the individual delegates into a tradition that should be strengthened by all as the main necessary condition for our further research and creative meetings. For if now, when we are at the very beginning of the more intensive and joint study of the problems of Balkan Studies, this atmosphere has ensured a calm and businesslike discussion of various, sometimes very specific, issues, tomorrow it will certainly give us the opportunity for unprecedented mutual acquaintance and study of the individual Balkan literatures and cultures.

The last decade of the century of the Enlightenment constitutes an important moment in the development of Greek culture. During these few years, manifestations of every nature (directly related to spiritual life or marking reflections on it) represent such a density that it could be said that they include within themselves the entire history of future Hellenism. From year to year we follow the withering away of religious humanism, the stagnation of reactionary doctrine, the formation of the liberal spirit and the progressive liberation of secular thought. These intellectual movements were influenced to a great extent by the development of international politics and the cultural life of the West. The strong impetus that Catherine the Great (Russia) gave to her policy regarding "philosophy" conditioned important changes in the activities of the Orthodox Church of Constantinople. Indeed, until 1791, the Patriarch of Constantinople was under the sway of two opposing forces: on the one hand, the need to maintain legal ties with the Ottoman Empire, on the other, the desire not to weaken the ties of the Greek Church with the Russian Empire, which belonged to the same faith and was officially considered the protector of paradise. The Patriarchate had to adopt a soft attitude, as little opposition as possible, in order not to arouse the discontent of Russia, but also to take into account the demands of the Sublime Porte.

Before examining the most general propositions that Isaac Passy formulates and defends in his book on tragedy, I will dwell on that chapter of it which bears the title "Aristotle's Dispute with Plato". Let me be allowed to begin with a topic that I myself have been developing for years. I will justify my desire with one more circumstance: my research, although unmentioned in Passy, ​​has had an impact on his book, and for me it is not without importance how this happened. I want to assure the reader that I will not abuse his patience and will not devote the initial part of my article exclusively to personal authorial interests. Because, on the other hand, the chapter in question reveals some important features that characterize Passy's book in general.

Over the past ten years, interest in the issues of Old Bulgarian literature has grown significantly, both among our own and among some foreign scholars. In the first place among foreigners in this regard are the Soviet medievalists D. S. Likhachev,1 I. P. Eryomin,2 Yu. K. Begunov, N. K. Gudziy, M. V. Shchenkina, who in a number of their works shed light on one or another fact of our old literature, express one or another assessment of the phenomena, etc. Following the example of their predecessors - the old Russian Slavists and experts on Old Bulgarian literature - they strive to study the facts well, to systematize them and, on the basis of all this, to draw the appropriate conclusions and inferences. This approach to the phenomena of the development of Old Bulgarian literature is completely correct and leads to positive results. Therefore, the mentioned Soviet scholars can also boast of valuable achievements.