Творчески

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.

It is a glorious Gorky tradition to call on artists of the word to collective work: to frank conversations and discussions, to extensive discussions of the most pressing problems of our time, to various ways of creatively stimulating literature, art and culture. For half a century, these traditions have been actively developed to a new stage by modern creative unions, institutes, editorial offices and cultural organizations of Soviet writers, artists, scientists and cultural figures. A new vivid document of these living traditions and the emphasized desire for joint initiatives is the booklet 12 - 1965 of "Literary Issues", the organ of the Union of Writers of the USSR and the Institute of World Literature "A. M. Gorky" at the Academy of Sciences of the CCCP. The editorial board's initiative to dedicate an entire separate issue of the journal to the literatures of the socialist countries in Europe is not only commendable and timely, but also very symptomatic of the mature contemporary conditions under which European writers from the socialist countries must develop their creative efforts.

"Tears of Lily" - pale and in many cases clumsy imitations of the sentimental direction in Heine's lyrics - Pencho Slaveykov wrote in his hospital bed in 1886-87. He himself repeatedly pointed out the weakness of this poetry of his, in order to highlight "Epic Songs" as the mature beginning of his work. But in Slaveykov, as in our poetry at its beginning (until Karavelov and Botev), we can notice that where this beginning is in the spirit and form of written poetry, it is still clumsy and inept - and once the poet has touched the living source of all poetry, folk poetry, his verses resonate with the power of a fresh artistic image. Thus, even before he had modeled his literary experiments ("Momini Salzi") on a book model, Slaveykov in 1885 was inspired by folk-poetic images and wrote his poem "Lud Gidiya". It is no coincidence that when he later collected his poems for "Epic Songs", he put "Lud Gidiya" in the first place in this collection... For several centuries, the people have created the image of the cheerful man of art, who plays the tambourine with intoxication from aesthetic pleasure. This image is picturesque: the young Stoyan hung this empty tambourine on his belt" and as he played, "the brides broke the robbery - the old hurks crushed" - and even the judge, to whom the people complained that they could not do their work because of the "empty tambourine", was carried away by the power of art. Instead of judging the young gypsy, "they became kadiyas to play - you're a furley binish in a chamber - you're a furley hat on beams"....With such a relief-shaped and elaborate folklore image, the young poet, barely 19 years old, wrote a poem inspired by it. The verse, close to the folk-syllabic, easily succumbed to him.

For almost a year now, bookstores have been offering the importance that Velichko Valchev has for readers a new work on Ivan Vazov - the most voluminous in the already impressive literature on the national poet. The author, Velichko Valchev, is a well-known researcher of the life and work of Ivan Vazov. He has published about sixty studies, popularization articles, reviews of editions of his works, translations of Vazov's works abroad, productions of Vazov's plays, etc. about our most popular classic. In addition, he has edited the poet's works, written a preface to one or another edition. Special mention should be made of the valuable volume "Unpublished Letters" of Ivan Vazov, Selected", edited and commented on by Velichko Valchev and published by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The book "Ivan Vazov. Life and Creative Path", written, as we learn from the preface, over a period of more than ten years, in a certain sense summarizes and completes the long-term studies and research of Velichko Valchev. In it, the author used, of course, not mechanically, much of what he had previously written about Vazov.