Книга

I recently read in a reference book that Nikolay Yankov first published his literary work back in 1943. And when I recalled the many examples from our contemporary literary life, I found it somehow too strange, too unfamiliar to me the fact that only at the end of last year, that is, almost two decades after his debut, did his first book, the collection of literary-critical articles "Books. Authors and Time", appear. The reasons for this atypical delay can be explained in a variety of ways, but I have no intention of taking on such a task, since I do not see any particular importance in solving it. I would only like to note in general that it is not the result of any ideological-aesthetic break, of a sharp turn on a completely opposite path, nor of genre wanderings, of genre instability, of jumping from one perimeter of activity to another. Without being one of our most productive critics, Nikolay Yankov delayed the publication of his first book not because of the lack of his own works, but undoubtedly in this case considerations of a different nature were at work, and in the first place, it seems to me, the feeling of self-criticism. I am led to this thought primarily by the circumstance that, with the exception of only three works, the remaining articles were written in the last five or six years. It is obvious that N. Yankov does not feel a particular weakness for his works from a long time ago, it is clear that when compiling the book he did not want to include in it all his long-standing critical production, including his very first manifestations, but considered it most expedient to present himself only with his articles from recent years. But unfortunately this self-criticism is relative, it is not fully manifested. While treating his earlier critical works with extreme strictness, N. Yankov somehow unexpectedly shows himself to be too liberal towards her recent work, voting her full confidence and deciding to present her in "Books, Authors and Time" almost without any exceptions. He also allowed the inclusion of some small notes, some - as he himself called them - "sketches", the meaning of which is limited to marking a certain anniversary or cultural event, notes that in the columns of the newspaper had undoubted value, but which - at least in this form - can hardly find justification outside it. The book of criticism should not become a kind of diary that records every manifestation, it always implies selection (demandingness is always mandatory, it is necessary not only in the assessment of the earliest manifestations). The book is always an assessment - and above all self-assessed, it presents a certain creative period from its most important, most essential sides. Without concealing the noted inclinations towards an unnecessary comprehensiveness, without concealing the unfulfilled self-criticism, it must nevertheless be emphasized without further reservation that Nikolay Yankov's first book gives a general idea of ​​his creative physiognomy.

"Readers will notice that among my heroes, neither learned heads, nor important merchants, nor influential rich men appear very often; but simple and ordinary people, all from the lower ranks. These do not appear precisely because the work I describe is foreign to them." And so as not to leave any doubt about the purpose of his book, Zahari Stoyanov confesses: "Finally, I turn to you, brothers, simple poor people. For you I have worked hard to write this book, to show you that the most ardent fighters and defenders of our fatherland were not proud rich men and puffed-up scholars, but simple and uneducated brothers of yours, who knew no more than you. It will be enough to remind you only of the names of Levski, Benkovski, Kocho Chistemenski, the Zhekovi brothers, Bai Ivan Arabadzhiata, Ivan Vorcho, etc., all the guildsmen and workers. These, and no one else, washed the face of Bulgaria and defended our disgraced glory. With these words, Zahari Stoyanov turns to the readers of his "Notes", to explicitly remind them of whom he had in mind when he wrote them. The only and main character in them is the people, and he wants the people to be their first reader.

In our country, tribute is still paid to an unpleasant and undesirable inertia that has not been experienced since the time of the cult of personality. Namely, little is written about famous Western authors (usually in the order of simple notes) or nothing is written at all. In this way, our public too often remains unfamiliar with the essence of this or that new phenomenon, with this or that book in a particular national literature. But in any case, despite the official silence, rumors and "evaluations" about books and writers are carried through the "literary ether", and often superlative ones. Therefore, one of the successful and proven methods to assess the real aesthetic, innovative or pseudo-innovative value of one or another famous author is for our literary thought to regularly and competently enlighten the Bulgarian public about the creative phenomena that at a given moment "scandalize" the French, English or American reader. In this way, on the one hand, we will have a clear and rich idea of ​​the literary life abroad, and on the other hand, the path of impure speculations and exaggerations surrounding the latest book by Françoise Sagan or Samuel Beckett will be cut off. In this sense, a book like "The Crisis in the Modern Western Novel" by Minko Nikolov is a good phenomenon, which in principle should be congratulated, accepted and encouraged. Such critical manifestations enrich the "assortment" of our literary literature, broaden our view and horizons, and, as strange as this may seem at first glance to lovers of dogmatic-sectarian thinking, they make us internally more resistant to the truly decadent phenomena in Western art and Western literature. In terms of composition, M. Nikolov's book includes eight chapters that are independent in character, internally united by one main idea - the idea of ​​showing the essence of the crisis in the modern Western novel. Some of the essay chapters ("The Revolution in Art and the Novel", "Existentialism and Novelists", etc.) are dedicated to individual phenomena and literary movements, while others ("The Lawgivers" Joyce and Proust, "The Cult of Kafka", "The Lessons of Thomas Mann") are dedicated to individual authors and their novels.

The biographical literature on Hemingway is not rich. That is why the book about Hemingway's life, published this year in the USA, was met with great interest, especially since its author is Lester Hemingway, the brother of the deceased writer. The material, completely reliable, is collected from personal observations. The author's goal is not to emphasize Hemingway's literary significance. His task is to acquaint readers with the family, with the writer's personal life, with the process of his creativity. This book refutes many of the fabrications that some bourgeois journalists have created around Hemingway's personality. As the author points out, Hemingway himself expressed a desire for a book to be written about his life. Lester Hemingway is sixteen years younger than his brother. Therefore, he collected information about the writer's childhood and adolescence from his mother, sisters and relatives. For us, the book is interesting as a document about the life of the talented novelist. We can agree with the statement of the famous researcher of Hemingway's work, Carlos Baker, who wrote in the weekly "Saturday Review": "The portrait of the brother, painted by the author of the book, is reliable, understandable and human." A great influence on the young Hemingway was exerted by his parents. Hemingway inherited his passion for adventure, travel and hunting from his father, a doctor by profession. His mother, an energetic woman, passionately loved music and continued to play until old age.

The centenary of the publication of the collection "Bulgarian Folk Songs" and the death of its compilers Dimitar and Konstantin Miladinov gave a favorable occasion to writers, historians, folklorists and linguists to shed light on new aspects of the life and literary work of the Two Brothers, to make a comprehensive assessment of their role, place and significance in the Bulgarian Revival. Nikola Tabakov's book "The Miladinov Brothers. A Biographical Sketch" appeared one year after the celebrated anniversary. The interest shown in it, however, showed that the attention of the Bulgarian reader to the two Revivalists was not accidental and jubilee. The author of the book, as is evident from the title, set himself a modest task - to popularize the life path of the Miladinovs. However, considering that in figures like Dimitar and Konstantin the biographical in most cases intertwines with the creative individual, Nikola Tabakov necessarily had to touch upon literary, folklore and other issues. Miladinovtsi have attracted Nikola Tabakov's attention for a long time. He is one of the publishers of their works, the author of articles about their magnificent work. Some controversial issues surrounding their life and activities have occupied him for a long time. And he digs through archives and old periodicals, compares data and opinions. In this way, Long-term persistence outlines in his consciousness two images from the past, which he "shares" with the reader as he "perceives" and feels them.

Ernesto, a large industrialist or something like that, puts a record on his new American gramophone, an ideal automaton with a complex mechanism. When Ernesto presses the button on the membrane, instead of obediently landing on the edge of the record, it rises into the air, makes a kind of paralytic movement and with a dry metallic click returns to its original position. Like all ideal mechanisms, the automaton at a certain point refuses to serve its purpose. A little later, Ernesto is in his luxury car with his wife and two children. He is a rich, happy man who has fulfilled himself. But somewhere at the bottom of his soul, a dissatisfaction has settled. This dissatisfaction tempts him to throw himself from a high cliff into the sea with his luxury car and his entire family. His not-so-good knowledge of the terrain and a hesitation that lasted a tenth of a second save him. Instead of in the waves, the car stops at a beautiful ravine, from which Ernesto, his contented wife and his joyful sons contemplate the calm element of the ocean. Alberto Moravia's new book of short stories "The Automaton" is built on moments in which the main characters realize their dissatisfaction, their inferiority, their automatic existence, their inability to live and enjoy what they have achieved. Men or women, young or old, they are faced with their deeper essence, with their true reality, which they have not known, with which they cannot cope. These are usually moments of imbalance, as in the plot of the story given above, moments of automatic and unconscious life, not controlled by the will.

The Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship is multifaceted - in politics, in economics, in culture, including in literature. It, our literary friendship with the Russian people and with the other peoples of the Soviet country, has deep roots and is a peer of the cultural history of our two countries. It is no coincidence that copies of the oldest Bulgarian manuscripts, dating back to the beginning of our writing, are found in a number of Soviet libraries. With affection we read in the ancient "Alphabetical Prayer" - this foundation of all Bulgarian poetry - verses addressed to the entire "Slavic tribe". This common appeal over the centuries rightly acquired a main focus on the largest Slavic people - the Russians, who became the support and foundation of the cultural development of all Slavic and many non-Slavic peoples. When I was in Ukraine in 1959, during the decade of Bulgarian culture, Kiev writers and literary scholars proudly pointed out the places connected in distant historical memory with the Bulgarian writer Grigoriy Tsamblak: we imagine him living among his colleagues from Kiev at the beginning of the fifteenth century, how in meetings with them they spoke the then common literary Slavic language - and yet they knew that he was Bulgarian, and spoke words of praise for the Bulgarian literary work, already famous throughout the world. Five centuries of slavery did not obscure, but strengthened the literary community of our peoples: the names of Botev, Karavelov, Nesho Bonchev and our other revivalists are most closely associated with Russian culture. Both during the six decades of bourgeois Bulgaria and during the two decades of Fatherland Front Bulgaria, this area of ​​cultural and literary friendship accumulated new and new facts and phenomena, and established itself as a law of our literary development. Today, Soviet literature is for us that beacon which illuminates with bright flashes our entire literary life.

Efrem Karanfilov is one of those authors for whom writing is not a casual occupation. He is usually not satisfied with a banal, impersonal examination of works and problems, because writing an article for him is a way to express himself, to express his attitude towards things, to communicate his discoveries about people and literature. He feels a writing vocation within himself, he is possessed by the ambition to involve readers in his thoughts, to instill in them his convictions. Naturally, the literary works he writes about are not indifferent to him, his attitude towards them is very active. With their images and ideas, they unleash the flow of his own thoughts and moods and always evoke certain emotional reactions. These features apply to E. Karanfilov's work in general, but they are manifested to the highest degree in his essays. Because this is indeed a very suitable genre for an author with his inclinations and temperament. The essay gives him exactly that complete freedom that he needs - to follow his thoughts, unbound by preconditions.

This is the tenth book in a row by Efrem Karanfilov and is yet another proof of his diverse literary interests. This time, the subject of study is only Bulgarian authors - poets from different eras and generations, from Paisius to our contemporaries. In Paisius's story, the critic is struck by a twisted revolutionary passion and an unquenchable, eternal youth, which captivates him with its irrepressible drive. It forces him to express in one breath the fascination of the immortal Paisius' work over the modern reader. This work sounds to him like a heroic poem, it carries him with the violent strength of the Hilendar monk, it ignites him with his patriotic flame. He writes about Paisius in an uplifting manner, with a romantic coloring in the style and diction. Efrem Karanfilov is most strongly and sincerely moved when he discovers fighting moods in the poets. The deepest experiences and immediate excitements in his soul are awakened by the fanfare of the martial lyre, the revolutionary flight of poetry sparkling with youth and vitality.

In recent months, our Botev studies have been enriched with another valuable contribution - the book by St. Tarinska "The Prose of Hristo Botev". Not large in volume, this new book about the great son of our people is the result of long-term, systematic, in-depth research work. Its subject is the relatively little-studied prose of Botev - his articles, essays and feuilletons. The author has collected a large amount of historical and literary material and has built a study that is distinguished by its overall harmonious composition, internal logic and consistency, in-depth penetration and analysis. With the scientific precision, accuracy and analytical skills of a talented literary historian, Tarinska collects observations and facts, traces the path of the publicist and feuilletonist, outlines the atmosphere of the time more and more closely, and delve deeper and deeper into the peculiarities and uniqueness of the literary process. Interesting precisely from a literary-historical point of view is the versatile, very specific analysis that she makes of the works under consideration - articles, essays and feuilletons. The method of fragmentation, of detailed literary-historical analysis is applied particularly consistently in the most extensive chapter of the study - "Master of the Feuilleton". The author searches for the sources used in writing each feuilleton, which served as material and as an occasion for the feuilletonist. Studying with literary-historical depth the "prehistory" of the work, i.e. the occasion for its emergence, the sources, the prototypes, Tarinska arrives at interesting observations, imperceptibly and slightly entering its atmosphere. The author argues with Al. Burmov about the time in which the feuilleton "The Wardrobe" was written, without getting carried away by the accumulation of facts for its own sake, in historicism for its own sake. "Al. Burmov's arguments at first glance are completely plausible and convincing, she writes, but if we carefully follow the content of the work and turn to the actual facts that lie at its foundation, we will see that his statement is false. We will dwell on this issue in more detail not only to specify the time of the creation of the feuilleton, but because this is largely a question of the principles on which Botev builds the feuilleton work." (p. 106). 1 Stefana Tarinska, The Prose of Hristo Botev", ed. Nauka i izkustvo, S., 1966. Tarinska is constantly searching for "principles", the main problems. The specific analysis of "The Closet" leads to principled conclusions and generalizations about the birth and development of the feuilleton theme, about Botev's ability to remain faithful to the actual fact and at the same time provide himself with sufficient distance to organize his material in such a way that the great social theme resonates. Through the analysis, the answer to the question is reached - how does the feuilletonist embed the actual fact in the general fabric of the work? For Botev, "the concrete-topical is not an illustration of the idea, but an expression of the idea. That is why he needs it in its unity between the particular and the general - as it manifests itself in reality itself." When examining the feuilleton "That Night I Dreamed..." Tarinska again searches for the principle on which the satirical exposure is built, discovers the intersection of the small and large themes of the feuilleton, the connection of the plot development. And she comes to the summary: "A constant overflow, a constant transition from the small to the large theme of the work. A continuous alternation of the fable-allegorical with the real-believable and all this through unexpected transitions, at the same time smooth, logical" in its illogicality, externally acceptable - on these principles Botev builds the feuilleton story." (p. 120) The analysis of "That Night I Dreamed..." gives the author material to reveal Botev's ability to fabulate, to create with ease and ease a feuilleton plot - interesting and deeply meaningful, saturated with a wide variety of motifs and at the same time monolithic and purposeful", to build the plot development on specific evil daily facts and at the same time project it onto the big, fundamental issues of the time, giving it a clear political focus.

During the solemn scientific session for the 1050th anniversary of the death of Clement of Ohrid, achieving its jubilee purpose with the greatest accuracy, the cleverly and interestingly written book by Nadezhda Dragova about the outstanding Bulgarian and Slavic enlightener was published. Without a doubt, in the bibliographies of those dedicated to Clement 1 N. Dragova, Kliment Ohridski. A Story about Him and His Enemies. S., Publishing House of the National Council of the Fatherland Front, 1966, 266 p. Works it will find its place in the section "popular scientific literature". It is not excluded that it will be passed over negligently by both individual representatives of strict academic thought and some of the creators of contemporary historical fiction, if they a priori attribute to it the known shortcomings of books of its kind. And it is neither elementary, nor dry and lifeless. From its first to its last page, we are greeted by the results of a perfectly clear, meticulously thought out and precisely executed plan, and we are delighted by the qualities of a high-class popularizer.

When we talk or write about our national character, about the character of the Bulgarian in its various shades and nuances, we tend to think that we can easily exhaust the question - we will say not about his modesty and hard work, about his courage and firmness, about his honesty and hospitality... But when we want to delve into the details, into the depth and essence of this problem, we suddenly encounter complex, difficult-to-solve questions, with a whole labyrinth of unexplored, unsuspected and surprisingly intertwined connections and relationships, with psychological mysteries and contradictory situations. This complexity is equally valid for scientific, historical and journalistic works that concern features of the characterology of the Bulgarian, as well as for works of art that recreate the characters of Bulgarians. We will encounter an amazing variety of interpretations, points of view, views, opinions and judgments.

The appearance of the book "Images and Problems" is a positive phenomenon in our literary science. Its author Ivan Tsvetkov is known as one of the few best experts on Soviet literature in our country. 176 As early as 1964, the publishing house of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences released his book "Maxim Gorky and Bulgarian Literature", a solid study of some aspects of the great writer's work and of a number of problems of its penetration, distribution and creative perception in Bulgaria. Written with erudition, with a temperamental and lively pen, this work contributed a lot to the overall clarification of the issues of Bulgarian-Russian literary relations. In his first book, Tsvetkov is alien to the narrow setting and solution of problems. He does not mechanically transfer the results of one national literary development to another, does not turn the regularities in the development of one literature into a mandatory norm for another, but seeks the true creative interpenetrations, conditioned by a complex complex of social, political and cultural factors. The subject of the study is the literary-critical perception and stage adaptation of Gorky in our country, with the task of interaction with our poets and writers being set out in perspective. It has now been partially fulfilled.

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.