Поезия

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.

In the first years after the September 9th uprising, Radoj Ralin belonged to the youngest generation, he had not yet published a book, and some were already talking about his "style". But while the talent of the young poet was undeniable, what was called then, and later, his style was far from undeniable. Radoj Ralin's style was characterized by the deliberate focus on simple, "ordinary" things and the conscious denudation of the verse from the brightness and juiciness of expression.

Many collections of poetry begin with dedications. Often this is the most sincere, the strongest poem in the book - a secret assessment of the journey, dictated by a sense of duty fulfilled or by the pangs of a rebellious conscience. Dedication - these are the poet's tablets, on which his civic and artistic credo is ardently written. These are manifestos of an aesthetic creed, excited promises to readers, to the people, to himself. Alas, poets do not always remain at the height of their aesthetic creed, they are not always able to resist their promises. On their own path, on the path of their cherished "Dedication" only true poets walk, and only then when their talent is elevated by a passionately searching, free creative spirit. Oh, this world must suffer, it must be reborn in you, and every thing and image around you must be recreated by your heart.. ("Dedication")

The literary historian who would undertake a more fundamental examination of the development and significance of proletarian and anti-fascist poetry in the thirties of our century will be confronted with a number of unexplained problems and contradictions in the work of individual poets, as well as - on the other hand - with the great revolutionary upsurge of this poetry, with its contribution to the revolutionary education of the new generation in the midst of the great historical events that were brewing. It is necessary, first of all, to clarify the driving forces of the era that led humanity to the Second World War. The rise of Italian fascism and German Nazism, the strengthening of the reactionary course in Europe,

We are including in abridged form Yevgeny Yevtushenko's statement on Soviet poetry, printed in the magazine "Young Communist", vol. 10, 1962, under the title "We are the heirs of great poetry". We are omitting the entire part of the statement dedicated to Russian classical poetry, in which one finds brilliant, penetrating characteristics of Russian poets. Yevtushenko is undoubtedly the most generously gifted, the brightest representative of the young generation of Soviet poets that took shape in the years after the 20th Congress of the CPSU. His poetry is characterized by a keen sensitivity to the civil and moral problems of socialist society, youthful intransigence to any Falsehood, dead ossification and bureaucratic arrogance. In it, the pure voice of incorruptible truth, deep sincerity and frankness, the civic excitement of a person inspired by the greatness and holiness of the communist ideal sound. His latest poems "Fears" and "Stalin's Heirs" testify to the civic maturity and manliness of the poet, to his keen eye, to his ability to see things in their essence and depth and not to be afraid to show them to us. It is precisely these qualities of his poetry that always gather full audiences and make Yevtushenko a favorite post of today's Soviet youth. Yevtushenko's article is directly related to the conversations about young Soviet poetry and to the All-Union Conference of Young Writers in Moscow in December of this year.

The appearance of the book “On Some Peculiarities of Bulgarian Poetry 1923-1944” by Rozalia Lykova is an interesting phenomenon. This is an attempt to systematize the vast material on our poetic development for two decades, to outline the directions and give portraits of the significant representatives of our poetry at that time. The author Rozalia Lykova has studied the entire literary life of that time. She has encountered many problems, successfully and with arguments she has rejected a number of obsessions and errors in the evaluations of poetry. Her book has not remained at the level of what has been established and said so far. Although it is based on rich historical-literary and factual material, Lykova tries to supplement and enrich our ideas about the poets, to complete their creative image. In a certain sense, she moves forward the attitude of our literary history and criticism towards the work of these poets.

At the beginning of this century, the famous physicist Hautermans discovered that nuclear explosions are the source of the great solar energy. This is a brilliant insight that later gave rise to unprecedented results in the development of modern sciences. They give reason to many people to call the time in which we live - the atomic age. TOR Hautermans returns in his memories to his youth, when he reached the conclusion of his several years of research and reflections. And he tells of that day of joy from the scientific discovery, in which the imagination quickly draws new perspectives and scientific programs for work, as if bathed in the sunshine, giving rise to new hopes and the will to penetrate the depths of the secrets of nature. "But that same evening," he continues, "I went out for a walk with a beautiful girl. When it got dark and the stars, in all their splendor, began to appear one after another, my companion exclaimed: "How beautifully they shine, don't they?" I puffed out my chest and said importantly: "Since yesterday I know why they are glowing." But it immediately became clear to me that my statement did not move her at all. It was possible that she simply did not believe me. But, it seems to me that at that moment she did not feel the slightest interest in any problems.

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."

Literary historians have not yet studied sufficiently the rich material on the traditional interest of the cultural community in the small Slavic nation - the Slovenes (numbering 1,600,000 inhabitants today) in our people, in their fate and their culture. There is evidence of this interest as early as the sixteenth century. Several prominent Slovenes of that time - the travel writer Benedikt Kuripečić, the diplomat Žiga Višnegorski, the first Slovene grammarian Adam Bohorič and one of the giants in Slovene literary and political life, the great Slovene enlightener Primož Trubar (1508-1586) - not only mention the name of the Bulgarians, but also speak with a certain sympathy for them. In later times, the interest intensified, acquired a more problematic character, the Bulgarian language and culture became the subject of study and research in the works of several notable people from small Slovenia: the figure of the Slovenian Renaissance Žiga Zojs, the scholar Jernej Kopitar and the continuer of his work Franz Miklošić, etc. And the most prominent poets of the late 19th century - Anton Askerc, Simon Gregorčić and Josip Stritar, as well as Matija Majar-Zilski, Josipina Turnogradska, Anton Slomšek, L. Klinar wrote works with Bulgarian themes.

Tradition and innovation is a problem that has been discussed the most in the history of literature. This problem is infinitely broad and connected with the very essence of literature. When talking about it, one must take into account the questions of the national and cosmopolitan character of a literature, the traditions in this literature, the mutual influences between individual writers and individual literatures, schools and creative individualities, literary fashions and snobbery, the contemporary sensibility and worldview of the writer, the changes in the consciousness of the contemporary in view of social changes, the nationality and party affiliation, the role of social ideals, etc. In our country, this question is often understood narrowly and is limited mainly within the form of the means of expression.

Recently, a handwritten collection from the 1830s was discovered in Veliko Tarnovo and handed over to the library of the Higher Pedagogical Institute "Brothers Cyril and Methodius" in the city. Its content - over 20 different in nature and size compositions, placed on 406 pages, will be announced separately. Among the other works in the collection, two poems are also recorded, which, due to their New Bulgarian language and their ideological and artistic qualities, deserve special attention. For the most part, the collection is the work of Mihail Popovich, a writer from Sevlievo, who is probably also the author of the poems. The first of them, "Oh, my son," was recorded in 1835. This is confirmed by the author's note, left on one of the following sheets. The second poem, "Unfortunate Bulgaria," was probably written later. It is located at the end of the collection and due to the lack of close inscriptions around it, it is difficult to establish the year of its creation. The name of the writer Mihail Popovich is unknown to our literary history, because so far none of his literary works have become public knowledge. The collection is kept as a valuable family relic by the descendants of the writer and only at the beginning of 1964 did professors from the Higher Pedagogical Institute in Veliko Tarnovo follow its trail and discover it. Before the common binding, it consisted of several books written at different times. The works included in the books that make up the collection and a number of other issues related to the manuscript will be discussed in detail elsewhere. However, here we cannot fail to highlight the fact that we are faced with a well-established writer from the first half of the 19th century, who was systematically engaged in literary work. The entire collection has a distinctly New Bulgarian appearance. Along with works of a church-religious nature, it also includes works with clearly expressed patriotic-enlightenment tendencies.

The most striking feature of any lyric is contemporaneity. In poems, the poet depicts his feelings, thoughts and experiences, and he lives in society and this is reflected in his soul and consciousness. Every lyric in 99 cases out of a hundred is contemporary. We may not find historical figures, facts and designations in the poems of poets, but they contain - reflected from different artistic positions - characteristic features of reality, something of the spirit and atmosphere of the era is present. The fact that outside of society there is no and cannot be art does not mean that contemporaneity automatically arises in the works of the poet. No, it is introduced by him first of all through ideas and images, and then through all the verbal-expressive requisites, formal features, style, structure of the verse, etc. An important role in the manifestation of contemporaneity in the writer's work is played by his worldview, his ideological and aesthetic understandings. Therefore, when we talk about the principle of modernity, we cannot help but touch upon the issues of worldview and method, of ideology and mastery, of language and style, etc. Modernity is an aesthetic category that encompasses works of art in their entirety - both content and form. It is an intrinsic, essential feature that is carried not only by the plot or the concluding verse, but by the pathos of the work, by its tonality. Here, in the pathos, in the general sound of the work, the ideological and artistic elements are inseparably combined and form a single aesthetic whole.

A wide library hall in the House of Culture. The left side is occupied by shelves with books, carelessly stacked in various positions. On the right - wide windows that cover the entire wall and make the hall bright and conducive to peace and reflection. In the corner, a ceiling-high philodendron, whose wide leaves seem to have consciously turned towards the sun to remind them of their distant tropical homeland. At an oblong table, the two opponents sit and leaf through books and magazines. They have left the neighboring hall, where a report on poetry is being read. Yankov. (With a smile). We are completely calm here. No one will disturb our conversation. As you know, writers are afraid of the word "bibliotheca". For them, it is something like a book museum, a tomb of names worthy of respect, but suffocated by literary incense. Gorano v. (With bitterness). How easily a writer can fall behind the times! His era opens its doors wide, and he has grabbed hold of some dogma and clings to it like a blind man to a stick! I recently came across the court case of Giordano Bruno before the court of the Inquisition. As a faithful son of the Catholic Church, Bruno recognizes the dogma of the "Trinity of God", recognizes it "a priori", as a verbal exercise, but, he says, it has nothing to do with the infinity of the universe and the innumerability of the worlds". He calls the holy fathers "a constellation of pedants who, with their ignorance, arrogance and rudeness, would drive Job himself out of patience". Scholasticism is for him a "shell for souls", instead of a "grain of knowledge". Yankov. (Laughs). What is to be done! The great man is always ahead of his time. Goranov. No. There is something else here. Such is pedantic thought. It is lazy, sectarian, and lacks flight. That is why I divide writers into two types: sectarians and artists, i.e. creators. Sectarians cannot be creators because of their sectarianism, they lag behind in their development, they arrive at the airport of history when the jet machine of time has long since taken off.

In the first half of the current year, 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 senior lecturer at the Faculty of Slavic Philology of Sofia University "Kliment Ohridski" - Georgi Mitrev Markov and to the full-time postgraduate student at the Institute of Literature - Atanas Vassilev Slavov.

I believe it will interest Bulgarian readers, who have long appreciated Ibsen, to know that his thoughts were, among other things, directed towards Bulgaria when he wrote "When the Dead Rise". The main female character, Irena von Satow, bears the surname of her second husband, a Ruthenian, owner of gold mines in the Urals. And her first husband was a South American. "A senior diplomat", says Ibsen's final version. But in the first draft it is said that he was a "Ruthenian", and in an intermediate version that he was a diplomat, a senior Bulgarian diplomat. "Why Bulgarian"? My theory is that Ibsen originally intended to allude to the Bulgarian Insarov from Turgenev's novel, "On the Eve." But Irena, who may be a "Turgenev" woman, is more of a femme fatale, like Irena in "Smoke," than a "strong" woman, like Elena in "On the Eve." That is why Ibsen ultimately dropped the term "Bulgarian." (I deal with this situation in more detail in a major study, "Turgenev in the Spiritual Life of Norway," which I have just finished.)

The artist's art is lasting when it reflects from contemporary reality what is interesting and significant not only for the given moment, but also for the future. I wrote about my personal experiences, but these were experiences of a certain time, with their own specific features, and it is no wonder that today in my poems one finds the formed features of a woman, and of a Bulgarian woman, in a long period of her development, which passed in the conditions of two different eras. Poetry for a poet is like a disease with which he was born. It is incurable, it is carried throughout life. This requires not only a lot of love and loyalty, but also mental fortitude, hard work, and sacrifices. Especially when the artist, like me, is a woman who began working in the difficult social and public conditions in our country fifty years ago. At a time when she had to fight life and death for her right to have talent, to express it with her work, to win and pave the way for the gifted women who come after her. This was, for its time, and I can say it now without undue modesty, a true feat and Amazonianism.

and for me, civic poetry is an inseparable part of national poetry, simultaneously party, patriotic, heroic, expressing the excitement of the people in moments of victory or danger, through images of individual heroes or an entire era. Such is the poetry of Botev ("Farewell", "Hadji Dimitar"), of Vazov ("Epic of the Forgotten"), of Mayakovsky ("Vladimir Ilyich Lenin"), where the excitement of the people's soul, the dictates of the time, the struggle for a new life are embedded.

Bulgarian civic poetry has a relatively long and glorious tradition. It began at the beginning of our national revival and continues to this day. The brightest works of our poetry from Hristo Botev to the present day bear a clearly civic character. Of course, every era has its own peculiarities, its own problems. Some were the problems of the time of Botev and Vazov, others are the problems that excite our contemporaries. After the October Revolution, our civic poetry marked a rapid rise. In the work of such colossus of our poetry as Hristo Smirnenski, Geo Milev, the poets of the 1930s with the brightest representative - our national hero Nikola Vaptsarov, the great excitements, thoughts and dreams of our people find vivid expression. Our revolutionary poetry of the twenties and thirties with its best achievements was civic lyrics in the best, I would say, in the noblest sense of this concept. Socialist humanism was the soul of this poetry.

I start with the last question, because I think it is very important. Is there a difference between intimate and civic poetry? As much as we would like not to see a difference, it does exist. I do not agree that every poem that is imbued with intimacy should be called intimate poetry. In "Fight" and "Farewell," Hristo Botev is intimate, but hardly anyone would dare to include these poems in intimate poetry. When we talk about intimate poetry, we mean that poetry that is born in the sphere of personal relationships. Mother and beloved, relatives and acquaintances, friends and comrades - these are the ones who cause intimate excitement in us. For all their significance, they do not affect other people or society. Perhaps I will be clearer if I cite as an example the poem dedicated to A. P. Kern by Pushkin. It is addressed only to her and to no one else. Here the world is closed between two people. Civic poetry is something else. When Pushkin wrote "To the Slanderers of Russia," he was not thinking only of his beloved, or even of his narrow circle of friends and acquaintances, but of all the people of Russia, of the entire nation, of the state, and of his fatherland.

Boileau, in his "L'Art poétique", enumerating poetic genres, mentioned the fable, taking away the right to be counted among poetry. But perhaps he did not intend to deny the fable as poetry, but simply forgot it or considered that it belonged more to prose. Boileau may have been wrong, but are all our and foreign textbooks, dictionaries and reference books wrong, which define the fable only as some kind of didactic form and nothing more? One dictionary says that the fable is "a short moral story or poem" that emphasizes the rules of morality. Others define the fable as "a story that aims to give some moral maxim", or which "gives an allegorical interpretation of certain rules of life or morality", etc.