белетристика

The history of Bulgarian Literature is long. Originating in the 9th century, it gradually achieved great conquests, had a beneficial impact on other Slavic peoples, while at the same time learning from the world's masters of the artistic word. Today, the work of writers, writers and poets is increasingly attracting the attention of scholars from different countries. This interest is constantly growing not only in old Bulgarian literature, when our literary thought reached an unusual flourishing for that time, but also in more recent periods, in the Revival and post-liberation literature, in the achievements of our contemporary artistic word. And if learned Slavists turn to our literary works in order to reveal their connections with the artistic thought of other peoples, to point out their historical and cognitive significance, to understand the general and specific laws of their development and the literary process in general, then thousands of readers reach for one or another work in order to relate to the past and present life of our people, to experience their long-standing, epic struggles for national Independence, social justice and cultural progress, to feel the pathos and heroism of today's glorious socialist modernity. This continuous interest also finds expression in numerous articles, essays, in a number of studies on specific issues, as well as in more general works. Recently, attempts have also appeared for a more comprehensive exposition of our literary development. Here too, Soviet science, continuing the traditions of Russian Slavic thought, works with its inherent scope, noting undoubted successes - the largest of which in recent times is the voluminous volume "Essays on the History of Bulgarian Literature of the 19th-20th Centuries", prepared by Bulgarian literary scholars at the Institute of Slavic Studies at the USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow. Along with the many individual studies, articles, and books on specific historical and literary issues, we are already aware of some partial attempts by Soviet literary workers to give a popular systematic exposition of more comprehensive periods of our literary development. Without underestimating the importance of these attempts to popularize Bulgarian literature, it should be emphasized that they lag far behind the work prepared at the Institute of Slavic Studies. The team of "Essays on the History of Bulgarian Literature 19th-20th Centuries" has taken a much broader and more in-depth look at its task, has carried out significant research work and has achieved undoubted results. And what is even more important. This work is the first more comprehensive attempt to examine literary development over the last century from Marxist positions, to see literary phenomena in their complexity and contradictions, to summarize and explain them by a single scientific criterion.

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.

The editorial board of the magazine addressed the fiction writers Andrey Gulyashki, Georgi Markov and Milcho Radev with the following questions: What paths did our socialist fiction travel during the 1920s? What main moments do you see in its development (respectively in the development of the novel, the short story or the short story)? What main problems and conflicts of our time are you particularly interested in? Which phenomena of socialist restructuring, which problems of the urban and rural man, of the intelligentsia and the youth occupy you in your work? Which obsessions do you consider harmful in contemporary fiction? What kind of foreign influences is it freed from in order to develop more fruitfully? What unfulfilled duty does our fiction have to the reader? What unsolved tasks do you see before it? What aspects of the tradition do you think can be fruitfully developed by the contemporary fiction writer? In what direction do you see the innovative searches of the contemporary fiction writer? In what direction are your own searches for new ways of expression? What new elements of fiction technique, genre enrichment, and genre blending do you think are part of the concept of contemporary fiction? How are they reflected in your own work as your own preferences?

While before September 9, 1944, only the translations of the most prominent representatives of our classics such as Ivan Vazov, Pencho Slaveykov, Elin Pelin, Yordan Yovkov, and in separate anthologies of about 40 other authors were known abroad, now we can state with satisfaction the fact that over the past 20-year historical period, more than 1,450 volumes of Bulgarian prose, poetry and drama have been published in 57 foreign languages ​​in a total of 24,000,000 copies.

The literature of every nation is connected in a unique way with reality, with its ideals. At different times, depending on the nature of social ideas and the state of art, this connection is realized in a specific way in the individual literary genres, with each individual creator. However, the bold social thought always seeks means to express itself aesthetically, to assert itself through artistic images. Bulgarian literature during the Revival is to a significant extent utilitarian. It was supposed to "react" to all current problems in a more specific form, to seek the most direct path to the reader. Its very first manifestations, regardless of its aesthetic inferiority, were ideologically purposeful - to find the positive hero of modernity and recreate him as an artistic reality, as a type. Of course, this was a long and difficult process, which was influenced by various factors - the definiteness of public ideas, the degree of artistic knowledge of the writer and reader, the literary tradition, the talent and worldview of the individual person, etc. That is why the literary process does not proceed evenly - there are periods of stagnation and flourishing, of "orientation" and innovation. All this cannot be ignored when the question of the positive hero of Renaissance literature in general and fiction in particular is raised. In lyric poetry, for example, he appears and is established significantly earlier than in the short story and the novella. But between the lyrical and the fictional positive hero there is a certain dependence, which is determined by the regularities in the development of the New Bulgarian literature. Common moments in the treatment of the positive hero are also observed in the translated and original works of art. In many of the translations made before the Crimean War, he is religious and humble, associated with the passing patriarchal life. His portrait characterization is schematic, the spiritual world - one-sided. But he also undergoes development, consistent with the worldview and artistic practice of translators and "Bulgarizers".

After her book on Bulgarian poetry in the period 1923-1944, Rozalia Lykova published her study of fiction during the same period. Having correctly understood the specifics of the literary process between the two wars, she set about characterizing it comprehensively and shedding abundant light on the work of its main representatives, with her inherent temperament. Before us is a researcher with a certain profile, who is able to discover the physiognomic in the artist's art, to determine his place in the development of Bulgarian literature. Her work is an interesting study of literary material, which is still insufficiently developed by our literary science. The book impresses with its correct assessments, with its characterization of the authors and the atmosphere of their work, and with its overall picture of literary life. Lykova's work is defined in the publisher's note as "a brief literary history of our fiction between the two wars." It is essential to see what distinguishes the author's literary-historical method. Her study contains essays on various artists and five general chapters, in which the literary historian's approach manifests itself with its characteristic features. The author not only knows the literary facts. She is able to penetrate behind them, into the spirit of the era in which social strata had shifted so that people's lives were emerging from their old trough, the rusty locks of social conventions and retrogradeness were broken, and new truths and ideals were born. The events also echoed in the sphere of literary phenomena. The foundations of a new literary movement were being laid. Existing methods of depiction could not meet the imperatives of the new era, which taught writers to analyze precisely, to see the true essence of things, to assess their real value.

If we look for the reason for the new phenomena in contemporary fiction - the expansion of the ideological and thematic circle of the reflected phenomena, the changes in the problematic, the new illumination of the image of the contemporary, the intensified process of artistic searches - we will inevitably come to changes in the aesthetic positions of the contemporary writer, to his expanded artistic and sociological vision. It is an indisputable truth that the aesthetic attitude is historically concrete and objectively conditioned by the general level of development of social existence and consciousness. The generalized experience of the writer of recent years naturally pushes him towards a new self-consciousness, towards new conclusions about the relationship of man to nature and society, towards new assessments of reality. From the positions of an expanded idea of ​​the beautiful, which included the experience of the last decade, from the positions of an aesthetic ideal liberated from dogmatic thinking, he strives to give a broader idea of ​​​​modern man, of the beautiful in man and his life.

Translated fiction in Bulgaria reflects in its own way the ideological and cultural peculiarities of the time, the taste and preferences of the reader. The content is one thing in the Middle Ages, when the newly adopted Christian religion had to be sanctioned, and its appearance during the era of national revival is another. However, its character changes relatively slowly, just as the worldview of the people also changes slowly... The economic changes in the Turkish Empire at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries lead to changes in the worldview, ideology and culture. Initially, they are imperceptible, manifest themselves unevenly, often developing in their old forms. However, they always become established - sometimes decisively and quickly, in other cases gradually and painfully. The new elements in the consciousness and psychology of the Bulgarian also require new literature - with themes, ideas and imagery, different from the literature of the Middle Ages. Indeed, in Old Bulgarian literature and in the Damascenes there are individual moments with secular content, with a view to the intimate world of man. However, these are only elements that had to be further developed and enriched, to be subordinated to the new concepts of the time. In this regard, a significant role is played not only by writers, but also by translators. Bulgarian writers understand the need for translated literature - be it artistic, pedagogical or social. This applies especially to the first decades of the Revival, when we did not have a significant original contribution in the field of national culture. Therefore, Revival writers perceive translated literature as an integral part of national literature. In this sense, the ideological and artistic principles that face the original creator are no less of a concern for every cultural translator.

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.

In the minds of the Bulgarian reader, the idea of ​​contemporary Swedish literature is almost exhausted by the works of August Strindberg and Selma Lagerlöf, who are known to the relatively older generation in our country. In recent years, the names of several more authors, representatives of different periods and trends in Swedish literature, have also been added to the two classic masters, whose individual works have been shown very limitedly, mostly with short stories and novellas. But Swedish literature as a whole, with its problems and tasks, with its main directions and tendencies, with its new names and works, still stands as undiscovered land not only for the ordinary reader, but also for our literary science.

"I love you, my dear Fatherland! I love your Balkans, forests, screes, rocks and their clear and cold springs! I love you, my dear land! I love you with all my soul and heart, even if you are doomed to severe suffering and misfortune! Everything that has remained good and holy in my orphaned soul so far is all yours! You are that blessed land that blooms, that is full of tenderness, with radiance and greatness. You have taught me to love and to cry over every human misfortune. And this is already a lot for one person!" These words were spoken by Lyuben Karavelov more than a hundred years ago, but it seems that even now we feel their sincerity. The Revival writer does not try to theorize, to search for bright images, original thoughts, unusual stylistic devices. He speaks simply and naturally about what lies on his soul, and his declaration sounds like a confession, and the inner excitement has imbued ordinary words with immediate freshness. This freshness has not faded to this day.

Our historical fiction underwent qualitative and quantitative changes after the people's victory on September 9, 1944. It became a leading genre in our contemporary literature and rose to previously unknown heights. Following the sound realistic traditions, carried out by such masters of the artistic word as Ivan Vazov, Zahari Stoyanov and Stoyan Zagorchinov, contemporary authors of historical works assess and make sense of the past through their contemporary understandings, seek in it similarities with our time, fight for the complete triumph of socialist ideals. The development of the historical theme throughout the entire twenty-five-year period yielded rich and fruitful results, and for this, of course, there are profound objective-historical and aesthetic-literary reasons. The new time imposed the need for a new, Marxist reassessment of the historical past, especially of the recent revolutionary events. Thus were born some of the most significant works of our contemporary literature: the historical tetralogy of Dimitar Talev, "Ordinary People" by Georgi Karaslavov, "Ivan Kondarev" by Emilian Stanev... all large, widely developed reflections of life that summarize the panorama of a given historical era, introduce its regularities, trace the trends of social development through the development of bright individual human destinies and deeply dramatic life situations, and solve contemporary ideological-educational and literary-aesthetic tasks. It is in this area of ​​our fiction that the artistic achievements, achieved thanks to the unlimited possibilities that the method of socialist realism provides to contemporary artists, are most obvious. They possess the surest compass for penetrating the dark depths of the past, for understanding the hidden meaning of historical events: a harmonious and vital philosophical system that organizes and interprets the artistic material, spiritualizing it with deep contemporary thought. At no other time have Bulgarian authors of historical works been so close to the tasks of today, to the spiritual needs of modern man. In no other period of the development of Bulgarian literary prose have so many and so significant works on historical themes been created. It is difficult to outline even the most cursory individual characteristics of the galaxy of historical contemporary authors, to reveal the originality of their writings, of the original interpretation of historical events and characters - so rich is their diversity.