Списание

The past 4th anniversary of the magazine "Questions of Literature", an organ of the Writers' Union and the A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, marked new serious successes in efforts to examine and clarify a number of major problems of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics, theory and history of literature. For our reader, the magazine "Questions of Literature" is like a large and bright window into the world of literary theory, as the most authoritative organ of Soviet literary thought. The political and spiritual upsurge of the Soviet peoples after the 20th and 21st Congresses of the CPSU is reflected in the pathos of the magazine. The first booklet of "Questions of Literature" from 1961 opens with I. Vinogradov's article "Za beguštim dnem" - notes on the novel by V. Tendryakov. The author dwells on the contradictory statements about the novel made by a number of Soviet critics, rejects some of them and, after a detailed analysis, clarifies some of the author's peculiarities with his tendency to portray an "intellectual hero", in which the main thing is "the struggle of ideas, the persistent search for a living, complex and significant thought". And insofar as this material is "new to the writer, he is not able to relate to it freely enough, to clearly separate it from himself. . . " This partly explains the contradictory perception of Andrei Biryukov, the main character in "For the Running Day". In the article "Poets of the Antilles" E. Galperina traces the stages of emergence, development and the current state of poetry in the Republic of Haiti, in the West Indies (the islands of Jamaica, Trinidad, etc.) and in British Guiana. The desire for national and political freedom, interest in the past and folklore, anger and contempt for the colonizers - 110 these features characterize the poetry of the Antilles. The questions of purity, euphony and creative use of modern literary language attract the attention of writers, critics and readers. E. Khanpira focuses on them in his short remark "Let's talk about our speech". In our attitude to language, breadth, a sober understanding of the peculiarities of artistic speech are obviously necessary, since any extreme purism can lead to the impoverishment of speech. In support of these thoughts, E. Khanpira cites convincing examples from the literary work of M. Gorky, S. Sergeev-Tsensky, Vl. Mayakovsky, V. I. Lenin and others.

I will be very pleased to fulfill the request of the editorial board of the magazine "Literary Thought" and tell you about the plans of our magazine. Recently, "Questions of Literature" published a similar statement by the editor-in-chief of our related literary organ in Bulgaria, Dr. P. Zarev, and the exchange of this kind of information is, in my opinion, a practical implementation of our literary contact. We can hope - things are going so well that Soviet and Bulgarian critics and literary scholars will not only be better informed about what has been done by each other, but will also more often participate in the common solution of certain research problems. That is why it is all the more important to know what problems interest each of the two countries. Our work this year will be marked by preparations for the upcoming XXII Congress of the CPSU. Since the congress will review an important historical period and adopt a new program of the party - the program of building communism - this obliges literary figures to understand the path of its development, to think more deeply about the laws of the construction of the great art of communism, about the distinctive features of this art. That is why the section "On a Contemporary Theme", with which each issue of our magazine opens, should be not only sufficient in volume, but also acutely problematic, including articles of a generalizing nature, analyzing the process of literary development in the conditions of victorious socialism. Introductory articles are planned in each issue on the work of critics and literary scholars in contemporary conditions; the titles: "Criticism and the Ideological Struggle", "Criticism and Life", Socialist Aesthetics - at a New Level", "Criticism and the Aesthetic Education of the People". The articles in the section "On a Contemporary Theme" should examine what literature has already achieved and outline further paths for a deeper artistic understanding of life, for higher mastery. Our plan includes works on the following topics: the in-depth reflection of the contemporary theme in literature (V. Survilo), labor and man (by M. Kuznetsov), combative Soviet humanism and abstract, contemplative humanism (V. Ozerov), the problem of building a new person in literary works (V. Baskakov), the moral and ethical theme in art (S. Koritnaya), Literature and village life (F. Svetov), ​​the search for new forms in art (S. Gaysaryan), the civic nature of young poetry (R. Kopilova), etc. In addition, reviews of the state of individual literary genres will be published: prose (T. Trifonova), journalism (V. Litvinov), etc. In a number of articles and publications we intend to develop the important topic of the party nature of literature and to show with concrete facts how fruitful the party's Leadership of Literature is, the new forms and methods that the party is applying with enormous benefit in today's conditions. In general, the magazine sees its task in analyzing those new features and peculiarities of the literary process and the entire course of literary life, which developed especially strongly precisely in the period of our life, marked by the decisions of the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU.

"Radyanske literaturoznavstvo" ("Soviet Literary Studies") is a bimonthly magazine, an organ of the T. G. Shevchenko Institute of Literature at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR and the Union of Ukrainian Writers. "Radyanske literaturoznavstvo" has been published since 1957. It is the peer of "Literary Thought". In nearly five years, the magazine has gained wide popularity, becoming a necessity for literary critics, teachers, students, and everyone interested in issues of literary studies. The magazine has attracted a large number of contributors from all over the country. Along with writers from Kiev, it also publishes lecturers from universities and pedagogical institutes in Lviv, Kharkov, Odessa, Kherson, Dnepropetrovsk, etc., teachers working in 130 different cities and villages of the republic, and contributors from abroad. On the pages of the magazine we find the names of prominent Ukrainian literary scholars, and alongside them the names of young, novice literary critics and historians. We will focus here on one anniversary of the magazine - the fourth, published in 1960. But since limiting ourselves to just one anniversary does not allow us to draw any conclusions about the nature of the magazine and the general directions of its development, we will refer to places and articles published in other anniversaries. At the same time, a more detailed examination of one of the anniversaries allows us to make the review more specific.

On March 29 and April 2 of this year, an extended meeting of the scientific council was held at the Institute of Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, at which the five-year activity of the journal “Literary Thought and the perspective plan for 1962” was discussed. Present were: Prof. Georgi Tsanev, Prof. Pantelei Zarev, Prof. Petar Dinekov, Prof. Emil Georgiev, Prof. Mihail Arnaudov, Prof. Stoyan Karolev, the scientific secretary of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Stoyko Bozhkov, Snezha Avramova from the founding party committee at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, senior scientific associates Georgi Dimov, Krastyo Genov and Efrem Karanfilov, scientific associates Iskra Panova, Minko Nikolov, Ivan Tsvetkov, Boyan Nichev, Krastyo Kuyumdzhievi who became associates of the institute. In his report, the editor-in-chief P. Zarev addressed the participants in the discussion with an appeal for the most active participation and careful assessment of the five-year activity of the magazine, in order to help the editorial board improve the writing of "Literary Thought", to enrich it and make it more interesting for the reader. He noted the particularly favorable time in which the discussion is taking place and the new inspiring tasks that the XXII Congress of the CPSU set for literary science and the overall development of socialist society. What had been started since the XX Congress of the CPSU was now confirmed with new, even more powerful force and persuasiveness: clearing away everything old and stifling that prevents the material and spiritual forces of the new system from unfolding and opening up new horizons for socialism, for the international communist movement, for socialist thought. B. emphasized the need to enrich the cultural and spiritual life of socialist society, to make new achievements in this direction, and pointed out the ways for the further development of socialist democracy and the complete elimination of the methods created during the cult of personality.

After Stambolov came to power, the former head of the liberal government, Petko Karavelov, who had been expelled from the political arena, was forced to engage in cultural and educational activities. He founded a society in Sofia for the dissemination of useful knowledge among the people and the development of their taste, which began publishing in 1888 the magazine "St. Clement Library", named in honor of the oldest enlightener, Kliment Ohridski. During the period of acute book famine in Bulgaria and the flooding of the book market with low-quality literature, the magazine sought to provide the general reader with exemplary works of world literature. Russian writers occupied a predominant place in the magazine. Its pages were dotted with the names of Pushkin, Nekrasov, Turgenev, Lermontov, Tolstoy. Readers get acquainted with little-known or completely unknown authors: with the poems of Batyushkov, Koltsov, Pleshcheev, I. Kozlov, with the stories of Shchedrin, Korolenko, Garshin, Karonin-Petropavlovsky. "The St. Kliment Library managed to become a conduit of Russian socio-literary influence in Bulgaria during the developing Stambolov reaction, when the official newspaper Svoboda carried out unbridled Russophobic propaganda and insisted on selecting special literature by Western authors for the younger generation. The populist writer T. G. Vlaikov, in his memoirs of the 1980s and 1990s, spoke of the magazine as very good and valuable for its time. "1

The program of the "Bulgarian Literary Society", founded in 1869, is multifaceted: to make efforts to develop the Bulgarian language and literature, to spread education among the people; to study the way of life of the Bulgarians and their neighboring peoples; to collect and publish folklore, ethnographic and other materials, to arrange exhibitions, to encourage every more serious manifestation in the field of art, science, etc. Many of the tasks formulated in the society's statute remain a project. But one of them - the publication of a "Periodic Magazine" - it manages to implement. The organ of the Bulgarian Literary Society was conceived as a monthly publication with three sections: literary, for original and translated works of art; scientific, for "articles on various branches of science" and critical, for reviews and critical analyses" on the occasion of newly published literary and scientific works.