пътя

So many books have piled up your table - a whole library is before you! These books contain the fifteen-year creative work of poets from several generations. Never in the past has our poetry been so torrential, never in the past has it known that so many poetic works by so many authors have been published in a period of 15 years. And how nice it is, leafing through the pages of these books in the silence of the night, to see how in many of them the gold of a new poetry shines, born, grown and developing inseparably from the new, socialist life of our country, how nice it is to feel the living pulse of this poetry in the works that successfully withstand the severe test of time!

One of the most characteristic phenomena in our literary development after September 9, 1944, is the continuous influx of young, fresh creative forces into the ranks of our poetry. It can certainly be said that never before has our poetry been enriched so intensively and on such a broad front with young, reliable creative cadres. The removal of artificial barriers between literature and the people is one of the great conquests of our cultural revolution. As is known, this is a two-sided dialectical process, which is characterized by the wide penetration of literature among the people, among the many-million readership and by the raising of the spiritual level, the aesthetic education of this reader, by the cultivation and manifestation of his creative abilities. "Art belongs to the people," says Lenin, "it must penetrate with its deepest roots into the bosom of the broad masses of the people. It must be understandable to these masses and beloved by them. It must unite the feeling, thought and will of these masses, elevate them. It must awaken artists in them and develop them."

The successes we have achieved over the past quarter century in building the economic power of Bulgaria do not make us happy in themselves. The Bulgarian Communist Party has always placed and places man above all else; caring for man has always been and is its primary concern. There are many dimensions that characterize the increase in the standard of living of our people. Let us take, for example, the real income per capita. In the period 1953-1968 alone, it increased from 341 leva to 933 leva (at 1952 prices), or nearly three times. The line of gradual wage increases and reductions in the prices of consumer goods is consistently being pursued in our country, an expression of which is the decree of the Central Committee of the Party and the Council of Ministers for further raising the standard of living of the people, published a few days ago.

The most significant part of our fiction is dedicated to the Bulgarian village, to its sad past and its radically transformed socialist present. It is difficult to list all the names of those of our writers whose work is closely connected with the life of the village: Anton Strashimirov, Todor Vlaykov, Mikhalaki Georgiev, Elin Pelin, Yordan Yovkov, Georgi Raichev, Georgi Karaslavov, Iliya Volen... Among them, the most prolific is undoubtedly Stoyan Daskalov. By his sixtieth birthday, he has already authored about forty books, ten of which are major novels about the life of the new, socialist Bulgarian village. He has tried his hand at all genres of fiction, achieving the most significant successes in the field of the short story, the novel and children's literature.