епопея

Fifty years ago, on the day of Leo Tolstoy's death, I wrote an article that defined my attitude and admiration for the life and work of the great writer. And then, as today, Tolstoy is for me a poet and artist, a great painter of the human soul, an interpreter of events and history, a subtle describer of nature. His novels of that time, the article says, "are epics, just as immortal as the poems of the blind Theosophist". In Tolstoy's work from beginning to end we see one, great loving soul, melting with grief for the sufferings of the poor earthly inhabitant - the wronged man". The article says: "The human race had one comforter - that was Tolstoy. With his death, it was as if some old high mountain had collapsed, which protected us from the cold winds and snowstorms of the era". When we read Tolstoy's novels, stories, and short stories, we have the feeling that the stormy ocean of life rages beneath us, which he tames like some all-powerful magician. Throughout his long life, Tolstoy fought for the truth that Others suppress, against power, public opinion, church fanaticism, and tsarism, so that the truth he reveals turns out to be stronger than anything. Questions about art dominated Tolstoy's thoughts from the early to the last years of his life. He rejected the idea of ​​art as a metaphysical play of beauty, a mysterious divine revelation and inspiration, as a means of pleasure - he considered art a way to bring people, humanity, together, uniting human souls in common feelings and aspirations.

Our time, along with the atom and space, despite automated production and despotic regimes, has imposed an indisputable cult: man. Renaissance humanism is an unparalleled pathetic glorification of the complete real man, universally and comprehensively developed", but it is inferior in depth to the analyses that contemporary art makes of man, who proved incapable of harmony in the bourgeois era. The interest in the intimate world of the individual, the awareness of the role of the subject, of his multifaceted, inexhaustible soulfulness, bring to literature a flow of lyricism that neither drama nor epic can resist. Although the novel - this "form of transcendental helplessness (G. Lukács), with its amorphousness and incompleteness, and drama - this ideally and existentially tense genre (E. Zeiger) with its pathetic or problematic conflict, have proven, according to most theorists, to be the most suitable for recreating the reality of modern man, the fate of the lyrical" does not cease to concern specialists and is intertwined with the practice of the "epic" and the "dramatic". The frequent observations that lyric poetry is the least popular today, that modern man and modern society are alien to the lyrical - are hasty and erroneous. Statistics show that in recent years interest in lyrical creativity has been resurging, and literary studies prove that it itself is undergoing significant evolution. In France, for example, last year there were from twenty to fifty thousand poets! (Nouvelle Critique magazine, No. 158/1964). A large number of youth poetry magazines are being published and are gaining popularity. Pocket editions began to publish Rimbaud, Verlaine, Apollinaire, Eluard, Aragon in mass circulation. In a short time, several poetic manifestos appeared: "Poetry to Live" by Jean Breton and Serge Brando, "The Manifesto" by Pierre Garnier, etc., which, together with "Word and Vertigo" by Alain Bosquet, the discussion of the magazine "Tel Kel" on poetry (No. 17), etc., testify to an effort to limit and explain the guiding principles of a "new" poetry.

In the centuries-old historical destiny of our people, there are eras rich in events and personalities that most fully reveal our national essence, synthesize the most intimate in the efforts of the Bulgarian for national affirmation, social-moral and cultural empowerment. That is why, like a beacon, they have attracted, retained and will direct the gaze of scientists and artists, historians and sociologists, philosophers and psychologists. Such a comprehensive and incredibly intense era undoubtedly represents the era of national liberation struggles, the epilogue of which was the April Uprising of 1876. For nine decades now, this event, magnificent in its conception and organization, in its ideological and emotional saturation, in its social and moral impulses, has been emitting an irresistible radiance. Crowned with the halo of immortality, it pushes us to reflect, confronts us with ever new problems. Prepared for decades with dedication and boundless sacrifice, conceived and guided by bright minds and ardent hearts, it came to show the world the greatness and tragedy of the Bulgarian tribe, to evoke the admiration of honest people, to disturb the public conscience, to throw confusion into the minds of European statesmen and diplomats. And most importantly - to strengthen the belief that "we are not forever submissive to them", that the land - soaked in blood for centuries and strewn with bones - will no longer tolerate a foreign enslaver, it has nurtured the most cherished dream - freedom and justice of the people.