съвременност

When one thinks of Tolstoy and the indelible mark that his works leave on the soul of the reader, one feels struck both by the magnificent scope of his work and by the vital truth reflected in it. We can read the works of revolutionary democrats, patiently study historical treatises, delve into the subtexts of yellowed archives of the nineteenth century, and finally, with the experience of modernity and the knowledge of historical materialism, understand the meaning of all the events of that time, but a stirring and convincing idea of ​​the dramatic human conflicts in the vast Russian land and its people of the pre-revolutionary era can only be obtained after reading the many thousands of pages of Tolstoy. Objective laws inexorably govern the course of social development. But we can hardly deny that the moral qualities in a people, created by historical conditions and its traditions in the struggle for freedom, accelerate or slow down the action of these laws. Tolstoy, having reached that supreme synthesis between the intellectual and emotional attitude to reality, from which the art of realism is born, manages to reflect with unsurpassed artistic mastery the vital drive and the deep contradictions in the Russian people in the nineteenth century. And it is precisely with this drive and with the already overcome social contradictions, with its experience of the struggle against countless invaders and with its revolutionary traditions that the Russian people today affirm life and lead all of humanity forward, respecting the rights and qualities of all other peoples. Hence arises not only the long-standing universal significance of Tolstoy as an artist and moral personality, but also his very specific contemporary significance in today's urge of the peoples towards liberation from spiritual and economic slavery, towards peace and socialism.

Over the past five or six years, literary scholarship in the Soviet Union has been undergoing a real renewal. One only has to think how many mistakes and misconceptions, how many incorrect views have been overcome in this short time! And the timid tone, and the empirical character of Literary Criticism, and the recurrence of a narrow Rappian conception of literature, and the intolerable backwardness of aesthetic and literary-theoretical thought, and often blatantly lowered aesthetic criteria. It seems as if the times were long gone when collections of current literary-critical articles and monographic essays on Soviet writers could be counted on the fingers; when there were no comprehensive studies of new Russian and Soviet literature, and no generalizing works on realism and socialist realism were written. The books that were published did not cover all literary phenomena, the more complex ones were overlooked, and entire periods of the history of Russian literature - for example, the late 19th and early 20th centuries - remained insufficiently illuminated. A number of circumstances prevented a more objective view and a more understanding assessment of even such a phenomenon as the proletarian poetry of the first years of Soviet power, not to mention the poetry of Blok and Yesenin or the satirical work of Ilfi Petrov. Writers who had played a significant role in literary life at the time were excluded from literary development. And as a natural result of all this, along with clever and serious books, illustrative, primitive-sociological writings began to appear one after another, flooded with an abundant number of quotations, behind which hid the lack of independent creative thought, of the ability to subtly and inspiredly penetrate artistic phenomena (which is associated with a natural gift, with a vocation), of truly profound knowledge.

Like any science, literary history "is not only a system of concepts (categories, laws). Science is always at the same time a method of knowledge. It is always not only already achieved knowledge, but also knowledge-process, knowledge-aspiration, knowledge arising from practice... 1 As for the subject of literary history, its system, the question is relatively clear - this is (generally speaking) our literary heritage. And insofar as disputes are still being waged here whether a given third-rate writer or a completely insignificant work should be included in it - then in essence these are again disputes about the method, not about the system, since in its conclusions and laws it only consolidates the results of the method. While the system is the conservative, restraining side in the process of knowledge, the method is the revolutionary, creative one. It moves science forward, it opens up new paths for it. That is precisely why now, when our literary studies - as well as all sociological sciences - are faced with new, grandiose tasks in connection with the upbringing of the new man, the man of communism, the question of method becomes so important. In fact, this is a question of the future of literary history, of its transformation into an effective, active social force. Method is an eternal movement - despite its relative definiteness, it is constantly changing and developing in order to meet the new needs, the new tasks that modernity sets before literary history. That is why the question of sociology and dogmatism in literary criticism did not arise by chance. The acute form in which it was posed is a reflection of the sharp need for a radical transformation of our literary science in order to be able to respond to its new tasks.

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.

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.

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.

There are no other two problems so closely related and almost equivalent in aesthetics as modernity and innovation. Both begin with the ability to observe reality, to select and evaluate, and end with the technical techniques of measured speech. Undoubtedly, modernity is a broader category that includes innovation. It is simply implied and very often there is no need to talk about it, it is not necessary to emphasize it specifically. Emphasizing it through deliberate efforts often leads to artificiality and posturing in poetry. It is an elementary truth that true innovation has nothing to do with pretentiousness. Contrary to superficial impressions, it is not the external arrangement of the verse that determines the innovative essence of poetry. Discovery does not depend on meter and rhymes - it can be done with or without them. Although in practice avant-garde pursuits are more closely related to free verse, exceptions are not at all rare.

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.

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.