Петко

Of the entire literary heritage of P. Yu. Todorov, his idylls and dramas represent the most valuable, the most significant part. And at the same time - the most contradictory, the most difficult to explain, because all the strengths and weaknesses of the writer's worldview and method are intertwined in it. You read "Nesretnik" or "Zmeyno" and you struggle to determine where realism ends and romanticism begins, you struggle to distinguish the democratic from the individualistic trends, to separate ours from the foreign, the commercial, the imported. Vain efforts - there is no boundary between the one and the other; qualities and shortcomings constantly flow together. Because these are qualities and shortcomings for us, from our, from a modern point of view. For the writer, both democracy and modernism are creeds, his aesthetic understandings represent a strange mixture of contradictory elements, some of which we will accept, and others we will reject completely. We would not be able to deal with this complex and delicate matter if we remained only in the views of the author's plan, if we were content only with outlining his intentions. The work of a contradictory artist is always richer than his own aesthetic views and declarations. This is also the case with P. Yu. Todorov. Because it reflects reality, the vital content breaks the framework of the literary school and often presents us with nuances and suggestions that even the author did not intend to give. In such cases, we must look at the works more broadly, evaluate them according to the ideas and images embedded in them, according to their impact on the contemporary reader, according to the objective results that are often obtained regardless of the subjective intentions of the author. This is especially necessary for the idylls of P. Yu. Todorov. Because in many cases we will value the objective result more highly than the writer's intention, we will prefer the relative independence of the artistic image to the actual intention of the creator. For us, what he created is more important than what he wanted to create.

The creative development of Petko Slaveykov provides the literary historian with exceptionally rich material on the socio-political and cultural conditions under which our fiction from the period of the Revival was created and developed so rapidly. In the 1940s, when the future author of "Don't Sing to Me" and "Cruelty Has Broken Me" was developing a strong ambition to be partly useful to his people, our Revival poetry did not yet have its own national artistic traditions. Petko Slaveykov read with enthusiasm Paisius's History, the attempts of our first poets and every new Bulgarian book, he was inspired by the patriotism of their authors, which also ignited in him a passion for literary activity. His constant connection with the people, the diligent collection of folk songs, proverbs and fairy tales, his own life as a worker and teacher gave rise to many ideas in the poet, opening up to him a variety of themes and plots for artistic creativity. Slaveykov looked for examples in his native literature from which to learn; he consulted with his acquaintances and friends; he read with interest the Greek, Serbian and Russian books available to him. The knowledge he gained from his native patriotic literature happily are supplemented by that useful literary reading that other national literatures offer him, especially the Russian one. "Dear Fellow Citizens!" - he addressed his compatriots in an announcement from 1847. - The benefit of reading books is obvious, and I know the scarcity of books in the Bulgarian language. This has grieved me daily, it has prompted me to take up my pen to bring the Writer Kurganov, the eleventh printed book in Russia, without the grammar, and I have divided it, as it is divided, into two parts, because it is a very large book. And I am now publishing an announcement only for the first part, which will have, in addition to various moralizing, useful and conversational stories... some rules for poetry (k. m.) and will also be embellished with some translated poems of mine. Petko Slaveykov did not manage to publish his translation of Kurganov's "Pistol". But it is also clear from the cited Announcement that the same Slaveikov, who worked hard to master poetic mastery, in 1847 had at hand some rules for poetry. From that moment on, Russian fiction occupied an increasingly important place in his creative development.

In his study of K. Fotinov, Iv. Shishmanov called the images of our Revivalists, whom he so lovingly knew how to extract from the darkness of the past, shadows. And this was true. What else, if not a shadow for us, is the face of Paisius, for example? What do we know about his life path? Hardly anything more than what he himself wrote about himself in his "History". This can largely be attributed to the majority of representatives of our Revival. And they were exceptional personalities. In order to properly understand the era in which they lived, as well as their works, we must certainly feel not only the writer, but also the person with his distinctive qualities, experiences and temperament. It is necessary for the researcher to see the creative individuality of the writer in its unique originality, in its connection with the laws of literary development. That is why, recently, the consistent study of the creative and life biography of the writer has acquired such great importance. And it is here, in this aspect of research work, that a number of generally accepted recipes often fail, "precisely" establishing the writer's method, his worldview, the ratio of proportions of one or another side of the literary process. Petko R. Slaveykov is one of our Revival figures, about whom we know much more than about the others. His lively and colorful autobiography, his large archive and rich correspondence have revealed to us a number of sides of his life path. But despite this, there is still something to add to what is already known. For example, we know relatively little about the years spent by Slaveykov in Constantinople, as editor of the newspaper "Macedonia" - the most mature and inspired years of his life, when his work became Bulgarian history. During this remarkable time, the image of a woman is intertwined in the poet's life path, who becomes unique and unrepeatable for him. The memory of her has long been buried under the heavy layer of years, and because of this, we have made no small effort to understand the bond that so firmly and forever connected them, hidden under the weeds of slander and misunderstanding.

As is known, already in the 18th and 19th centuries, Serbian and Bulgarian writers dedicated their works to the revival of the two peoples. Andrija Kačić-Miošić, for example, did not divide the southern Slavs. Dositej Obradović mentioned in his works not only Serbia, but also "poor Bulgaria". Vuk Karadžić was the first to publish Bulgarian folk songs, Konstantin Ognjanović worked for the spiritual awakening of the Bulgarian people, to whom he dedicated his works. Major writers such as Hristofor Žefarović and Jovan Rajić were of Bulgarian origin. They wrote their works in the Russian-Slavic language and contributed equally to the Bulgarian and Serbian spiritual and political development. During the Renaissance, an unprecedented transfer of ideas and themes from one literature to another occurred. However, when we must note the undoubted impact of South Slavic literatures in our country, especially since the beginning of the 19th century, we must also bear in mind the fact that these South Slavic literatures themselves sought models in Italian, Russian, Greek and Austrian literature, that they were in natural, natural relationships with these literatures. First of all, Dalmatian, and for a long time after that, the other Slavic literatures suffered the general influence of the European Renaissance, which manifested itself somewhere earlier, somewhere later in separate borrowings and imitations of one or another model. That is why, when we study the Serbian and Croatian literary and cultural influence in our country at the beginning of the 19th century, we cannot help but notice that this is actually a natural creative process that encompasses both countries, as well as the other Balkan peoples, that historically conditioned interconnections are taking place here, that from what we have taken in a given period, we have created qualitatively new works with which we have moved literary development forward.

There is a portrait of him, painted by the artist Nikola Mihaylov, which has always attracted my attention and brought me face to face with the "dilemma" of Petko Todorov. I would not say that it is the most accurate pictorial interpretation of his image. But it achieves a kind of balance between our current assessment and the enthusiastic ideas about him of contemporaries and admirers from the past. On the canvas, Petko Todorov, the "meek" Petko Todorov, sits with his hand resting on the back of his chair, focused, lost in his thoughts. This ascetic profile of a hermit perhaps hides the secrets of a late-born fanatic, whom new circumstances and other character traits have prevented from recognizing the extremes of spirit and thought. Perhaps. But everything else - from the kind, half-hidden gaze, to the long, relaxed, artistic fingers, speak of the soft character of a born intellectual. This is a man who, for all his ambitions, may never have been completely confident in himself, but who has always taken his work seriously - with that seriousness that is more like inner conscientiousness and dedication. Entangled in a web of greenish half-shadows that crawl over his arms and beard, growing into the surrounding landscape, in the painting, he seems to be a spiritualized and civilized Dragon from the world of his own idylls. The warm range of butter-green tones flows over his face, overflowing into the environment as a continuation of his thoughts, as a plastic symbol of his thirst for an eternal connection with his native nature. This is how he remained in the minds of his best connoisseurs from the past - with his eternal striving to penetrate the soul of his people and merge with their nature. This is how we can perceive him today, with all the sobriety and all the reservations that the obvious weaknesses of his work impose on us. The artist himself was apparently not unaware of their awareness, because he found a way to hint at them and balance his image with a few sure strokes: in the upper right corner of the painting, a landscape detail somehow imperceptibly creeps in, like a projection of the writer's thoughts, which irritates, "disturbs" the impression, because it carries something of the bad German taste from the time of the Secession. And this is Petko Todorov again, seen from a different side.

It was deep autumn, in 1842. With souls filled with love for their homeland and a burning desire to continue their education, Petko Slaveykov and Hristo Draganov set off for Svishtov. They traveled on foot through the villages, with bags on their shoulders, in which, along with bread, lay the manuscript of Paisiy's History. "This journey through the villages was extremely curious for me. At that time, I already knew Bulgarian history, but my geographical knowledge was still very limited," the poet wrote. When they saw the Danube, they realized that they had reached the city. The great river flowed majestically and silently. To the north of it spread out the endless plain, and to the south rose white hills with gray houses perched on them, squeezed into narrow streets. The city was a center for the export of grain from the Danube Plain and an important economic center with distant trade connections - through Serbia, Austria, France, Dalmatia, to the entire commercial Western and Eastern world. Work began early and ended late in the evening. The Svishtov merchants, who had traveled "from Europe", dressed in a "European" way - shirts with stiff white collars, ties. Their wives wore malakofs sewn in Bucharest, the daughters - outfits from Galati, Pest and Vienna.

And in the many studies on the life and work of Petko Slaveykov, his personality as a public figure and creator with great charm continues to be at the center of scientific research on the national peculiarities and the rapid development of Bulgarian Renaissance literature. And this is mainly due to the exceptional importance that Slaveykov has as the creator of New Bulgarian poetry, as an editor of meaningful periodicals and as a courageous tribune of Bulgarian national consciousness, who retained self-control in the face of more than one mishap in his diverse patriotic endeavors. But not only for this important reason. It so happened that in the literature about this our poet and public figure, quite a few aesthetic, bourgeois-idealistic, subjective and essentially unscientific assessments were preserved for the longest time, either for his political and social views, or for his individual works or - which is especially important - for the main directions of his poetic work.

In the era of the Revival, so widely and inspiredly revealed by our writers, literary historians and theorists, there is an area almost unexplored, an area in which the aspirations, feelings and tastes of the people are directly reflected. We are talking about the numerous manuscript collections and songbooks distributed in our country at the end of the 18th and 19th centuries, a part of which, although small, has been preserved to this day. They preserve those works of the Bulgarian creative spirit with which the middle and lowest class in our country - the people themselves - lived.