повод

In his article "Hristo Botev in Russian Criticism and in Russian Translations" ("Literary Thought", No. 1, 1960) L. Erikhonov, while making a cursory review of my works, 126 also dedicated to Hristo Botev, draws the reader's attention to only one circumstance. Namely - L. Vorobyov, who in his works from 1950-1953 so fiercely fought against the desire to present Botev as a Proudhonist and Bakuninist, in 1957-59, without any apparent reasons, changed his position and now presents the great revolutionary-democrat as a follower of anarchism. From this follows the conclusion about the sad evolution in the researcher's views, i.e. about the unprincipled change of his positions. If Leonid Erikhonov had proceeded from objective data or if he had not shown oversight, this note would not have been needed. But, unfortunately, Erikhonov distorts the facts.

There are translated books that are quickly forgotten. There are also those that remain in our consciousness, create new worlds before us and permanently captivate us. These notes will try to explain a charm, so fresh and so beautiful, so strong and so bright - the charm of Halldor Laxness, the great Icelandic writer, creator of "Independent People". In 1902, a boy was born in Reykjavik. He showed great talents and for many years bumped into the stone walls of many philosophies and faiths, until one day he went out into the wide field - facing the dark North Sea and the Icelandic wilderness. Before that, the boy had traveled many countries, stared in awe at the centuries-old monuments of civilization, denied his impenetrably backward homeland, only to return one day and discover the famous skald Egil Skalagrimsson, to fall in love with sagas and legends, to see the harsh face of the harsh truths of life and experience the divine thirst to transform them into art. The boy had already become a man, and abroad he had come to love his homeland, because he had seen it in its true dimensions and magnitude. And a man can say with a firm, confident voice The people slept in the mountains, inhabited by fairy creatures and elves, and in this virgin land, where every valley reminds of our history, every wilderness is a symbol of our innermost feelings, we live today as if reborn children of nature, gifted with sincerity who speak in a divine language, and above us the morning sky dissolves, predictions and signs burn in the forest... In the most remote places lives an unwavering striving for spiritual development. In the present generation there is no sense of satisfaction, this plague bacillus of stupidity in stagnation. Everything is in ferment. People want a deeper, richer spiritual life. In every young Icelandic heart lives a joyful foreboding

The editorial office received a letter from Dr. Penyo Rusev, which says: I would like to draw your attention to the following: 1. While examining the story "Andreshko", on page 51 (vol. 5, 1960 of the magazine "Literary Thought") M. Dragostinova writes that in my book "The Creativity of Elin Elin up to the Balkan War" a methodology was manifested that seeks to closely link the image with some real prototype; that in my opinion the spontaneous rebel Andreshko is a member of the Agricultural Union" and that by studying and observing the life and activities of this organization, Elin Pelin discovered his hero precisely in its ranks". By forcing and attributing all this to me, M. Dragostinova concludes: "Such an automatic application of historical facts will lead us to a completely empirical approach to literary phenomena". The statements attributed to me by M. Dragostinova are not in my book. On the contrary, in it I write: "The question of whether Andreshko belongs to the farmers or the socialists must be relegated to the circle of fortune-telling" (pp. 114-115). Moreover, I claim that "it is irrelevant" whether we attribute Andreshko to the farmers or the socialists of that time.

It is so young that its name is still being debated. But it strives to keep pace with every other science. On the desks of the people who deal with it are manuals and reference books on differential calculus, higher mathematics, information theory, psychology, and physiology; their file cabinets are full of statistical data from mass tests, their sound libraries are teeming with recordings, in their laboratories the tape recorder is being replaced by the complex equipment of wide-ranging sound spectrograms. In just a few years, these people have done a tremendous job of clearing away the metaphoricalism in the terms and concepts that have dominated our knowledge of verse so far: today it has been experimentally established that the objectively stressed vowel does not carry any stress and that usually the sound that we feel stressed is not pronounced the most stressed; that the sound flow is objectively indivisible and is not separated into syllables or words, that the Sound itself is not uniform, but represents a whole bouquet of sounds, in which no one can yet establish exactly how our ear manages to recognize what it needs. As you can see 150 - complete chaos reigns even in our ideas about the physical nature of the verse. Yanakiev boldly puts an end to everything that has been done so far and proposes to start from A and B: a complete break with the current metaphorical use of terms, the application of exclusively scientific methods, relying solely on logic, precise formulations and dealing only with material and clearly distinguishable for everyone components of the verse composition - these are Yanakiev's principles. As a true man of science, he believes that the first step must be absolutely accurate, though small and far behind what the intuitive glimpses of aesthetes and critics have so far given us on the path to penetrating the depths of poetic Mysteries. His first step is to study - if one may so say - the anatomy of verse; to make a purely structural examination of the structure of the poem, to study the different forms of rhythm and to specify the terms by which these forms will henceforth have to be named.

In the history of our old literature there are still details to be clarified, some previous assumptions to be re-evaluated, there is a great need to search for and publish new materials on individual writers or periods. But when one proceeds to re-evaluate previous conceptions, it is necessary that the argumentation be more comprehensive and more convincing, so as not to introduce unnecessary or premature disturbances into the course of our literary history, which has to solve such important tasks, to clarify more fully the content, the problematics and the significance of old Bulgarian literature.

We have always admired the remarkable generalizing thought of D. S. Likhachev and his broad erudition, which allow him to look in a new, extremely original way at a number of problems in old Russian literature - to a large extent problems of Bulgarian literature as well - and to express convincing new views, directing scientific research to unexplored areas. However, his article "Old Slavonic Literatures as a System" (Literary Thought, vol. 1, 1969) particularly excites us, because, as is known, it specifically addresses problems of Old Bulgarian literature and a number of fundamental questions that relate in general to the character and development of Old Slavonic literatures. A large part of the thoughts expressed by D. S. Likhachev are the result of insightful observations and cannot be ignored by Slavic scholars in their scientific research work on their native literature. Other opinions disturb with their categorical generalization or prompt reflection, as they subject traditional concepts and understandings to reassessment. The article by D. S. Likhachev invites a thorough and comprehensive examination of Old Bulgarian literature on the level of modern science.