Константинов

In two meetings - on September 29 and October 13 of this year, the Scientific Council at the Institute of Literature in an expanded composition discussed the work of Alexander Nichev on Aleko Konstantinov. The work has a monographic character and includes the following sections: Introduction: Biography; Literary Attempts; To Chicago and Back; Bai Ganyu; Feuilletons; Poetics; Aleko Konstantinov and Bulgarian Social Democracy. The reviewers Emil Stefanov and Rozalia Lykova evaluate Nichev's work as the first comprehensive scientific monograph on the life and work of our great writer. They see its positive qualities both in the collection of valuable and in many respects new factual material, and in the analysis of this material. "Everywhere in his book, Nichev has carefully, in detail, and with the necessary arguments explained Aleko's ideological and political development," emphasizes Emil Stefanov. "For the first time in our Literary History, Aleko's ideological positions have been widely and thoroughly examined and explained."

The bold feuilletons of the Lucky Man appeared in the 1990s, when the bourgeoisie, eager for power and wealth, had already thrown the people into a new slavery. At that time, the Populist party, headed by Konstantin Stoilov, was ruling. Stambolov was overthrown from power, but his deputy oppressed the people with the same barbaric means. The democratic Tarnovo constitution, which was at that time, was cruelly trampled. This is how Dimitar Blagoev characterizes this bloody era: "In terms of domestic politics, the Populist regime was just as gangster and violent as Stambolov's. The Stambolov regime had many political murders through torture in prisons, through mass shootings during elections, through military executions, etc. But the Populist regime added to these horrors political murders from ambushes by bribed robbers and gangs. "1

Aleko Konstantinov belongs to the generation of writers from the 1990s, which has immortalized itself for generations. And that - both with the criticism of social reality and with the fresh poetics of the artistic form. The works of "the most cheerful Bulgarian writer were born in the midst of sharp social struggles. In them, an image of a distant reality stands out. But they are not history. Because their author, having penetrated the depths of humanity, has captured characters and spiritual movements that carry typical human traits, immortal, secrets" of Mammon's passion. Because in them one can see the captivating artistry of a writer with a delicately gentle, exquisitely noble spirit.

The great creators of artistic values ​​are the few people marked by fate who outlive their time, cross the borders of many countries, attract attention, evoke the admiration and gratitude of more than one generation. The great charming power and eternal significance of these creative personalities are as significant and comprehensive as the more organic the connection between artistic achievements and social behavior, between ideological and aesthetic insights and civic and ethical aspirations. Such people, like a beacon, attract the eyes of all who live with the impulses of a more intense life, are possessed by higher ideals of social progress and moral elevation. Readers of different generations and eras turn to the work of such creators in order to relate to what they have achieved as artists and citizens. Getting to know their mental and emotional world, their trials, insights and conquests serves as a support and prerequisite for further development of national and universal literature and culture. Such a charming personality is undoubtedly the great citizen-humanist and writer-realist Aleko Konstantinov.

A writer with a high aesthetic culture, with serious care for style and language, Konstantinov stands apart from writers with openly expressed militant anti-fascist sentiments. Deeply embedded in his convictions is the thought that moral laws surpass political passions. But behind the calm contemplation of his books one feels a man with a civic, social conscience, tormented by questions about man and human existence, in love with life and suffering for its imperfection. A subtle poetic feeling makes him responsive to any suffering, to human life and to nature.

Recently, Alexander Nichev published a monographic study dedicated to the work of Aleko Konstantinov. Much has been written about the life and literary work of the citizen and writer Aleko. "Bai Ganyo" and "To Chicago and Back" are classic works of Bulgarian prose, a lasting artistic document against a denied world. A document that does not preach despair, doom and fear and, despite the denial of an ugly and deformed reality, has a purifying and ennobling effect. "The Lucky One" is a figure that attracted not only the writer's contemporaries, but still has a charm on us today.

Bulgarian history after the Liberation is dramatic and oppressive. The selfless patriotism of the Bulgarian National Revival was replaced by ruthless partisan struggles, which brought to the surface unscrupulous careerists and gangsters, dark characters like Vazov's Gorolomov and Alekov's Bai Ganyo. With bitter irony, Vazov called this period an era that nursed great people. In vain did his Kardashev seek romantic plots. Reality offered him only vulgarity, vulgar accounting, and crime. No matter how biased Irecek's assessments may be in places, in his diary he still faithfully captured the degeneration of political morals in the young principality, the rampant passions for power and material well-being. "People are ready with inner rage to throw stones at anyone, recklessly;..." "A person who does not lie and does not slander others, here is something extraordinary, a miracle of the world..."2 The young Czech scientist was shocked by the selfishness of the rulers with whom he was in constant contact. On the pages of his diary we repeatedly encounter such statements: "A person will become dull. .No longing, no idealism, no enthusiasm. I have fallen away. A desperate struggle against stupidity... A person becomes a misanthrope". Of course, in this miserable world there also live bright personalities, with Renaissance idealism, such as Petko Slaveykov, Vasil Drumev, Petko Karavelov, Vazov, Pencho Slaveykov, Aleko Konstantinov, Svetoslav Milarov, Olimpiy Panov, Trayko Kitanchev and others. They actively participate in political life, but its appearance is given by self-forgetful tyrants like Stambolov and Stoilov. The power is in their hands and with the most brutal means they neutralize their ideological enemies. Because of his love for Russia, boldly expressed in a church sermon, Metropolitan Kliment (Vasil Drumev), is threatened with a death sentence, which is commuted to 15 years in prison and eternal exile. Petko Karavelov spent years in the Black Mosque, Svetoslav Milarov, Atanas Uzunov, Olimpiy Panov, Alexander Karagyulev and others. They perish at the will of Stambolov, and later a villainous bullet from an ambush pierces Aleko's heart. Stambolov had found a brazen justification for the lawlessness and murders - that he was committing them out of inner conviction, and his successor Konstantin Stoilov called the violence of his district governors and gendarmes "exerting a moral influence on citizens". In the young principality there are no obstacles to the development of capitalism. But due to its lateness, due to the lack of democratic traditions, this development takes on the most ugly forms.

The problem of the connections of Bulgarian writers with the world masters of the artistic word and more specifically with the Russian ones is of important methodological and practical importance. Today everyone agrees that in the development of Bulgarian literature - classical and contemporary - bright examples of typological and contact phenomena are found. That is why it is especially necessary to indicate the nature of this influence and it is with each individual author, since this will shed additional light on the literary process as a whole. In this sense, the legacy of Aleko Konstantinov hides very interesting, still incompletely studied literary material. His work shows its own specific features, and along with them also carries the common: close acquaintance with the works of Pushkin and Lermontov, Gogol and Turgenev, Nekrasov and Shchedrin, as well as some basic principles in the aesthetics of Belinsky, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov - help our author to grow as a significant national writer. But they only guide him! Because, as I said, Aleko Konstantinov is an original Bulgarian satirist and feuilletonist. First and foremost, he relies on our national literature, no matter how scarce it was in terms of works and traditions at that time. All his works grow on our soil, they are an exciting echo of the social quests of our people in the 80s and 90s of the last century.

Recently, the publishing house "Narodna Kultura" released a monograph on Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. The publication is a jubilee one - in August of this year, the entire cultural humanity solemnly celebrated the one hundred and fortieth anniversary of the writer's birth. Numerous articles and notes - original and translated - have been published in Bulgarian so far, starting from 1898, when the seventieth anniversary of Tolstoy's birth and fifty years of his literary activity were celebrated. I will recall the most significant of them - Dimitar Blagoev's review of the treatise "What is Art?" on the occasion of its Bulgarian edition in 1900, Petko Todorov's preface to Lev Tolstoy's brochure "The Times are Near", individual works by Vasil Kolarov, Vela Blagoeva, Georgi Bakalov, confessions and assessments by Ivan Vazov, Aleko Konstantinov, Stoyan Mihaylovski and others. All this and additional material collected by the author formed the basis of the monograph "L. N. Tolstoy and His Influence in Bulgaria". There is no doubt - this is the first comprehensive study by a Bulgarian literary critic on the life, literary work and philosophical-ethical ideas of the great sage from Yasnaya Polyana. Among the vast - both in size and in thought - critical literature on Tolstoy, Georgi Konstantinov's book will rank not least. Above all, it captivates and excites with the researcher's personal attitude to the many and often mutually exclusive problems and ideas that Tolstoy himself advocated during more than half a century of his most active and fruitful creative activity, and under whose pen so many amazing works of art were born.

When reviewers want to pay a big compliment to a critical or literary book, they say that it is "a pleasure to read" or reads like a novel. I do not believe that this is one of the main qualities that the author of such a book claims. Here the reviewers simply make a logical error - they exchange the places of our interest in a given issue with the slight pleasure that we can get from some fascinating reading, they translate a new concept into an older language. Therefore, I will not say that Georgi Konstantinov's book "An Extraordinary Friendship" (I have already heard such an opinion) is read easily, as a work of fiction. It simply reads as an interesting documentary, and in no case would I replace its content precisely as a documentary with the most skillful fiction construction. Incidentally, Georgi Konstantinov has also shown a certain fiction dexterity - he has arranged the documents at his disposal in such a way that the sequence of events and facts, their logical and plot connections, can be traced. But that is not what is important. It is important for us that we can feel the unique breath of authenticity, of personal testimony in history. The taste for the documentary, accurate, factual reproduction of historical events has been increasingly imposed in our country lately. It seems that we already prefer a letter, a memory of a living participant in events to any romantic imagination. Fiction seems to be starting to lose in a competition with history; History is increasingly imposing itself and dominating our consciousness, it seems to us more extraordinary and more fantastic than the greatest flights of fantasy, it seems to have the ambition to displace art, philosophy, and "mythology". Haven't you noticed that recently the memoir is the most sought-after, most preferred reading material? Of course, in the world historical process, and especially in our development since 9. IX., we will find many explanations for this "demythologizing", for this striving to unveil, deheroize, "historicize" history, for this desire to see how it was made, but these reflections would take us too far.