Димитър

Among the major problems facing our literary science today, a particularly important place is occupied by the problem of the emergence, formation and development of socialist realism in Bulgarian literature. And this is quite natural. Because the further development of our entire contemporary literary art is closely linked to the solution of this problem. That is why for a number of years now literary theorists, critics and historians have been devoting special attention to this problem. And it is no coincidence that their efforts are increasingly directed towards clarifying the essence of the artistic methods used by proletarian-revolutionary poets and writers - precisely where the very core of the problem lies. The works of Georgi Bakalov, Todor Pavlov, Pantelei Zarev, the Soviet literary scholars Dmitry Markov, Nikolai Kravtsov and others contribute to mastering this difficult area to one degree or another. First of all, in our and Soviet literary science and criticism, there is no dispute that in our country the method of socialist realism was formed as a result of a certain socio-historical, ideological-political and literary development - inextricably linked with the growth of class consciousness and struggles of the Bulgarian proletariat under the leadership of the Communist Party, under the influence of the Great October Socialist Revolution and of young Soviet literature (in the beginning - mainly from the work of Maxim Gorky). As pioneers of proletarian-revolutionary literature in Bulgaria, Dimitar Blagoev emerged - in the field of theory and criticism, Dimitar Polyanov and Georgi Kirkov - in the field of lyric poetry and fiction. In a historical-literary sense, Polyanov and Kirkov stand in the closest kinship-genetic relationship with the social-revolutionary traditions established in Bulgarian literature by Lyuben Karavelov and Hristo Botev, as well as with the critical realism of Aleko Konstantinov and Stoyan Mikhailovsky. With their creative activity, Dimitar Blagoev, Dimitar Polyanov and Georgi Kirkov gave shape to the first - "propaganda" - stage of the development of our proletarian-revolutionary literature (until the end of World War I). The poetry of Hristo Smirnenski marked its second stage - with the manifestation of socialist realism as a new method in our national literature.

Dimitar Blagoev belongs to those creative personalities whose work we remember not only on anniversaries and celebrations. With all the enormous achievements of modern thought in various fields of human knowledge, the traditions and testaments of these notable personalities retain all their vitality and timeless significance. Generations from different eras turn to their work to draw knowledge and wisdom, lessons and inspiration in their efforts to realize high social and cultural ideals. Therefore, such historical figures are not only our teachers, who have given us a true compass for orientation in the complex problems of life, but also our living contemporaries, suggesting to us the direction to the great truths.

Every personal contact I have had with Dimitar Dimov has evoked in me the feeling that his whole life is a constant dichotomy between logic and imagination, between science and his vocation as an artist. At the same time a professor of veterinary anatomy and a writer, he seems to have no other dedication than the measured, methodical work of a scientist. Sometimes I have been amazed at the logic of his reasoning, devoid of the spontaneity characteristic of some other writers I know, and at the same time at his subtle observations on morals and human weaknesses, his insight into the dialectics of the human soul, his attachment to bright, colorful characters, with a personal modesty and strictness towards himself.

According to the unanimous opinion of critics, Dimitar Dimov failed to build an antipodal world to "Nicotiana", to depict the heroic and bright beginning of our time, which could be contrasted with the dark forces of the bourgeois world. The images of workers and communists in his remarkable novel "Tobacco", with few exceptions, are far inferior in brightness and vitality to the other images in the novel. In itself, this mishap is an unhappy phenomenon in our literature, but it is too eloquent and instructive, contains too many interesting problems for us to easily pass it by, to simply register it, without making an effort to examine and explain it, to discover the mysteries and truths embedded in it, to reveal its true significance for our literature. Because often the failures of talent turn out to be more fruitful and more valuable for history than any mediocre success. They bring us closer to more truths, they reveal to us a deeper and more interesting picture of the world, there is more life, more drama and power in them than in all mediocre "achievements", in all talentless straightforwardness and innocence. Or, to paraphrase a sentence of Guizot, we can say that talent enjoys this wonderful and deserved privilege of having its errors fertilize truths.

Still a beardless high school student from the countryside, when both distance and circumstances separated me from those extraordinary people who write books and who at that time were for me a kind of unattainable human beings, I had the chance privilege of meeting Dimitar Polyanov and talking to him for nearly half an hour. So he is the first writer with whom I established any direct contact. Moreover, if I did not consider that two years earlier in Rakitovo my acquaintances had pointed out to me from afar the then young K. Konstantinov, I could say that he was the first writer I had ever seen. However, I would like to go back a little and begin my story with another meeting - the meeting not with the man, but with the author and editor, which took place much earlier and without which the second one would hardly ever have taken place.

For years, for obvious reasons, our literary scholarship has been shedding light on the creative and life path of the writer Dimitar Talev in a very uneven way. Divided by the gamut of historical events in 1944-1945, this path offers a heterogeneous ideologically and emotionally, artistically unequal and unequally grateful material for studying the author. The mature work of D. Talev, which attracts with a true abundance of ideological and aesthetic problems, social and life conflicts, of human images and motives, is quite justified in the center of the most significant studies to date on the literary work of the writer. The attention of D. Talev researchers continues to be directed today to the great ideological and artistic wealth of the four-volume historical epic, a work that has secured an inviolable place in the heart of every Bulgarian, and has won for the author the name of an indisputable master of everyday-historical narration. Before tracing the writer's overall creative development, before outlining his appearance in detail, it was imperative to understand the beauty and power of that series of novels that earned the author extraordinary popularity and recognition. The relevance of this task for the future is undoubted.

"I am afraid of those comrades who, as soon as they start writing or speaking, see only the clear scheme of the external world and hostilely avoid the labyrinth of the soul." This is how the hero-narrator of the unfinished, recently published novel "Achilles' Heel" confesses to us. In these words, as well as in the entire first chapter - a kind of reflection, a philosophical-psychological essay, we clearly perceive the own voice and gaze of the writer, Dimitar Dimov. "Is it," the communist narrator further asks, "the richness, diversity, subtlety and depth of thoughts and feelings that the immense complexity and beauty of the external world awaken in us, some kind of heresy?" No, of course not. After all, it is precisely from this wealth of the soul that the fruits of material and spiritual labor spring.... Indeed, it is precisely in it that the possibilities of the new man who builds socialism lie hidden! The greatness in the soul of modern man is not in some steel (according to the famous expression) monolithicity and hardness, in the absence of shortcomings and contradictions. It comes not from some "guild decency" in his morality, but from the courage with which he faces the truth, from the heroic firmness with which he overcomes the difficulties around him and within himself. That is why we should not hide his weaknesses, his vices, we should not decorate his character with "trinkets."