Полянов

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.

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.