явления

The present notes on the latest English novel are by no means exhaustive and are intended rather to outline some common and interesting features in the literary life of contemporary England. They are limited to four or five works by younger novelists: "Happy Jim" by Kingsley Amis, "A Place at the Top" by John Brain, and "This Is Love, After All" by Stan Barstow, "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" by Alan Sillitoe. All these authors belong in spirit to one trend - they are more or less among the so-called "sirdites" or "angry young people" - and they are connected by a certain community in concepts, and even in their means of expression. Whatever shortcomings the "angry ones" may have, however justly they may suffer attacks on many points, they have nevertheless managed to assert themselves in English literary life and even, in a certain sense, to occupy a commanding position, to set its tone. With all reservations, they remain, both as a whole line and as separate achievements, the largest, central phenomenon in English literature of the last few years. On the one hand, they are very indicative of the moods and psychological reactions of the young English intelligentsia, they expressed a certain stage in the development of its thinking; on the other hand, both criticism and the large circulations of the above-mentioned novels point to them as the best among all the rest of the production. That is why it would not be entirely arbitrary to limit an analysis mainly to them - it would indeed not illuminate the whole problem, but it would cover the core of the problem. Of course, it should be immediately reminded once again that this is not a comprehensive review of the English novel and that a number of novelists known to our reader, such as Graham Greene, James Aldridge, Jack Lindsay, are beyond their scope.

In the creative circles of Poland, two completely contradictory phenomena emerged after the 20th Congress of the CPSU and the 8th Plenum of the Polish United Workers' Party. One was expressed in a criticism of dogmatism and in the revelation to writers of new creative socialist perspectives. On the other hand, however, under the influence of sometimes unprincipled criticism, a process of ideological regression took place in some circles. In the midst of the criticism, revisionist voices spoke out, placing political issues at the center of their attacks: the attitude of the authorities towards the masses, the role of the party in society, the importance of socialist ideology in practical state and public life. Even individual authors came to the conclusion that in order to avoid mistakes, one must act without relying on any ideology, on the basis of a technologically practical attitude towards social issues. These revisionist views found their most vivid expression in Leszek Kolakowski's essay "The Priest and the Fool", in which the author tries to prove that man is faced with only one basic alternative: to adopt the attitude towards life of a priest or a fool. And Kolakowski proved all the advantages of the fool's attitude. All kinds of systems and ideologies limited freedom and conscience with dogmas, stiffened the mind - the only expressor of human dignity. The main mistake in the past was to put history in the role of the former god, to replace facts with assessments, while only the mind, unconstrained by any systems and dogmas, ready to mock the accepted order, could judge the facts. For Kolakowski, the "fool's attitude" meant a technological attitude towards problems, it was a revisionist transition to the positions of bourgeois neopositivism. I will dwell in detail on this "revelation" of revisionism, to understand the essence of the revisionist manifestations in Poland during the years 1956-57 and so that we can also grasp those positive phenomena that have been observed in Polish cultural life for the past three years.

In the movement of Bulgarian literature there are a number of inconsistencies, a number of paradoxes, which are caused by the lateness and backwardness of our life due to the five-century yoke. In a short time, without the necessary experience and preparation, we had to catch up with what was missed, to catch up with the new in thought and in contemporary ideas, to participate in the world cultural process with our national contribution. In this haste, in the impatience to keep up with the new, to not remain provincials, a number of our writers of the past thoughtlessly put on foreign costumes, made the Bulgarians get out of their skin, to rave uncharacteristically, to repeat ready-made thoughts. In our country, some currents of European thought have taken too caricatured forms, have borne the unripe fruits of superficial imitation. These questions have found a proper formulation in G. Tsanev's report, which contains Some new clarifications about individual movements and authors in the development of our literature.