Литературен

It is difficult to find a Bulgarian writer of my generation who, in one way or another, has not gone through the literary school of Bojan Angelov. And it is easy to explain why this is so: barely having crossed the threshold of high school, through his "Stylistics" and his "Theory of Prose and Poetry" we first began to penetrate the technique of artistic creativity. However, this meeting with the author was necessitated by the requirements of a single program, pursued a single educational goal, and usually ended in the lower grades, without leading to any lasting reflections. Thus, most of us became acquainted with the textbook and teacher without getting to know his research and literary-critical assessments of Bulgarian writers. And if this is the case even with those who learned from his books, even less awareness can be expected from the younger generation: very often they have not even heard his name. That is why the collection "Literary Articles", which was published recently and contains some of Bozhan Angelov's more characteristic works, comes just in time to respond to a ripe need. It will help our new reader to become acquainted with a little-known writer, with whom until now mainly specialists have dealt, and at the same time it will enable many older readers to convince themselves that the author of some textbooks on literary criticism was not an ordinary dry theorist, as they seem to think from old memory, but was primarily concerned with the problems of living Bulgarian literature. The collection "Literary Articles" is divided into three sections, which combine similar works: on folklore (1), on the history of Bulgarian literature (II) and critical essays on some prominent Bulgarian writers (III). To the last section, without being connected by subject with the others, two articles on sensational literature have been added. Obviously, the aim of the compiler was to present the author in such a way that the reader, after getting acquainted with the book, would gain a relatively complete idea of ​​the main directions of his literary work. And it must be said that methodologically this approach is correct. However, I have one objection of a practical nature, which concerns part two of the book.

"RLF" - Workers' Literary Front. I leaf through the yellowed pages of this veteran with excitement. Here every slogan, every article, every verse and story is colored by the flame of the class struggle. The end of 1929. The wound from the September Uprising, from the pogroms in 1925 is still alive. The headscarves of the thousands of mothers, wives and sisters of the murdered are black. Even blacker is the blackness of fascism, hanging over the entire country. But the people who survived the five centuries of Turkish slavery, the people who fought with black bullets against the Sultan's empire, the people who refused to kill their brothers at the front and sprinkled Vladaya with their blood, the people who, in the name of communism, rose up in the first anti-fascist uprising in the world - this people is awake. It is gathering strength for a new struggle, for the last decisive battle. It is enough to felt the first breath of the rising revolutionary wave in our country and abroad, to erect a camp, to rise from the fire like the legendary bird, the ranks of the fighters. And again the fiery banner is raised and taken off. The Bulgarian working class, the working peasantry and the progressive intelligentsia are writing new glorious pages in their heroic history. An important place in the fierce ideological struggle, and especially on the literary front during this period, is occupied by the newspaper "RLF", which was published from December 1929 to June 1934 in the conditions of the bourgeois fascist state, of the dominant bourgeois, fascistizing culture, in it openly and boldly proceeded to organize and unite the progressive artistic intelligentsia in the name of communism. Of course, even before "RLF" in general political and special publications the party defended Marxist understandings of literature and art, fought for affirmation and development of the seeds of socialist culture. However, never during the period of capitalism and fascism was this struggle waged so openly, so massively, offensively and effectively as in the "RLF". For this, of course, the accumulated experience and revolutionary traditions of the past played a significant role. After all, among revolutionary democrats such as Rakovski, Botev, Karavelov and others, literature and art were an integral part of the common struggle for the liberation of the people! These traditions, in the conditions of capitalist society, were continued by Blagoev, Kirkov, Polyanov.

"Galileo of modern aesthetics!" (A. Richards), "a seer, a teacher who sheds light on life" (J. Mackail), the founder of many modern artistic and literary trends... For our reader, these definitions of the English romantic poet S. T. Coleridge sound strange and lofty. Some bourgeois literary critics also accept that they are lofty, but what is their subtext, what is the reason for bourgeois literary criticism's fascination with Coleridge, and whether he can only be a "progenitor" of the Neoplatonists, the intuitionists, the Freudians, the "stream of consciousness" - this is still a question that Marxist literary criticism has not answered exhaustively.

Dimitar Dimitrov - a name that says almost nothing to the modern reader. One by one, those who, in their unfaded memories from more than six decades ago, could restore something of the image of this enthusiastic idealist - with the fragile physical figure of a restless workers' organizer, with the restless and temperamental pen of a talented publicist, with the searching thought of a promising socialist literary critic and scholar - are leaving. Dimitar Dimitrov is from the phalanx of the first socialist activists who, even in that early era, saw the need for a practical struggle for the liberation of the working class and participated directly in this struggle. And as writers, they are not contemplatives, but fighters who clear the way for socialist ideology and literature. For about 5-6 years of public and literary activity, he leaves an interesting and meaningful legacy that has its own definite place in our Marxist criticism since the end of the century. His social and literary work, his life, was very quickly put to an end by the "yellow guest", which suppressed so many young socialist forces.

The October Revolution, which shook the entire world and caused radical changes in the socio-political life of a number of countries, also pushed the spiritual development of the peoples onto a new path. For the Bulgarian people it played a fateful role, largely determining their further economic and cultural development. It is enough to glance at the Bulgarian literature of those revolutionary years to feel the irresistible power of the new spiritual engines of our national consciousness, created by the Russian Revolution. After 1917, the entire cultural and literary life in Bulgaria radically changed, the people and the homeland again invaded the works of literature, the worldview of the Bulgarian writer changed, a qualitatively new literature of socialist realism was created, the democratic-realist principle in the work of almost all significant artists strengthened... These processes are very deep and complex, they affect different artists to varying degrees and become accessible and understandable only through direct acquaintance with the works of art born directly or indirectly from the Great October. In this regard, the newly published fiction collection "October" is a significant contribution. It illustrates the basic, irrefutable process of a deep ideological and aesthetic transformation in Bulgarian literature and the revival of its revolutionary traditions. This collection is published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, edited by Zdravko Srebrov, Yordan Radichkov, Kamen Kalchev, Neviana Stefanova and Rozalia Lykova, and contains one work each by thirty-seven prominent Bulgarian fiction writers.

Marx's monumental style was admired by people of the rank of Engels, J. Marx, P. Lafargue, W. Liebknecht, Lenin, F. Mehring, and others. In their memoirs and notes, one finds extremely important observations and assessments of Marx's style, but without any attempt at analysis. Mehring merely sets the task: "The language of Karl Marx deserves a detailed study; this would be an important contribution to the study of Marx's personality and his work." 1 Exactly sixty years have passed since then, but the question still remains open. Why is the problem of style unanimously overlooked among the countless studies of Marx's literary heritage? Of course, as Mehring points out, this is not a primary task compared to propaganda and the further development of Marx's ideas. And although it is true in its essence, this explanation is already outdated and incomplete. According to Engels, when a new teaching is spread, for the sake of ideas, at first they do not pay attention to the form or attribute it to accidents, to the peculiarity of the creative personality. Later they begin to identify the thinker with his teaching, evaluating them as a whole. Finally, they reduce the ideas to the scale of the work, and the personality to the sum of the qualities necessary to carry it out. And so in the final stage they remain: Marxism as a revolutionary-proletarian teaching, Marx - the founder of scientific communism, and Marx the man - drowns in biographies. Therefore, the return path from the personality to the immanent features of its creativity encounters exceptional difficulties. But not so much because of a lack of biographical data, but as a result of the systematic underestimation of the principle of dialectical unity between the personality and its creativity. And they do not complement each other, but exist through each other. Marx did not construct his doctrine speculatively - the objective premises were prepared by history - but he created it. He is its creator. But not only with his genius and colossal erudition, but also with his will, his heart, his love for the proletariat, his contempt for the bourgeoisie, with his whole personality. On what grounds then is a titanic personality reduced to a function of intellect and class struggle?