Никола

Once Karaslavov reproached Zhendov that he, Smirnensky's best friend and comrade, had not thought of making at least one portrait sketch of him from life. Surprised by the sudden comradely reproach, the artist was embarrassed and sincerely replied: "How could I have known that he was a brilliant poet! Smirnensky was more ordinary than everyone else around me and no one suspected that one day his name would thunder throughout the four corners of Bulgaria." This short confession of our remarkable caricaturist contains an exceptional truth. So would anyone be able to notice and single out their close friend as something exceptional in the comradely collective, among which he is every day? Hardly! Therefore, Zhendov's wise answer can with full reason be set as the Motto of Georgi Karaslavov's entire book - Meetings and Conversations with Nikola Vaptsarov." Indeed, which of Vaptsarov's closest comrades (and the author was among them) could have imagined that one day Vaptsarov's name would travel to the four corners of the five continents and spread the glory of our small people? Which of them could have even for a moment assumed that Every moment of the poet's life, every creative impulse, idea and dream, every object he touched, every vital detail, every gesture even, . . would attract the curious attention of his millions of admirers? And precisely because no one noticed the extraordinary personality in their proverbially modest comrade, that is why they did not think of recording at least one of his conversations with all its colorful details. Nor did his artist friends think of making a portrait or a sketch from life. Should we reproach them in turn? It is hardly necessary. Nor is it appropriate now, with the appearance of an entire book of memories about Vaptsarov, in which the preface emphasizes: "Yes, even then in his work Vaptsarov had outgrown everyone, had risen to a level that we, his closest comrades, could not see. (p. b). And on the next page it is added: "But Vaptsarov was so modest, so "ordinary", so close to us, that we could not see and measure his gigantic stature during his lifetime."

Vaptsarov, this somewhat intrusive young man, with a casually unbuttoned collar and a lock of hair falling on his forehead, as I remember him, moved imperceptibly among the people. But this was only the external, "showy" side. Because every cell of his soul trembled with tension, excitement and businesslike drive. Because as a party functionary he was on the front line, on the firing line. But wasn't he like that as a writer too? Didn't he still modestly consider himself a "newbie" in the universally recognized literary environment, even though his success and achievements spoke otherwise? He, the still unknown, who recognized the primacy of his teachers and who did more than them, by transforming the everyday life, the pain, the suffering and the willingness to sacrifice of the working class in an original way. Here is his characteristic urban landscape:

There is hardly a Bulgarian poet with a more expressive appearance than that of Furnadzhiev. It contains great expressive power. His face resembles some Negro deity, primitive, crude, clumsily carved. There is something very pre-cultural, pagan in him, very much the emanation of pure "nature". A strong, earthly, vital poet, he immediately conquers you with his poetic power. All his poetry is filled with earthly aromas. Especially his early lyrics are filled with a powerful jubilation. Clearly, before us is a poet with enormous energy and great vital reserves. If he were an artist, he would certainly be from the school of Jordaens, if he were a prose writer, he would certainly model images like Rabelais, if he were a poet, he could not but be Furnadzhiev. We do not know how else this brute force of nature could have been poured out, if not in such highly dramatic, powerful, impulsive poems. He resembles a poetic spirit that constantly calls upon the earthly forces of life. Isn't he a kind of continuation of the earth, of the soil, of the stones, of the roots of trees in literature? There are no features in him that would speak of a pure manifestation of the "spiritual." And yet he is not an enemy of air and space, of dreams and reveries. But the spiritual processes in him flow through his dynamic-impulsive nature.