Вапцаров

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:

We know under what circumstances and when Nikola Vaptsarov wrote his two death poems: "Farewell", dedicated to his wife, and "The Fight is Mercilessly Cruel". The poet wrote under them the date July 23, 1942 and the hour - 2 p.m., on the very eve of his execution. The excitement that overwhelms us when we read these two poems of two stanzas is irresistible: they sound in our hearts and memories, vibrate as if each verse is a string, constantly vibrating under the pressure of a feeling, immeasurable in its depth, a sublimation of a shaking lyricism. Perhaps before Vaptsarov, only in Botev - in his "Farewell" - do we find such dramatic tension and feel such a conquering power of the lyrical wave.