Караславов

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."

When in 1926 the name of Georgi Karaslavov was noticed, it was difficult to guess how the young talent would shine. He was heading towards the village that had been plunged into sorrow and angry silence after the April days of 1925. He also wrote about the lives of children from the outskirts of the capital, who, with the loss of many human dignity, resemble the Gavrosh family from Smirnensky's "Winter Evenings". He also told about the moral resilience of the fighters from the construction proletariat in the vicinity of Prague, led by a conscious political avant-garde ("Spor Zhilov"). He also created quite a few images of urban intellectuals - folk teachers, dreamers and realists, who died at the stake of the revolutionary struggle. However, Karaslavov's main personal theme gradually became clear and it remained the village until the end. The village with its transparently serene natural pictures, spring and winter moods, the village with its cruel possessive ambitions, with the drama of the sharpened class struggles. It, this post-war, already changed village, different from Elin Pelinovoto and Yovkovoto, sounded like a constant melody - restrained, but strong and noble. Two terrible forces rage in it: the power of property, which gradually, mechanically destroys humanity; the power of its negation, inspired by the tenderly embraced world of the desire for liberation.

One of the characteristic features of the contemporary literary process is its genre diversity. This applies equally to both fiction and literary criticism. Artistic aspirations and generalizations, the searches and insights of historical-literary and critical thought find expression in various genres and forms, sometimes very heterogeneous, but nevertheless interesting as evidence of the richness of literary life, of the diversity of creative individuals, of the different paths that writers and literary critics take to reveal truths of an ideological-aesthetic, biographical-creative, moral, and emotional nature.