години

The literary historian who would undertake a more fundamental examination of the development and significance of proletarian and anti-fascist poetry in the thirties of our century will be confronted with a number of unexplained problems and contradictions in the work of individual poets, as well as - on the other hand - with the great revolutionary upsurge of this poetry, with its contribution to the revolutionary education of the new generation in the midst of the great historical events that were brewing. It is necessary, first of all, to clarify the driving forces of the era that led humanity to the Second World War. The rise of Italian fascism and German Nazism, the strengthening of the reactionary course in Europe,

I predict that the reader will be perplexed when he reads the title of this article: is it possible that such general theoretical questions as the formation of the artistic image and the division of literature into genera and types can be solved or examined on the limited material of a literature for one decade and taken at that not in its best era: because in the 1840s of the 19th century, neither Botev, nor Vazov, nor Karavelov, nor Petko Slaveykov, nor Rakovski, nor even Chintulov had yet appeared on the literary horizon in Bulgaria. The literary field is mainly occupied by poets such as Neofit Rilski, Neofit Bozveli, Rayno Popovich, Konstantin Ognyanovich, Naiden Gerov and others.

In the Soviet Union, there has long been a lively interest in Bulgarian literature. The works of Bulgarian writers are published and widely distributed throughout the vast Soviet land. First place here is occupied by translations into Russian. By 1944, several dozen books with works by Vazov, Karavelov, Botev, Smirnensky, Geo Milev, M. Marchevsky, L. Stoyanov, etc. were published in Russian. The Russian reader became acquainted with the merits of our native literature, loved it, and began to seek it out. However, relations at that time with bourgeois Bulgaria did not contribute to the widespread translation and distribution of Bulgarian literature. The victory of the people's power on September 9 opened a new page in the relations of our homeland with the USSR. Having embarked on a new path, Bulgaria established the closest fraternal relations with the great Soviet country. Our lively cultural ties favored the distribution of Bulgarian literature in the Soviet Union. The number of translations there grew rapidly. Today, translations into Russian hold first place among all other languages. Over the past twenty years, 217 separate books of works by Bulgarian writers have been published in Russian in the USSR. A significant part of the works of our masters of the literary word are already known to the Russian reader.

Twenty years ago, very little was known about Bulgarian literature in the Czech Republic. The older generation might still remember the translations of Vazov's works (mostly published towards the end of the 19th century and before the First World War), as well as something from the 1920s and 1930s, when one could read something by Elin Pelin or Kiril Hristov, whose articles, poems and stories often appeared in the press in Czech and German during his stay in Prague - later, readers and critics only knew a few names from the scattered individual poems in Bulgarian literature or forgotten books. Hardly anyone connected these names with specific works. After all, Botev was more of a legendary national liberation hero for the Czech cultural community between the two world wars than a poet and publicist, and of his works, only the poem "Hadji Dimitar" and the article "Funny Cry" were known at that time, which was reprinted several times. Bagryana's poetry collection "The Eternal and the Holy" ("Ta věčna a ta svatá", 1931), archaized by translation to the Parnassian poetry of the late 19th century, failed, Strashimirov's poorly translated "People" ("Svatebni rej", 1928) was met with no success - and conversely, the poems of Lyuba Kasyrova, a poet completely forgotten in Bulgaria, found a response in the critics. The set of ideas about Bulgarian literature with which one entered the forties was insignificant. Apart from the usual folk literature, the stories of Elin Pelin, the prose of Yordan Yovkov and the small book "Once Upon a Time" ("Dávno", 1938) by Dora Gabe translated by Vitezslav Nezval, born from the moments of the first child's perception of the big unknown world, like much of Nezval's work, it is difficult to find another translation from Bulgarian until 1944 that is somehow more deeply connected to Czech literature. After the liberation of Bulgaria and after the liberation of Czechoslovakia a year later, the blank field in the knowledge of Bulgarian literature came to the surface very plastically and clearly.

The liberation of Bulgaria from centuries of Ottoman oppression opens up wide opportunities for the unleashed national spiritual and creative energy. Having manifested itself with unsuspected force and so brightly during the last decades of the glorious Renaissance era, now with the changes in socio-political life it marks new significant successes in various fields of knowledge. The cultural-historical, literary-artistic, critical-aesthetic traditions of the Renaissance are being revived and rethought, in accordance with the new social reality. It also nourishes the emergence of new phenomena and trends. Although the liberation of 1878 created a new stage in the socio-political and socio-economic development of the Bulgarian people, in the field of spiritual and intellectual activity during the decade immediately after the Russo-Turkish War, we are witnesses of a very broad ideological and aesthetic continuity. Here, the processes seem to continue in the same direction, they show greater vitality, their pace is not so rapid.

Kiril Hristov lived a difficult life, a life filled with constant torment, eternal dissatisfaction. He had unattainable ambitions. He considered himself the called spiritual leader of the nation. But after the first great recognition he received in the 1990s, his civic and personal behavior became increasingly unpleasant to the literary community. He began to be evaluated biasedly, slander and ridicule began to pour down on him from all sides, his poetry was denied most sharply and without appeal, he himself became the object of newspaper headlines. No distinction was made between the person, his behavior and his poetry, and everything was irresponsibly denied in a heap. He lived with the consciousness of a slandered prophet. Comical gestures began to appear in his public behavior. The more hatred and dislike he encountered, the more angrily he attacked his contemporaries, participated in the wildest and most outrageous newspaper polemics and arguments, flailed left and right, and in his rage he spared no means to prove how pitiful and deranged the Bulgarian intelligentsia was, which could not appreciate and understand him, the genius and the prophet. Nothing could calm his wounded ambition, nothing could satisfy his cold pride. His soul seemed to be covered with thorns and nettles, words of icy contempt and malice towards his contemporaries did not come from his lips.

Here is a sixtieth anniversary that surprised many. Not that sixty years is a long time, but Emilian Stanev's vitality and cheerfulness can rightly be envied by both forty and thirty-year-olds. Everyone who has had the opportunity to meet and talk to him has been amazed not only by his appearance, his lush black, unscented hair, his always cheerful movements, but also by his extremely mobile and restless thought, his turbulent imagination, his extraordinary spiritual energy. Emilian. Stanev is not among the most prolific writers, but it is difficult to imagine another writer who is so constantly busy with his work: not only in his office, but also on the street, in the garden, in the club, in a circle of friends - everywhere. He seems unable to survive a single day without thinking and talking about art, about his work. And despite the great preliminary work of the mind and imagination, what an impressive amount of paper Emilian Stanev writes for each chapter of his works. His critical, weighing thought is vigilant at its post, demanding new and new revisions. He is tireless in his pursuit of perfection, he is dedicated and selfless as a creator, both young and old can take an example from him.

I was very young when I heard the October Revolution and Lenin's name mentioned. It was at the end of World War I. I heard that things were not going well for us at the front, and in our village the number of widows was increasing. A week would pass and a cry would be heard from some house. Grandma, dejected and despondent, would begin to cross herself - she had three sons who were soldiers - and grandfather would look down on her and, as dry and witty as he was, would snarl through his teeth: - And pray to your God - all that. War, a human slaughter.... Whoever conceived it, his mother's fault. Hunger was roaming the poor houses, hungry throats were hard to fill, and the mayor and the secretary-tax collector would go around the neighborhoods and requisition any draft animals they could find.

The October Revolution is not just a picturesque moment in the turbulent history of mankind. With a certain set of actions, thoughts and attitudes, it radically changed the entire worldview of the man of our time. What it accomplished once again confirmed the basic principle: one moves forward by rejecting what is obsolete, by perceiving the past through new perspectives: moral, political and artistic. With its grandiose innovation, the October Revolution erased the "greatness" of the ideas, philosophical views and moral theses proclaimed by the bourgeois revolutions that preceded it. With the brightness and fury of lightning, it illuminated the backward content of philosophical concepts, layered, processed and systematized for almost a century and a half.

One of the first translators of Soviet literature in our country, from the time of its penetration in the 1920s, was Nikolai Khrelkov. A close friend of G. Milev, Khrelkov collaborated in his magazines, Libra (1919-1922) and Flame (1924-1925), mainly with articles and translations from Russian Soviet poetry. This activity of N. Khrelkov, which at that period completely absorbed the attention of our poet, was not appreciated in its merits - it was either ignored or considered as part of his fascination with the Russian symbolists. In fact, the author of Midnight Congress, like Geo Milev, turned his gaze to the young Soviet art. It attracted him with its revolutionary call, with its ideas and innovation.

The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences occupies a paramount place in the cultural life of our country. Its membership includes the most prominent representatives of Bulgarian science, it has organized scientific institutes in all fields of modern knowledge, its members and associates participate not only in the most important research within the country, but also in scientific life abroad, numerous international congresses, conferences, symposia, etc. To this must be added the enormous publishing activity that the academy carries out; this activity began with its very beginnings - as the Bulgarian Literary Society in Braila, founded in 1869, but the dimensions to which it has reached today represent an exceptional phenomenon in the history of Bulgarian science and culture. We do not always appreciate this fact enough. If we go back to the years when the foundations of the future Bulgarian Academy of Sciences were laid, we cannot fail to note one important circumstance: it is a product of the Bulgarian national revival. Its creation is not the result of a decree issued by a single authority, but of a long process, expressed in numerous reflections and proposals, in various projects and actions. The idea of ​​a Bulgarian Academy of Sciences was born in the great aspiration of our people towards enlightenment and cultural progress: already during the Renaissance era, it should embody the enlightened ideals of the people and also give a strong impetus to their cultural development. In this respect, our country repeats the history of academies in Europe - they arose in the 15th century, in the era of the Italian Renaissance ("Platonic Academy" in Florence, "Accademia Antiquaria" in Rome, etc.).