Една

In his study of K. Fotinov, Iv. Shishmanov called the images of our Revivalists, whom he so lovingly knew how to extract from the darkness of the past, shadows. And this was true. What else, if not a shadow for us, is the face of Paisius, for example? What do we know about his life path? Hardly anything more than what he himself wrote about himself in his "History". This can largely be attributed to the majority of representatives of our Revival. And they were exceptional personalities. In order to properly understand the era in which they lived, as well as their works, we must certainly feel not only the writer, but also the person with his distinctive qualities, experiences and temperament. It is necessary for the researcher to see the creative individuality of the writer in its unique originality, in its connection with the laws of literary development. That is why, recently, the consistent study of the creative and life biography of the writer has acquired such great importance. And it is here, in this aspect of research work, that a number of generally accepted recipes often fail, "precisely" establishing the writer's method, his worldview, the ratio of proportions of one or another side of the literary process. Petko R. Slaveykov is one of our Revival figures, about whom we know much more than about the others. His lively and colorful autobiography, his large archive and rich correspondence have revealed to us a number of sides of his life path. But despite this, there is still something to add to what is already known. For example, we know relatively little about the years spent by Slaveykov in Constantinople, as editor of the newspaper "Macedonia" - the most mature and inspired years of his life, when his work became Bulgarian history. During this remarkable time, the image of a woman is intertwined in the poet's life path, who becomes unique and unrepeatable for him. The memory of her has long been buried under the heavy layer of years, and because of this, we have made no small effort to understand the bond that so firmly and forever connected them, hidden under the weeds of slander and misunderstanding.

At the end of 1961, a "panorama" of contemporary literatures in the world was published, very luxuriously published in Paris in French by the well-known publishing house Hachet. The book is included in a series entitled "From the World", edited by Jean-Claude Hubert, with a foreword by the famous French essayist Roger Caillois, director of the Department of Literature and Art at UNESCO. "Contemporary Literatures in the World" is a collective work, carried out with the cooperation of twenty-one writers, among whom are the names of prominent French critics and connoisseurs of foreign literatures.

From the time of Tacitus, when the metonymization of the concept of style began, to the present day, things have happened and continue to happen with it that have hardly happened with other concepts: "style" has expanded and continues to expand its scope in a threatening manner... Modern literary critics rightly complain that in their field style is still an unscientific term, that it still lacks any definite and generally binding content. However, if we take a look at the work of their colleagues - theorists of music, painting, architecture - we come across the same terminological uncertainty, which manifests itself even more sharply in the attempt to elevate the term style from the level of the theory of a type of art to the level of aesthetics. Meanwhile, "style" is also entering the terminology of anthropologists, ethnographers, psychologists (behaviorists, for example), cyberneticists... There is hardly any point in talking about its use in everyday speech and journalism ("colloquial" and "journalistic" style), since the title of this note has also fallen victim to this terminological "miscellany".

The discussion of the problem of tradition and innovation is one of the most meaningful manifestations of our institute, related to the very foundations of aesthetics and art. Both Alexander Obretenov and Georgi Tsanev put this problem on a Marxist-Leninist basis. I liked Obretenov's thought that not everything that differs from the old is innovation. Also the emphasis on communist ideology as the basis of innovation.

The business plan recommended by the International Association for the Study of the European Southeast also includes comparative studies in the field of Balkan literatures. Although the idea of ​​this is very fortunate, it seems to me, however, that the task will be difficult for researchers if certain preliminary measures are neglected, which are necessary to take, in the haste to arrive at conclusions that would obviously be too approximate. It will be necessary, in my opinion, first of all to establish the methodology in the order of the searches, in order to leave nothing to chance, by eliminating from the very beginning the possibility of falling into errors, a possibility that would be, I think, incompatible with the aim pursued by this type of work. It is needless to say that any researcher who would embark on such an activity faces enormous difficulties. For it can be asserted without exaggeration that the literatures of the Balkan peoples existed and developed in a closed circle, without obvious relations between them. The difference in language, religion and culture often raised insurmountable barriers that prevented free exchange between the "intelligences" of the ethnic communities of the Balkans. The empires that succeeded each other over the centuries were unable to melt into a single crucible the heterogeneous elements of these peoples, who, although they sometimes lived under the same political power, developed in the direction of their own destiny. Especially since the beginning of the 19th century, the national awakening that marked the life of every Balkan people and the struggles that followed, carved a deep chasm between the intellectuals of this part of the world; the Balkan literatures therefore saw themselves as very distant from each other, I would even say, in some cases fiercely opposed to each other. This explains why the elite of the Balkan countries did not know each other, and with rare exceptions, no Balkan country showed any interest in getting to know the literature of its neighbor. We must also add that the attention of Every country was attracted by the brilliance of the great world literatures, which served as models for writers.

For almost a year now, bookstores have been offering the importance that Velichko Valchev has for readers a new work on Ivan Vazov - the most voluminous in the already impressive literature on the national poet. The author, Velichko Valchev, is a well-known researcher of the life and work of Ivan Vazov. He has published about sixty studies, popularization articles, reviews of editions of his works, translations of Vazov's works abroad, productions of Vazov's plays, etc. about our most popular classic. In addition, he has edited the poet's works, written a preface to one or another edition. Special mention should be made of the valuable volume "Unpublished Letters" of Ivan Vazov, Selected", edited and commented on by Velichko Valchev and published by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The book "Ivan Vazov. Life and Creative Path", written, as we learn from the preface, over a period of more than ten years, in a certain sense summarizes and completes the long-term studies and research of Velichko Valchev. In it, the author used, of course, not mechanically, much of what he had previously written about Vazov.