време

More than twenty years ago, a Belgrade newspaper conducted a poll to find out which of its compatriots Yugoslavs considered the most popular. After the poll was completed, the name of Branislav Nušić was at the top of the list, along with that of the football player Moša Marjanović. This was and is one of the rare cases in our time when a great writer is surrounded by such popularity. In order to gain it, he undoubtedly entered both the everyday and the festive 1 Boyan Ničev - Branislav Nušić", publishing house of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1962 120 people. Only this could make them categorically place him among their chosen ones of the day. Because the greatness of a famous mind is usually not accompanied by great popularity.

During its turbulent and long life, which temporarily faded away during the wars and ended in the tragic year of 1923, the magazine "Novo Vreme" by Dimitar Blagoev invariably devoted a large space to the problems of art and especially fiction. Blagoev was deeply convinced that fiction is one of the best means for society's self-knowledge, that the influence it can exert on life is enormous. This conviction inspired him to tirelessly care for illuminating in "Novo Vreme" the problems of art and literature from a "socialist point of view", to lead a consistent struggle for realistic and progressive fiction.

The most important problem of a historical novel, as well as of any work of art, is its attitude to the present. Every significant historical novel is indicative of the moods, aesthetic principles, tastes and preferences of its time. To discover the modern in history, to draw the reader's attention to one or another of its sides, to one or another aspect of well-known and usually not new historical problems - this is an individual creative work. The category of subjectivity retains its place in our aesthetics as the writer's right to an original creative interpretation of the topic on the basis of the objective-materialist approach to history. This is a subjectivity of a new quality, which has nothing to do with the arbitrariness of subjectivism, since the writer does not oppose himself to the deep and enduring social moods, but, on the contrary, strives to express them as clearly and fully as possible.