Проф

In October 1962, the Institute of Literature was visited by the prominent French Slavist Prof. André Mazon. A guest of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, during his two-week stay in Sofia, Prof. Mazon had set himself the task not only of conducting some scientific research, but also of getting acquainted with the work of our Slavic scientific institutes, of meeting with representatives of Bulgarian Slavic studies and of informing our public about the achievements of French Slavic studies - with this aim, he also read a report on the topic "Slavic studies in France". Prof. Mazon spoke with the director of the institute, Prof. G. Tsanev, and a number of scientific associates, showing a keen interest in their work. He became acquainted with the structure of the institute and its publications and expressed his admiration for the broad opportunities and the great material support that the Bulgarian People's Democratic State provides for the development and progress of science.

At the end of October of this year, a meeting of the well-known Soviet literary scholar and Bulgarian scholar, Professor Dmitry Feodorovich Markov, with the team of researchers at the institute took place at the Institute of Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The guest showed interest in the work of all sections and in particular in the creative plans of the collaborators from the sections for contemporary literature, aesthetics and theory of literature, Russian and Soviet literature, etc. The scientific secretary of the institute, Efrem Karanfilov, introduced the Soviet scientist to the plan and the immediate tasks of the "youngest" section for contemporary literature, and Iskra Panova - to the tasks and achievements of the section for aesthetics and theory of literature. The director of the institute - Professor Georgi Tsanev, academician Lyudmil Stoyanov, Minko Nikolov, Ivan Tsvetkov, Atanas Natev, Boyan Nichev and others took part in the informal conversation.

After the end of the First World War (1914-1918), from which Bulgaria emerged defeated, crippled and with shattered national ideals, a desire for renewal through education and moral improvement arose in the bosom of the intelligentsia. Then the ideological currents manifested themselves and flourished: communism, anarchism, Tolstoyism, temperance and tourism. One of its apostles expressed this newness very well: "an awakening to spiritual life, a longing for something higher than that in which cares, everyday vanities and struggles oppress the soul." Invited by the board of trustees of the "Nadezhda" community center in Tarnovo to give several talks on my specialty, I accepted the invitation with some embarrassment; It seemed to me that the times were not at all suitable for lectures on biology and chemistry, and that the words of a laboratory worker would not resonate in hearts dried up by the current events of political disputes and worries about livelihood.