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SPEECH OF COMRADE TODOR ZHIVKOV AT THE MEETING OF THE POLITBURO OF THE CENTRAL CENTRAL CENTRAL PARTY WITH WORKERS OF THE CULTURAL FRONT, DELIVERED ON APRIL 15, 1963 Dear comrades, At the beginning of April, as Comrade Mitko Grigorov announced in his opening remarks, a meeting lasting several days was held at the Central Committee of the Party with a wide range of representatives of the creative intelligentsia and other workers of the ideological front - the leaderships of the creative unions, the bureaus of the party organizations at the creative unions, the editors-in-chief of the central daily newspapers, the editors-in-chief of newspapers and magazines on issues of literature and art, the leaderships of the ideological institutes, of cinema, theater, radio and television, the secretaries for propaganda and agitation of the district committees of the Party, the members of the ideological commission of the Central Committee of the Party and the Council of Ministers. The meeting held a frank discussion on the urgent issues that concern our cultural community, and discussed in detail the work of the creative unions to implement the party decisions, and in particular the decisions of the Eighth Party Congress in the field of literature and art. The meeting of the Central Committee of the Party once again unequivocally confirmed that the vast majority of our creative intelligentsia correctly understands the role and tasks of the ideological front at the current stage in the development of our country and tirelessly and consistently implements the policy of our Party after the April Plenum of the Central Committee and the decisions of the Eighth Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party. What comments could arise in connection with this meeting of ours?

The theory of "Art for Art's Sake" has been around for more than a century, but the questions it raises and the struggles that surround it have perhaps never been as decisive for the development of art as they are today. What is the essence of art? Should it serve something other than itself? Is "pure beauty" not its only goal, or, in order to acquire social significance, must it submit to the great moral tasks that society sets for it? What is the role of the artist: to become the creator of autonomous artistic values ​​that will be enjoyed by a small elite of spiritual aristocrats, or to be in the vanguard of the great battle for social renewal? The theory of "Art for Art's Sake" has its answers to these fateful questions, and these answers lie at the foundation of the formalist art of the bourgeois world, as it has developed from the last century to the present day. Therefore, to describe the socio-psychological atmosphere in which this aesthetic concept was formed, to reveal its social and theoretical essence, to indicate the problems it posed and solved, and to assess them both in the context of the relevant historical situation and in view of contemporary requirements, is undoubtedly a topical task that our aesthetics and art studies cannot and should not ignore. The present article is an attempt in this regard. It sets itself limited requirements: to examine the theory of "Art for Art's Sake" as it developed in France - its true homeland - and only within the framework of that generation of writers and artists who first gave it the appearance of a specific aesthetic doctrine and first used it as a weapon, or more precisely, as a cover for their hatred of bourgeois society and culture. The representatives of this generation did not form a single school. These were artists, different in temperament, inclinations and tastes, different in the nature of their work and therefore different in their place in the history of new art. What united them was their common understanding of art and its tasks, of its relation to morality, politics, religion, science, nature, to reality in general. This understanding was not the result of a strictly thought-out theoretical work.

This article was conceived and written as a continuation of another one that the author published last year (Literary Thought magazine, vol. 6), under the title "Origin and essence of the theory of "art for art's sake". Both there and here the author attempts to examine the relevant phenomena from a historical point of view, which, taking into account the specific conditions of their emergence and development, seeks to penetrate their complex and contradictory essence, to analyze the struggle of positive and negative tendencies in them and the fatal end of this struggle, in which, by virtue of a whole complex of social reasons, the destructive principle prevails. It is here, in the aesthetics and art of individualism, that the reader will see (if, of course, the author has been able to prove it) that both in the actions of individual human behavior and in broader social and cultural manifestations, subjectively honest intentions often lead to objectively harmful results, or more precisely, that the pursuit of freedom of personal expression in artistic creation is only a positive value when it is guided by the consciousness of public service, when it is restrained by the principles of social discipline.

One of the most interesting events in the cultural life of Poland this autumn was the first international congress of translators of Polish fiction (the first event of its kind in the socialist countries), which took place from 4 to 12 November of this year. At the invitation of the Authors' Agency, over 60 people arrived in Warsaw (from the USSR and the socialist countries, from the Scandinavian countries, from England, France, Italy, the Federal Republic of Germany, South and North America, Mongolia, Japan and Israel), among them prominent poets and writers who translate Polish fiction into 32 languages. The aim of the congress was for the Polish side to express its gratitude and appreciation to those who, through their work, acquaint foreign readers with the achievements of Polish literature, and to give them the opportunity to get acquainted with life in Poland, to enter into close and direct contact with writers' circles and to get to know the problems of literary development in Poland more closely.

"Art and Criticism" is one of the few progressive publications that continued to be published even during the most difficult years of fascist terror in our country - during the Second World War, when Bulgaria was turned into a bridgehead for the Hitlerites, when the fighting anti-fascist forces defended the honor and freedom of the Bulgarian people with arms in hand. The editor of the magazine is Georgi Tsanev, a critic who brilliantly began his literary activity in the publications of the party and the Komsomol in the 1920s with the affirmation and passionate defense of the poetry of Smirnensky and of young Soviet literature. Later he fell into the nets of "Zlatorog" and for a whole decade the evil Torogshtina stifled his voice, killed his talent. The critic himself felt that this atmosphere was ruining him as a person and a creator and in the mid-1930s he sought to break with the magazine "Zlatorog". The first step was taken with the publication of "LIK". But Tsanev dreams of a magazine that would stand on anti-fascist positions, a magazine that, on the basis of high artistic achievements (a question that "Zlatorog" has always speculated on), would unite progressive and democratic writers. "Since the end of 1935," writes Tsanev, "I had planned to organize the publication of a literary magazine, the contributors of which would be anti-fascist writers. After long efforts and repeated attempts to obtain permission, this idea was able to be realized: in early 1938, "Art and Criticism" began to be published under my editorship and with the close participation of Hristo Radevski, Georgi Karaslavov, Iliya Beshkov, Lyubomir Pipkov, Orlin Vassilev, Georgi Raichev, Blenika, the young Pavel Vezhinov, Valery Petrov, Bogomil Raynov and other progressive writers."1

The strangest thing that critics allow themselves is to suspect the artist of infidelity to his own work. And yet this is precisely what makes criticism artistic. To reveal the moral or socio-political resonance of the work, to highlight the cognitive-psychological moments in it, to assess its historical veracity - without all this, criticism would not fulfill its serious mission. However, none of these criteria, nor all of them together, are capable of achieving an artistic assessment. It can only be discussed when one penetrates the work's own logic - when one sees the internal expediency, in the spirit of which individual, even interesting in themselves, details would turn out to be unnecessary deviations or the shortcoming of "something" would stand out, undesirable roughnesses, imperfections, etc. would stand out. On this basis, the critic can make artistic demands on the author. And we would be making a grave mistake if we decided that we had entered a purely formal area.