днешната

A serious and difficult problem is finding the new in contemporary Yugoslav literature. This is due to the great diversity of literary methods, trends and schools, each of them with its own "family" concepts and principles, with its own talented representatives and, of course, with arguments that they are the bearers of the new. And it is practically impossible to give an objective assessment right now of some of these creative methods whether they are really new or just an unlived fashion. (The old is easily recognized!) All this is because poetics follows poetry.

Literary historians have not yet studied sufficiently the rich material on the traditional interest of the cultural community in the small Slavic nation - the Slovenes (numbering 1,600,000 inhabitants today) in our people, in their fate and their culture. There is evidence of this interest as early as the sixteenth century. Several prominent Slovenes of that time - the travel writer Benedikt Kuripečić, the diplomat Žiga Višnegorski, the first Slovene grammarian Adam Bohorič and one of the giants in Slovene literary and political life, the great Slovene enlightener Primož Trubar (1508-1586) - not only mention the name of the Bulgarians, but also speak with a certain sympathy for them. In later times, the interest intensified, acquired a more problematic character, the Bulgarian language and culture became the subject of study and research in the works of several notable people from small Slovenia: the figure of the Slovenian Renaissance Žiga Zojs, the scholar Jernej Kopitar and the continuer of his work Franz Miklošić, etc. And the most prominent poets of the late 19th century - Anton Askerc, Simon Gregorčić and Josip Stritar, as well as Matija Majar-Zilski, Josipina Turnogradska, Anton Slomšek, L. Klinar wrote works with Bulgarian themes.

I believe it will interest Bulgarian readers, who have long appreciated Ibsen, to know that his thoughts were, among other things, directed towards Bulgaria when he wrote "When the Dead Rise". The main female character, Irena von Satow, bears the surname of her second husband, a Ruthenian, owner of gold mines in the Urals. And her first husband was a South American. "A senior diplomat", says Ibsen's final version. But in the first draft it is said that he was a "Ruthenian", and in an intermediate version that he was a diplomat, a senior Bulgarian diplomat. "Why Bulgarian"? My theory is that Ibsen originally intended to allude to the Bulgarian Insarov from Turgenev's novel, "On the Eve." But Irena, who may be a "Turgenev" woman, is more of a femme fatale, like Irena in "Smoke," than a "strong" woman, like Elena in "On the Eve." That is why Ibsen ultimately dropped the term "Bulgarian." (I deal with this situation in more detail in a major study, "Turgenev in the Spiritual Life of Norway," which I have just finished.)