Хрелков

There are writers who play a major role in public and literary life, but remain alien to the "noisy fame". Their activity resembles those deep water currents that change the climate, enable flowers and trees to grow in distant northern countries, while they themselves are inconspicuous, invisible, unknown. Such a creator in our communist anti-fascist literature is Nikolay Khrelkov. His charm as a person and a poet, his role as a communist-teacher are perfectly understood by those who had the opportunity to be in personal contact with the writer, to be friends with him, to experience his beneficial influence. "Visiting Khrelkov - shared the heroine of the RMS Lilyana Dimitrova - is a holiday for me. He seems to be a person from another world." Many writers such as Goncho Belev, Lyudmil Stoyanov, etc. To a large extent, they grew up as socialist realist artists, taking the decisive step from the general democratic anti-fascist positions to the positions of Marxism-Leninism thanks to the personal friendship and the influence that Nikolay Khrelkov had on them.

I met him for the first time in the fall of 1928. The descendant of Lyuben Karavelov had just returned from abroad, from emigration. Tall, with his head slightly bowed between his asymmetrically raised shoulders, the figure of this man radiated intransigence, the valor of the unyielding. When he spoke calmly, a bribing childish gullibility and kindness flowed from his gaze. But if he happened to switch to polemics and defend his faith in the people and their right to freedom and human happiness, arrows of his revolutionary conviction would fly from his eyes. His gesture was angular and dramatic, saturated with a hidden inner tragedy, intertwined with boundless feeling for the poor, for the suffering. The sonority of his voice carried the excitement of his noble heart, the impulses of his impetuous thoughts, the accent of his charming devotion as a faithful proletarian son... A sworn devotion that consciously and unwaveringly came true over time in that tragic end of Nikolai Khrelkov, which became a measure of his moral and political stature as a communist citizen.

It was one morning in the first days of September, we had breakfasted at one of the coastal hotels of Montreux, where we had happened to be at night, and after taking a short walk through the park to enjoy the Swiss nature, we set off again. We had a long journey to Paris ahead of us, but at the same time we did not want to miss a happy opportunity - to visit the famous Chillon Castle, which we had passed the night before. We had no time to waste, so we had to choose quickly. And, of course, we chose what could turn out to be unique. So instead of heading for Lausanne, as prudence dictated, we turned in the opposite direction and headed for Chillon. And suddenly we were once again immersed in the Swiss landscape: on the right the calm azure expanse of Leman, on the left the foothills of the Swiss Alps, and in the far southeast the feminine cones of the Danne-du-Midi, slightly gilded by the September sun. I looked at this picture, full of picturesque grandeur, and imperceptibly the visible began to give way to an excitement that the night's sleep had interrupted. As at the first meeting with the snow-capped mountains, I felt myself once again in the spiritual and emotional atmosphere of one of my poets, who had once passed through here and had populated the Alpine landscape with the shadows of his imagination. But instead of the gloomy ghosts of the previous evening, now, under the influence of the morning clarity, I had involuntarily sought in it that which foreshadowed the end of a nightmarish night. And I had found it in these two verses that unexpectedly floated into my mind:

Unexpectedly for myself, about a month or a month and a half after the meeting at the Royal aperitif, a not very pleasant change occurred in my life. Since I had to prepare for a state exam, which more than any other exam implies better working conditions and less occupation with side pursuits, I thought about what to do and, finding no other way out, decided to return temporarily to the province. Thus, no matter how unpleasant it was for me, I distanced myself from literary circles and for a while lost track of Khrelkov. However, what I learned later alarmed me. It turned out that Khrelkov had suffered a hemorrhage and, at the insistence of the doctors and people close to him, had finally agreed to be admitted to a sanatorium. And indeed, I heard afterwards that he had gone for treatment in Iskrets, later, I think, in Plovdiv and some other places, and in the summer of 1937 I quite unexpectedly found him in Chepino-Banya at the home of my classmate and friend Vasil Sotirov - an unusually kind-hearted and generous man, with whom he had come into contact through some unspeakable means. As a result of these efforts, the acute attacks of the disease were stopped, but his health still remained irreparable. There was no way he could even think of returning to normal life, so with the help of close people Khrelkov had settled in Gorna Banya - at first only for treatment, and then as a permanent residence. It was here, precisely with his behavior and his intransigence, that he moved from literature, where he had already made a name for himself, to another field, which I would call a literary legend.

One of the first translators of Soviet literature in our country, from the time of its penetration in the 1920s, was Nikolai Khrelkov. A close friend of G. Milev, Khrelkov collaborated in his magazines, Libra (1919-1922) and Flame (1924-1925), mainly with articles and translations from Russian Soviet poetry. This activity of N. Khrelkov, which at that period completely absorbed the attention of our poet, was not appreciated in its merits - it was either ignored or considered as part of his fascination with the Russian symbolists. In fact, the author of Midnight Congress, like Geo Milev, turned his gaze to the young Soviet art. It attracted him with its revolutionary call, with its ideas and innovation.