Стоян

There is a motto of Marx, which in Russian sounds like this: "Be yourself and go your own way!" There is no more appropriate motto for a person and an artist with firm and unshakable convictions, for a complete personality that is always organic in its manifestations and does not deviate from the chosen path. Sometimes this striving for fidelity to oneself can cost extraordinary efforts, great moral endurance and readiness for sacrifice. The upheavals of time, surprising tremors and storms can confuse the weaker and break the susceptible to insidious temptations, break his resistance and turn him from a subject into an object of events. However, the stronger will not submit to circumstances and will not give up his essence. For me, this motto radiates nobility unclouded by time, apostolic selflessness and consistency in his convictions. He has no relation to those who play in life as on a stage, and after each intermission they put on a new costume, after each act they take a higher note. We know from history that all revolutions and the eras that followed them had their knights and silent heroes, but also their inevitable grimaces - I think a German poet said this back in the last century.

The epistolary heritage has, as is well known, an important significance for illuminating the personality of a given social, political or cultural figure, for revealing his "peace of mind", the motives of his actions, etc., as well as for filling in the gaps or correcting the inaccuracies made in his biography. This is especially true for the period of formation, maturation of the creative personality, for which period there is usually very scarce or uncertain information. Hence the justified interest that is shown in the correspondence of prominent personalities both by the researcher and by the wide circle of readers.

The first contacts between Bulgarians and French people are lost somewhere in the Middle Ages... After the Great French Revolution, which shook the minds of the whole world, more echoes can be found in our country (due to slavery, they are distant and indirect) of the struggles of the French people for freedom and social justice, of the ideological searches of French society. But the facts of the indirect and concrete acquaintance with French literature and the first contacts and visible influences on individual public and literary figures, mainly those who studied or lived in France, date from the middle of the 19th century. And these contacts and influences are very diverse, go through different stages, have their own interesting history. In the present notes, we focus on those of our writers from the period after the Liberation of Bulgaria from Turkish slavery until the First World War, who studied in French schools, lived in France and began their creative path in a French environment with direct acquaintance and influence of French culture and literature. And one more thing that interests us above all is the concrete facts of this acquaintance: the respective city and university, the student environment and first meetings with foreign writers, the collaboration in the French press, etc., necessary both for enriching the civil biography of the writers, and, of course, for a more complete clarification of their first literary steps and their creative image in general. The impressions are the result mainly of visiting the places where the Bulgarian writers lived and studied, of those few traces that the past decades have spared... The following could be noted in advance: both with the most direct impact of the French social and cultural environment, and with the strongest influence of the diverse French literature on our writers, they do not lose their own national and individual appearance as creators. Even when, especially in the years immediately before the First World War, in the verses of our poets, carried away by symbolism, tones sound or images appear that are very similar to those of their French teachers, they still manage to preserve their Bulgarian face.

Stoyan Karolev's new book "In the World of Prose" is one of the most meaningful events in our literary life in recent years. It can be passed over and underestimated only by someone who suffers from congenital aesthetic myopia or is gripped by attacks of progressive professional egocentrism. It reveals with utmost clarity the most joyful trends in the development of contemporary, dialectically enriched aesthetic thinking, capable of penetrating the specific spheres of verbal art, of discerning the uniqueness of various creative talents, of achieving the truth about the artistic completeness and functionality of various stylistic and genre phenomena, about the aesthetic existence of the individual work of art, of the artistic image and suggestion. "In the World of Prose" affirms the legitimate aspiration of today's literary researcher to enter the holy of holies" of authors and books without prejudice and pretense, without aesthetic ecstasy and "artistic exaltation," but with increased intellectual insight into real ideological and aesthetic values, with increased emotional responsiveness to the artistic atmosphere of literary facts. Indicative of the peculiar renaissance that many of the leading representatives of our theory and criticism have experienced in the last decade, this book also represents an event in the author's personal biography: it contains the happy fruits of an inspired creative maturity.