талантливо

They say that people's names are sometimes so closely associated with their personality that it is difficult to imagine a familiar person with another name. I think this is also true of good books and their characters. "Under the Yoke" cannot be named by us otherwise than as the poet called it. We cannot imagine Boycho Ognyanov and Dr. Sokolov otherwise than with the names with which they entered history. And if we nevertheless succumb to an illusion with people, then with books and literary images we are always dealing with a regularity. And this regularity, it seems to me, is the presence of that real aesthetic coating that always exists between conception and execution in every talented book, in every significant image. Milena Tsaneva has titled her first separate book "From the Poetic World of Ivan Vazov". Along with the subtitle - literary-critical articles - this title suddenly reveals both the intention of the entire book and the aesthetic scope of its content. With the title chosen in this way, the author does not promise much. And, thank God, we have had enough of pretentious titles that promise a lot but do not deliver even half of what was expected. This is not the case with M. Tsaneva. She does not undertake to study the entire mountain before mastering its approaches. She does not approach Vazov's legacy with the self-confidence of a historian, nor does she promise to be exhaustive within the framework of a monograph. Her task is more modest. Captivated by Vazov's poetic world, she wants to share with us both her joy from direct contact with some countries only from the rich, diverse and instructive world of the artist, and her excitement about some unresolved issues. A modesty worthy of respect. Because behind the apparent simplicity of the definition - literary-critical articles - lies a clearly realized aesthetic concept, which is proven by the way of specific observations and reflections on Vazov's poetic world. That is why it would be at least hasty to think that M. Tsaneva's book is simply a series of separate articles, written on different occasions and published in different places, which the author now presents to her readers collected together. Sometimes this is how it happens - different articles are collected and published as a separate book, which is united by nothing else except the two covers. A careful reading of the book "From the poetic world of Ivan Vazov" shows that she makes a happy exception. Here, the commonality that unites the individual articles is neither in the thematic object" nor in the external chronological sequence. It is elsewhere - in the unified aesthetic concept, in the original interpretation of the subject, in the special, emphatically personal author's vision and assessment. This gives the book a significance that goes beyond the framework of the literary-critical analysis of individual works and brings it closer to scientific-theoretical research, while preserving the freshness of immediate perceptions and emotional outbursts. It can be said that M. Tsaneva happily combines the "strict" view of the scientist with the restless heart of the poet. Perhaps this individual attitude of the "critical apparatus" also determines the special charm of her style - as scientific as it is expressive, equally strong in theoretical-philosophical generalizations and in specific aesthetic judgments. Being "readable", M. Tsaneva's style is not lightly essayistic. The elegance of the phrase is always based on the depth of thought, the categoricalness of the assessments, the persuasiveness of the arguments. And that is why, I will repeat again, her individual articles do not carry an anniversary gloss, but a sharp feeling of the power and beauty of the considered artistic phenomena, transformed into a convincing ideological and aesthetic analysis. And this is precisely the strength of M. Tsaneva as a connoisseur. She knows how to introduce effortlessly into the world of art, creating an emotional atmosphere in which she immerses everything - both the author and the problems considered, and the reader. And to make her notes, develop her thoughts, impose her assessments without unnecessary critical pathos, without inflated erudition and irritating ostentation. One example from the study of "Epic of the Forgotten" is enough to present the author: "Epic of the Forgotten" is a classic work of the elevated heroic-romantic style. Here the heroes appear with their halo of heroes, standing in the pose in which the monuments immortalize them. Of course, no one would undertake to recommend as universally obligatory one single approach to the image of the heroic. But still, it seems to me, one cannot fail to note that Vazov's solemn, pathetic style has its own particularly deep psychological basis.