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There is hardly any other view of art that is more unanimously rejected than that of naturalistic aesthetics. According to the general conviction of specialists, art would commit suicide the moment it decided to put its harsh principles into practice. It would lose its soul - creativity. This conviction goes so far that today it is enough for a work of art to be called "naturalistic" to be considered compromised. Unlike other artistic concepts that have aroused sharp reactions at their appearance, but over time have imposed themselves on public opinion or, conversely, have been rejected only when they degenerated into fruitless norms that stifled the free flight of creative imagination, naturalism, both as an aesthetic and as an artistic practice, has been the subject of the most fierce attacks from its birth to the present day. Perhaps the basis of this constant hatred lies in its latent vitality, its comparatively easier adaptation to the criteria of elementary taste, or simply its not always clear distinction from another method of which it became the historical successor - realism. For it is a fact that when it appeared in France in the last century, naturalism was closely related to realism, that these two concepts were often used as synonyms. Their common struggle against the false classicism of official bourgeois art, against romanticism, against the ideal of universal beauty and the glorification of the past, their common cult of nature, truth and science, their love for the prosaic sides of reality, which until then had been considered unworthy and unacceptable as objects of artistic reproduction, quite naturally turned them not only in the eyes of the general public into manifestations of the same aesthetic concept, which is indifferent whether it is called "realism" or "naturalism". No one thought that there was anything essential that could distinguish the art of Flaubert from that of the Goncourt brothers and Zola, or the painting of Courbet and Millet from that of Manet and Degas. All were equally accused of lack of idealism, of vulgarity, of apotheosis of the ugly, of indecency, of blind copying of nature.

Sixty years ago, on November 16, 1907, the very next day after his arrival, Konstantin Velichkov died in Grenoble. Not only the last days, but the entire life and writing destiny of this public figure and writer of ours is connected with French culture and literature, with France in general. Let us recall the more important facts, adding some less known data about his death, extracted from the French press. Velichkov's first and at the same time the deepest and most lasting impressions of French literature, and indirectly also of the freedom-loving French spirit, were from the time of his studies at the French Lyceum in Constantinople. When the authorities asked for a young man from Pazardzhik to study at state expense, the city government unanimously proposed and sent Velichkov - who had already shown himself to be a capable and diligent student. And in September 1868, he entered the Lyceum Imperial Ottoman. At the same time and later, the following people studied here: Stoyan Mihaylovski, Georgi N. Zlatarski (the later famous professor-geologist), Hr. Genadiev, An. Frangia (political figures) and others. Organized according to the French model and with French teachers and educators, the lyceum gave its graduates the opportunity not only to learn French excellently, but also to become acquainted with French literature, with the rich and instructive history of the struggles of the French people for freedom.

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.