семейна

Even during her lifetime, Svetoslava Slaveykova managed to find and collect memories from numerous relatives, friends, writers, artists and public figures with whom Pencho Slaveykov was in contact. Most of these people are now deceased and their memories, which seemed insufficiently interesting to us ten years ago, today far from correspond to our then-present view. On the contrary. Although not written quite "literarily", the spirit of the times lives in them, they speak the language of the era. Particularly interesting are those of them that concern the native environment and atmosphere in which the poet lived, the interesting image of his mother - Irina Slaveykova, the last years of his father's life, the house and their everyday life in Tryavna, Tarnovo and Sofia. What was left by Ekaterina Karavelova, who characterizes the poet's mother with only one word - a good Bulgarian woman, is irreplaceable. And this really seems to be her most typical quality. She is Bulgarian in everything - in her proud patience, in her persistent work capacity, and in her unyielding character. Unfortunately, however, the memories that we are publishing here from Karavelova are only a draft excerpt from one of her articles, intended for the collection that was to be published on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the death of Pencho Slaveykov. The collection never saw the light of day. The memories were lost. After some time, when Svetoslava Slaveykova visited Karavelova with a request to tell her something about her grandmother's life, she, who was already nearing the end of her life, replied: "I can't remember anything anymore, I wrote everything back then." We report this, in the hope that it is still possible that Ekaterina Karavelova's memories may be found accidentally forgotten in some archive or editorial office.