Музиката

Returning to Yovkov - after Vazov and Elin Pelin - always awakens a keen sense of his unique character as an artist. When we compare Vazov and Elin Pelin, it is natural to deal with similarities and differences, to speak of a natural step forward in the development of the short story. When we get to Yovkov, all this starts to sound too general and approximate. The step forward is present here too. But with him it is not only a step forward, but also a step "aside". The similarities and differences here turn out to be more indirect and deeper, precisely because they are intricately mediated by Yovkov's artistic individuality. Indeed, Yovkov also relied on Vazov - at least to the extent that Elin Pelin also relied on him. And Yovkov, although he writes stories about ten years after Elin Pelin, strictly speaking, has no other national school and no other heritage behind him, except the Vazovs, and no other example alongside him - except Elin Pelin. And yet Yovkov stubbornly, centimeter by centimeter, for twenty years in a row, breaks his artistic path further and further away from the Vazov-Elin Pelin highway. And the reader feels that the separate comparisons between them and him would yield even less than between Vazov and Elin Pelin, if they had not gone through the understanding of the whole; that before being decomposed into similarities and differences, - precisely Yovkov more than anyone else - must be felt in his peculiarly secluded, in comparison with the first Two, almost closed artistic system.