славянско

Professor Emil Georgiev possesses an energetic and fresh pen, he is not alien to the polemical passion of the publicist and the pioneer, and all this - as in this case - combined with a rich erudition and a Marxist worldview, assigns him a leading and leading place among the figures of our and international Slavic studies. At the same time, his long-standing work as a professor at the Department of Slavic Literatures at Sofia University helped to build a number of young Slavic scholars. One of his latest books, "General and Comparative Slavic Literary Studies", is based on lectures read to students. But Professor E. Georgiev does not stop at facts, he is not satisfied with just discovering, researching and analyzing them, but above all illuminates them in a literary-theoretical aspect and outlines the path of a general and comparative examination of literary phenomena. His book, divided into chapters-essays, each of which claims to be independent, is written on the basis of abundant critical and factual material. It is rich in valuable bibliographical and literary references, which once again emphasize its academicity. But the original interpretation and creative assimilation and generalization of the works used have helped the essays to go beyond the framework of a teaching aid and to turn the book into a significant and valuable contribution to literary science and Slavic studies. Of course, the entire diversity and breadth of Slavic literary relationships are not and cannot be under the gaze of only one scholar, to be highlighted in only one scientific work, no matter how voluminous it may be. Prof. E. Georgiev himself defines the framework of his scientific research, bringing to the fore, first of all, moments of the Bulgarian-Slavic literary community in the era of the Bulgarian Revival.

Two recent international congresses - the Belgrade Congress of the (international) Association for the Comparative History of Literature (ASIL), 1967, and the Prague Sixth International Congress of Slavists, 1968, updated the issues of comparative literary studies, confronted us with the need to clarify our attitude to this science unequivocally. At the Belgrade Congress, a proposal was adopted to prepare a collective work on the comparative history of European literatures, the Literary Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences received powers from ASIL and the obligation to coordinate the work scientifically and administratively, and in Budapest the first volume of a series of collections that examine preliminary problems is already being prepared for publication. At the Prague Congress, the Soviet delegation launched the idea of ​​writing a collective history of Slavic literatures, it seems to me, without achieving much success. Although each of the undertakings is independent in organizational terms, there is an internal connection between them. The success of the first undertaking should prompt us to develop the second: how Slavic literatures will be represented in the comparative history of European literatures will depend on the objectivity and scientific merits of Slavic literary history.