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and for me, civic poetry is an inseparable part of national poetry, simultaneously party, patriotic, heroic, expressing the excitement of the people in moments of victory or danger, through images of individual heroes or an entire era. Such is the poetry of Botev ("Farewell", "Hadji Dimitar"), of Vazov ("Epic of the Forgotten"), of Mayakovsky ("Vladimir Ilyich Lenin"), where the excitement of the people's soul, the dictates of the time, the struggle for a new life are embedded.

Bulgarian civic poetry has a relatively long and glorious tradition. It began at the beginning of our national revival and continues to this day. The brightest works of our poetry from Hristo Botev to the present day bear a clearly civic character. Of course, every era has its own peculiarities, its own problems. Some were the problems of the time of Botev and Vazov, others are the problems that excite our contemporaries. After the October Revolution, our civic poetry marked a rapid rise. In the work of such colossus of our poetry as Hristo Smirnenski, Geo Milev, the poets of the 1930s with the brightest representative - our national hero Nikola Vaptsarov, the great excitements, thoughts and dreams of our people find vivid expression. Our revolutionary poetry of the twenties and thirties with its best achievements was civic lyrics in the best, I would say, in the noblest sense of this concept. Socialist humanism was the soul of this poetry.

I think that many Bulgarian poets could rightly take part in this conversation. With the wealth of their literary experience, they would enrich our conversation. I will try to answer the questions posed, based not so much on my personal creative practice as on some observations on our poetry.

For me, civic poetry is above all a revelation, above all a confession. If we have to tell the whole truth - that which is not a confession and revelation in the work of a poet cannot bear the sacred name of "the poet's sincerity". I admit that these thoughts can be attacked from many positions, but it is time to start calling things by their true names. In this sense, I am not afraid of any replicas and opponents, as long as there is no desire to distort what I said in this conversation. I have always been impressed by the attempt to mechanically distinguish civic from other themes in the poet's work. There is nothing wrong with this, especially when we consider the existing genre specificity. The bad and condemnable thing is that once the civic position of the artist is separated as a theme, it is often approached as a "special" theme, a "special" theme that can be built with other types of expressive means. You see, some try to assert, this topic is close to the concerns and aspirations of the people, of society, of the party, it cannot be approached intimately, secretly. And because it cannot be approached intimately and secretly, expressing one's own thoughts and feelings, it is approached thesesically, loudly, often dryly and unconvincingly.

I start with the last question, because I think it is very important. Is there a difference between intimate and civic poetry? As much as we would like not to see a difference, it does exist. I do not agree that every poem that is imbued with intimacy should be called intimate poetry. In "Fight" and "Farewell," Hristo Botev is intimate, but hardly anyone would dare to include these poems in intimate poetry. When we talk about intimate poetry, we mean that poetry that is born in the sphere of personal relationships. Mother and beloved, relatives and acquaintances, friends and comrades - these are the ones who cause intimate excitement in us. For all their significance, they do not affect other people or society. Perhaps I will be clearer if I cite as an example the poem dedicated to A. P. Kern by Pushkin. It is addressed only to her and to no one else. Here the world is closed between two people. Civic poetry is something else. When Pushkin wrote "To the Slanderers of Russia," he was not thinking only of his beloved, or even of his narrow circle of friends and acquaintances, but of all the people of Russia, of the entire nation, of the state, and of his fatherland.