Mihail Arnaudov

The work of B. St. Angelov, senior research associate at the Institute of Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, deals with the Bulgarian writers of the 18th century, little studied or completely unknown to the educated circles in our country, although they represent a significant interest for the construction of the Bulgarian literary and cultural history. While the most prominent figures of this era, Paisii of Hilendar and Sophrony of Vrachan, have long entered the horizon of scientific researchers and the enlightened society, being examined in detail in literature textbooks, their more modest in merits, but still worthy of attention, their predecessors, contemporaries or closest followers, have long remained in the shadows, despite their valuable contributions to the development of our literature and the growth of education or of national and civic consciousness. To honor these forgotten workers of the pen, smaller or larger links in the chain of the historical process, remained the duty of the specialists who undertook to follow this process conscientiously and correctly. The work of B. Angelov comes to fill a significant gap here.

I first met Kiril Hristov (1875-1944) in the autumn of 1896, when I was a student at the University, and he had published his Songs and Sighs in the magazine Misl and in a separate booklet. He had just returned from Italy, where he had spent about a year as a student at a naval academy, and had renewed his friendship with Dr. Krastev, Pencho Slaveykov, Petko Karavelov and Aleko Konstantinov, in whom he had valuable patrons and friends. Having left the seventh grade of high school prematurely, he was now coming to pass his failed matriculation exam, in order to then enroll in the University as a law student. The subject of great attention in literary circles, he had become a favorite of a part of the youth with his lyrics, which revealed his passionate personal temperament and reflected the individualistic or social sentiments of a new generation that had begun to shake off the aesthetic prejudices of the older one. After his trip to Italy and other Western countries, Hristov stayed for a longer time in his homeland, changing various official positions, each more burdensome for him, in accordance with his will for an independent life and free creativity.

In the person of La Rochefoucauld we must see not only the great writer, who showed in his maxims and maxims a subtle observation and original wit, but also the proud worldly man, whose motto is "honor and glory" and whose activity is mainly in military enterprises and dangerous conspiracies. The writer here appears relatively late, only when all hope for success in the political field is lost and when severe disappointments and physical infirmities force the strong-willed man to withdraw into a quiet distance from the turbulent public life. Very indicative of the true ambition of La Rochefoucauld is the fact that he decided to print his famous collection of Reflections from 1665 when he had reached the age of 52 and that the reason for this was the appearance - without the knowledge and consent of the author - of a "bad copy" of his manuscript, capable of giving a distorted opinion of the original. He did not aspire to the laurels of a writer in the least, although he was easily able to write poems and tried with success to compose memoirs. He sought his true glory in exploits with the sword: he always considered the art of war "nobler and more glorious" than the art of speech. In order to understand not only this preference, but also the spiritual face of Laroche Foucault in general, it is necessary to cast a cursory glance at the life destiny of the man who occupied such a prominent place in the literary history of the French 17th century.

In book 2 of Literary Thought, volume IX (1965), pp. 73-99, I presented part of a biographical-psychological survey of Kiril Hristov, which concerns some important moments in the internal and external history of his poetic work. Now I offer another part of this survey, with mainly biographical data and notes on my meetings and conversations with the poet. An important addition to this material would be my correspondence with the poet, in which questions of a biographical and psychological nature related to the origin of his literary works are often touched upon. My survey from 1914-1915, continued in 1921, mainly concerns the childhood, student life and the early period of Hristov's work. As brief as it is, it comes to supplement the poet's testimonies and confessions to other people, as well as what he published on this part in various memoirs and articles. My diary with notes on meetings and conversations with the poet is not is kept consistently, but it may have some value as a direct reflection of what the poet thought and did. However cursory and accidental these notes may be, they would contribute something to an insight into the character and work of a person who occupies a significant place in our literature of the period between 1894 and 1944.

The proposed work, which has 312 pages in total, represents an important contribution to the general Literary Studies in our country. Although similar studies have been attempted earlier by writers and scholars who were interested in Bulgarian-German literary relations, the study by the Germanist Stefan Stanchev has the great advantage that it covers a larger period of translations and research and that it examines the problems of the penetration and assessment of Goethe's works in our country from a strictly critical and consistently advanced standpoint. What is special in this case is that the author everywhere brings the perception of Goethe in Bulgaria 1.St. Iv. Stanchev, Goethe in Bulgaria, part I, II, III. Yearbook of Sofia University, volume LVII and LIX Sofia, drzh. Publishing House Nauka i izkustvo, 1963-1965, pp. 150, 74 and 88. 140 in close connection with the overall process of literary life in our country, perceiving the dependence of the choice and interpretation of Goethe's works on the character and directions of the poetic creativity and the literary views of the Bulgarian writers. Accordingly, Stanchev's work includes, compositionally speaking, four chapters: 1. Translations until the Liberation; 2. Translations and literary-critical views until the October Revolution; 3. Goethe in our country until September 9, 1944 and 4. The same theme in literature about Goethe until recent times. A detailed bibliography finally complements the broad plan of the study. Goethe himself, with his comprehensive literary education and the rapid spread of his works in numerous translations into various languages, had more than once the occasion to pronounce on the importance of Literary communication between nations and on the meaning and justification of translations. Especially during the last period of his life, when Goethe was already one of the most recognized representatives of his native literature in all cultural countries, he felt more and more strongly the need to include his work in the scope of the new "world literature", making this Literature accessible everywhere, despite the diversity of national languages. Goethe passionately advocated the introduction of international solidarity in the name of a common artistic culture and the great idea of ​​fraternizing nations through art and science capable of enhancing human dignity.