Mariya Argirova

One of the most solid Western publications, which represents the new trends in bourgeois literature, in bourgeois aesthetic and philosophical thought, is the magazine "Merkur" published in Stuttgart, the Federal Republic of Germany. In it we will find articles and materials on all those issues that are currently being discussed and speculated on in the West, and attempts are being made to somehow renew the well-known and already outdated idealistic theories. In art, the positions of the so-called avant-garde are especially discussed. The concept of "avant-gardism" has acquired such a broad meaning in the articles of Western authors that they interpret it and turn it into a platform for the most diverse points of view.

The works of the young generation of German writers have recently aroused an increasingly lively and deserved interest among the literary community and reading circles in the GDR. They are at the center of creative discussions when discussing the literary reflection of the immediate socialist everyday life and the new moral qualities of human relations that are taking shape in it. These works are also used as a starting point when talking about certain trends in the literary process, about the search for more original means of expression - linguistic, stylistic and compositional, as well as about a new "feeling of life" in literature. Of course, there can be no question of any ideological or principled creative differences between the different generations of writers in the GDR. Indeed, the older generation, which as the bearer of proletarian-revolutionary traditions rendered invaluable services to the creation of socialist German literature, in its new works less often develops the problems of our time in all its contradictions and originality. Usually the limit of its thematic amplitude is 1945. (There are, of course, exceptions such as Hans Marchvitsa, Willi Bredel and especially Anna Zegers. Her novel "The Decision", known in translation to the Bulgarian reader, is an exciting epic about the years 1947-1951, i.e., about that decisive stage of (the most recent history of the GDR, when the first German workers' and peasants' state was created, developed and strengthened.) The middle generation, although very thin since the time of fascism and war, is more active in mastering contemporary themes. It is enough to mention only the works of Franz Fuemann or "Love Story" by Yuri Brezan, a novel that, according to critics, belongs to the most beautiful things created here in recent times. And yet the greatest aspiration for current issues, the greatest inclusion with the new time and identification with the new society of the GDR is felt in the work of young writers. They continued the traditions created from 1952 to 1959 in mastering the socialist reality of today's, higher stage of the development of German literature.