Olga Deykova

The creative development of an author consists in searching for and gradually revealing what is personally his. Along the way of this search, he will naturally come into contact with what has already been created and will take from it his own. Dimcho Debelyanov appeared in our literature in the first years of our century, when the Vazov tradition was gradually being displaced by the modern literary trends of the time. Debelyanov quickly oriented himself towards them, of course, after paying tribute to the tradition.

Dimcho Debelyanov established himself in our poetry as the continuator of a poetic tradition, established through the work of Vazov, Pencho Slaveykov, Yavorov, Kiril Hristov. At the time when Debelyanov began his career as a poet, poems were written in the usual rhythms of the syllabic system. Vazov had already imposed it and had used all its rhythmic schemes, trying not to go beyond their framework. He had, to a certain extent, "engraved the word in the step". Most of the poets of that time did not seem to feel that the accepted rhythmic schemes could be diversified. We leave aside, of course, Yavorov, who was a true innovator in terms of the technique of verse. He not only did not allow the usual stress of the word to be changed because of its place in the verse, nor did he allow it to be damaged, but he was the first to consciously and with a swing begin to diversify the rhythm of his verse and made the rhythmic movement an expression of the deepest inner content. Yavorov pointed out the entire musical wealth of Bulgarian poetic speech and the possibilities for the rhythmic refreshment of the syllabic system. The path that D. Debelyanov bravely set out on had already been paved. Debelyanov's creative period closed between the years 1906-1916. This was the time when in our country a struggle was waged in poetry against realism, accepted as obsolete, and when the belated echoes of French symbolism is making its way.