Boris Delchev

In the tense days when, for the second time after the liberation, Hainboaz entered our history with a different kind of fame, I was one of those who set out for the old Balkans to experience the birth of the new up close and to refresh themselves with the working enthusiasm of the twenty-year-olds. And since the nature of my literary expression does not allow me to recreate what I had experienced through the means of artistic expression, I had to justify my trip to the public through another type of cultural work. For more than ten days, I went around the Youth Brigades looking for those skilled in fiction, with the intention of providing them with creative assistance and at the same time establishing closer contact with the people. And indeed, we read their works, talked, argued. Thus, from my tour, which some friends mockingly called a "poet hunt," I took away many hopes and several handwritten pages of poems in which a certain literary gift was evident. A few weeks later, in a report about the experience, I found an opportunity to share my impressions with the readers and to say that not only new people were growing up in Hainboaz, but also new poets who carried within them something of the tension of the era "... I am convinced," I wrote, "that it is precisely this youth - still clumsy, still inexperienced - that will renew our country and our artistic creativity. It will create art in which the enthusiasm for work, love for the simple man, the creator of values, love for the homeland will pulsate - art that will combine in an inseparable unity the living world of objects and great ideas, great dreams for the future". And in order to point out the sprouts of a fresh imagery that promised something unsaid, I cited some of the brigadier's poems of a then unknown poet whom I had met by chance. Not long after, the author of these poems began to collaborate with our periodical, only to recently emerge as one of the sure hopes of our contemporary lyric poetry. Thus, in our fiction, as I expected, the name I had pronounced in my report, the name Ivan Radoe in...

From the partial publications that were made in the periodical press over the past two decades, we already knew about the literary conversations that the late Professor Spiridon Kazandjiev had with Yordan Yovkov, and in general we had certain impressions of them. However, these impressions were based on partial acquaintance with the text and were naturally fragmentary in nature. That is why the recently published book "Meetings and Conversations with Yordan Yovkov", which contains almost entirely the diary of Professor Kazandjiev (I say almost, since some passages have been omitted from it), now comes to satisfy our curiosity and introduce us to the spiritual world of one of the great Bulgarian writers. Yordan Yovkov, as is known, was neither particularly talkative nor particularly accessible. He did not easily fall into revelations and did not like literary confessions. Therefore, it was difficult to penetrate his creative laboratory and find out what his assessment of people, events and books was. This is precisely what determines the value of the diary "Meetings and Conversations with Yordan Yovkov": it speaks of facts and moods that we cannot glean from any other source - facts and moods that shed light on some very important aspects of the author's life and work.

It is difficult to find a Bulgarian writer of my generation who, in one way or another, has not gone through the literary school of Bojan Angelov. And it is easy to explain why this is so: barely having crossed the threshold of high school, through his "Stylistics" and his "Theory of Prose and Poetry" we first began to penetrate the technique of artistic creativity. However, this meeting with the author was necessitated by the requirements of a single program, pursued a single educational goal, and usually ended in the lower grades, without leading to any lasting reflections. Thus, most of us became acquainted with the textbook and teacher without getting to know his research and literary-critical assessments of Bulgarian writers. And if this is the case even with those who learned from his books, even less awareness can be expected from the younger generation: very often they have not even heard his name. That is why the collection "Literary Articles", which was published recently and contains some of Bozhan Angelov's more characteristic works, comes just in time to respond to a ripe need. It will help our new reader to become acquainted with a little-known writer, with whom until now mainly specialists have dealt, and at the same time it will enable many older readers to convince themselves that the author of some textbooks on literary criticism was not an ordinary dry theorist, as they seem to think from old memory, but was primarily concerned with the problems of living Bulgarian literature. The collection "Literary Articles" is divided into three sections, which combine similar works: on folklore (1), on the history of Bulgarian literature (II) and critical essays on some prominent Bulgarian writers (III). To the last section, without being connected by subject with the others, two articles on sensational literature have been added. Obviously, the aim of the compiler was to present the author in such a way that the reader, after getting acquainted with the book, would gain a relatively complete idea of ​​the main directions of his literary work. And it must be said that methodologically this approach is correct. However, I have one objection of a practical nature, which concerns part two of the book.

I have always been amazed by the almost incredible indifference with which many literary facts in our country are usually passed over. Unknown names appear, new books are published, questions are raised, and periodicals often not only do not write about them, but do not even note them. And this applies not only to translated literature, which for some unknown reason is not given any attention, but also to quite a few works by Bulgarian writers who are vitally connected with the development of our literary word. That is why, without having resigned myself to this practice, I have already become accustomed to this practice and I am not surprised that a critical book like "Four Fiction Writers" by Simeon Sultanov, which I had to edit as part of my official duties, remains unnoticed by the literary press for nearly a year and a half after its publication. Note, however: I say unnoticed, but not unnoticed by readers, which is something else. I emphasize this because I know for a fact that despite the disrespect shown towards it, this book made an impression on all those interested in literary criticism and was very well received. And if I return to it today, I do so not so much to fill some gap in the reader's mind, but rather for another, more important reason - to note some positions that are of a principled nature and give cause for reflection. First of all, anyone who has read "Four Fiction Writers" will agree that this is a complete book - a book with a physiognomy. It is known that, in the beginning, national Literature is created in the periodical press and is affirmed through it. And this applies not only to small types, not only to what is conceived by the malice of the day, but very often also to great literary works that leave a lasting mark behind them. That is why we can say about most Books that they are born twice - once on the pages of magazines and newspapers, often as a result of a commission, and a second time united by a single title in a common cover. However, since one can collect not only what is conceived and realized as a whole, but also what is the fruit of chance, in this second birth one often falls into passions and reaches an unwanted automatism. As a result, books appear that contain heterogeneous works that are difficult to unite not only in volume, by subject and by meaning, and even by genre. And this unacceptable practice, of course, affected literary criticism: here too, there is an effort to present to the reader everything that the author has written - even the literary notes in the daily newspapers and speeches at meetings. Thus, in recent years, quite a few voluminous collections of articles have appeared in our country, which are compiled in a very mechanical manner and, along with the significant, which deserves attention, also contain things that have no literary value. That is why Simeon Sultanov made an all the stronger impression with his efforts to deviate from a practice that sometimes seems insurmountable, and to present to the readers under one common title four uniform monographic essays on four prominent representatives of the Bulgarian short story: G. P. Stamatov, Georgi Raichev, Angel Karaliychev and Iliya Volen. In this way, he presented himself with a first book (if we do not count the separately published study on Angel Karaliychev) that no young critic has presented himself with in recent years - with a book that contains nothing accidental, nothing thoughtless, and speaks of such literary requirements that are usually the first sign of emerging creative maturity.

I think that it is sometimes difficult to judge the qualities of works of art, and even more so the moods of artists and readers, based solely on what is written about them. The world of art is much more extensive than is usually assumed, and the paths of artistic influence are much more complex than they seem at first glance, in order to encompass them from one or another observation post without falling into obsessions. Therefore, we very often see that, along with the names that we have surrounded with recognition, people also carry in their minds others that have remained outside our horizon, along with proven values, they also enjoy those that seem controversial to us, along with the pointed examples of civic and creative behavior worthy of imitation, they also admire those who do not bear the mark of heroism. On this basis, some forgotten artists, sometimes justly - sometimes unjustly, come to life through the memory of their acquaintances and sometimes even become legends in famous circles of admirers before their works have reached the average reader. When I say this, I will not say a word, I have in mind more than one case, but it is enough to mention just one that interests me at the moment and seems to me one of the most characteristic - it is enough to mention the case of Alexander Vutimsky. Alexander Vutimsky, as is known, lived in great poverty and died very young, barely twenty-four years old. Despite the efforts of relatives and friends, which some letters suggest, during his lifetime he was unable to publish his works in a separate book and present himself fully to readers. Thus, his poems remained for many years in the dusty pages of magazines or in some private archives, accessible only to a very narrow circle of poetry lovers. And surprisingly, this undeserved neglect lasted for a very long time - almost two decades after his death. Fate has not been kind to him this time either: between fasts he is the last of the benevolent friends of our world whom we have thought of. Yet it would be inaccurate to claim that during these years he remained among the forgotten - due to the nature of his poetry, which is difficult to connect with the tasks of modernity, he was rather silenced, forgotten forever. And indeed, if it is true that Alexander Vutimsky is a relatively new name for a large number of young readers, it is also true that he has often occupied a significant place in private conversations and literary discussions of recent years. The number of those who have had the opportunity to read him is small, but many are those who live with the memory of his poetry and his tragic fate. It may seem strange, but there is no doubt that this young man, who died early, before establishing himself as an artist, with his poetry and his personal fate, reflects on many of the living - and today we feel his presence in the moods, intonation and figurative thinking of some poets of his generation. Therefore, contrary to expectations, the small collection of his works, entitled "Poems", which was published two years ago (1960), came at least for the Literary circles not to discover and establish a name, but to respond with great delay to an already ripe interest. This book came to outline the real dimensions of a literary work, which was most often assessed in the 1960s. The Hoarseness of Memory and a Woman Already with a Legend.

It is hardly possible to communicate with painters without hearing a complaint that is repeated all too often when it comes to portraiture: "It is a pain to paint." And this complaint, so widespread, does not surprise anyone. If there are "painful" things in any work, they will obviously also manifest themselves in the efforts to recreate the human image. There is nothing unusual in the fact that a painter fails to discover in a certain model such qualities that do not nourish his creative imagination and do not excite his thirst for search, or vice versa - does not find the strength within himself to rise to the spiritual and plastic tasks that another model sets for him. In both cases he is confronted with difficulties that apply with equal force to all the arts and are considered something quite natural in creative practice. However, something else will seem more strange - that these difficulties apply to a certain extent also to certain manifestations of human activity that lie outside the scope of art. Such a manifestation is literary criticism, which, although in a different area of ​​spiritual interests, also has the task of discovering the characteristic in a person, taken as a creator of artistic values, and to outline his image with the means of the journalistic word. That is why the literary connoisseur, for whom to a certain extent the laws of inspiration also apply, in turn faces similar difficulties and in turn, for one reason or another, can say: "This author does not lend itself to me." At least I have had the opportunity to face such a failure more than once and give in. And I must admit that for many years one of the "tormenting" authors for me was none other than Radoj Ralin.

I vividly remember an incident from the first years after the war. At that time, the Writers' Union was located on Lege Street and had only two or three modest rooms, which could hardly accommodate even its administrative and editorial departments, which were still very small at that time. Therefore, when general meetings of the members were necessary, difficulties arose and it was necessary to seek temporary shelter under someone else's roof. Thus, somewhat unexpectedly, in March 1947, the general annual meeting was held in the large concert hall of Radio Sofia.

Every time I look up at the bookshelf where I keep everything without which it is difficult for me to imagine my everyday life, my gaze involuntarily falls on a small collection of poems in dove color, already faded by the years, which bears the familiar title "Birds in the Night". Miraculously surviving the bombings and the endless journeys from apartment to apartment, this collection of poems with an Art Nouveau cover, on which the bird of wisdom stands with calm self-confidence on a large letter P, contrasts somewhat unusually with its colorful young sisters and hides among them with a slightly old-fashioned shyness, not particularly characteristic of our time. Born in another era, very different from the current one, it comes with its presence not only to resurrect in my mind a bygone stage of our literature, but also to remind me of my first contact with Nikolay Liliev - one of the poets who had a certain influence on the spiritual biography of my generation.

In literature, as in ordinary life, one has casual acquaintances, very often people of considerable cultural value, whom, either due to a lack of spiritual affinity or due to an unfavorable combination of circumstances, one has not been able to get to know, appreciate and include in the circle of one's relatives and friends. For many years, Georgi Raichev was just such a casual acquaintance for me. Of course, like all young people of my generation who were interested in fiction, I heard this name very early - back in the blissful times of my adolescence, when it seemed to me that I held the world in my hands. Even then, I had the opportunity more than once to read what Raichev published in periodicals and to leaf through his books - "The Little World", "Queen Neranza", and that "Song of the Forest", which gave rise to talk about him once again. However, these meetings were random in nature and I don't know why they didn't arouse in me a more lasting interest in the writer's personality and work.

Years ago, a fellow writer, with whom we used to go to Paris to gather culture in our youth, spoke in the magazine "Izkustvo" about his meeting with the great French poet Paul Eluard during the troubled year of 1939. I remember even now that with his account of what happened, he not only revived in my mind some dormant memories of our stay in France, but also awakened in me a painful feeling of regret that often overwhelms me on such occasions - regret that due to clumsiness and bad luck I had missed something irreparable this time too. Fortunately, the future turned out to be more generous to me and wished to correct the mistake of the past: although very late, I had the opportunity not only to meet Eluard, but in connection with a common work and to get closer to him, to breathe for a short time his spiritual and creative atmosphere, and even to become an involuntary witness to his last hours. Because of all this, I have lived with his image and for years now I have felt an urgent need to share with you my impressions of the man and the poet, whom, not only because of the geographical distance between us, I once considered untouchable. Needless to say, long before I saw Éluard, I had already heard of him and was to some extent familiar with his poetry. But unfortunately, for reasons beyond my control, even this purely literary meeting also took place very late - at a time when the poet's name had gained wide fame not only in France but also far beyond its borders.

It was one morning in the first days of September, we had breakfasted at one of the coastal hotels of Montreux, where we had happened to be at night, and after taking a short walk through the park to enjoy the Swiss nature, we set off again. We had a long journey to Paris ahead of us, but at the same time we did not want to miss a happy opportunity - to visit the famous Chillon Castle, which we had passed the night before. We had no time to waste, so we had to choose quickly. And, of course, we chose what could turn out to be unique. So instead of heading for Lausanne, as prudence dictated, we turned in the opposite direction and headed for Chillon. And suddenly we were once again immersed in the Swiss landscape: on the right the calm azure expanse of Leman, on the left the foothills of the Swiss Alps, and in the far southeast the feminine cones of the Danne-du-Midi, slightly gilded by the September sun. I looked at this picture, full of picturesque grandeur, and imperceptibly the visible began to give way to an excitement that the night's sleep had interrupted. As at the first meeting with the snow-capped mountains, I felt myself once again in the spiritual and emotional atmosphere of one of my poets, who had once passed through here and had populated the Alpine landscape with the shadows of his imagination. But instead of the gloomy ghosts of the previous evening, now, under the influence of the morning clarity, I had involuntarily sought in it that which foreshadowed the end of a nightmarish night. And I had found it in these two verses that unexpectedly floated into my mind:

Unexpectedly for myself, about a month or a month and a half after the meeting at the Royal aperitif, a not very pleasant change occurred in my life. Since I had to prepare for a state exam, which more than any other exam implies better working conditions and less occupation with side pursuits, I thought about what to do and, finding no other way out, decided to return temporarily to the province. Thus, no matter how unpleasant it was for me, I distanced myself from literary circles and for a while lost track of Khrelkov. However, what I learned later alarmed me. It turned out that Khrelkov had suffered a hemorrhage and, at the insistence of the doctors and people close to him, had finally agreed to be admitted to a sanatorium. And indeed, I heard afterwards that he had gone for treatment in Iskrets, later, I think, in Plovdiv and some other places, and in the summer of 1937 I quite unexpectedly found him in Chepino-Banya at the home of my classmate and friend Vasil Sotirov - an unusually kind-hearted and generous man, with whom he had come into contact through some unspeakable means. As a result of these efforts, the acute attacks of the disease were stopped, but his health still remained irreparable. There was no way he could even think of returning to normal life, so with the help of close people Khrelkov had settled in Gorna Banya - at first only for treatment, and then as a permanent residence. It was here, precisely with his behavior and his intransigence, that he moved from literature, where he had already made a name for himself, to another field, which I would call a literary legend.

When it comes to Alexander Balabanov, the first thing that comes to mind is the celebration of the Czech writer and diplomat František Kubka - the last of the series of celebrations that the Union of Bulgarian Writers organized in the spring of 1946 in the salons of the Bulgarian-Soviet Society. Of course, I knew Balabanov for a long time before that. I first remember one of his stories on ancient Greek literature from the idyllic times of my student days in Pazardzhik. His fame as an eccentric and absent-minded person was already spreading and the audience had filled the "Videlina" community center, warned by the rumor that they would hear an amusing professor. I have forgotten the details, but I well remember the joyful excitement of the listeners from that strange combination of the grotesque and the serious, which was a basic feature of his entire personality. What we learned from this story - I don't know, but one thing was indisputable: it turned out that ancient Greek literature is not as uninteresting and distant from us as some textbooks presented it to us. A few years later, already as a student in Sofia, I had the opportunity to meet Balabanov almost every day. I still see him anxious and perpetually in a hurry, moving along Tsar Osvoboditel Boulevard with a bag in his hand, a carelessly placed soft hat on his head, under which his curly, uncombed hair peeked out, surrounded by students and acquaintances, talking excitedly or arguing with some imaginary opponent. I even had the opportunity to stop in front of the University and watch with defiant curiosity whether he took off his galoshes before getting on the tram, as the legend created around him claimed. And after September 9th, I don't know exactly when or how, we became close, and since we lived in the same neighborhood, we would walk the distance from the then club of cultural figures to the Doctor's Garden almost every evening. And despite all this, when it comes to him, I first remember that celebration on Mizia Street, which I mentioned.

Still a beardless high school student from the countryside, when both distance and circumstances separated me from those extraordinary people who write books and who at that time were for me a kind of unattainable human beings, I had the chance privilege of meeting Dimitar Polyanov and talking to him for nearly half an hour. So he is the first writer with whom I established any direct contact. Moreover, if I did not consider that two years earlier in Rakitovo my acquaintances had pointed out to me from afar the then young K. Konstantinov, I could say that he was the first writer I had ever seen. However, I would like to go back a little and begin my story with another meeting - the meeting not with the man, but with the author and editor, which took place much earlier and without which the second one would hardly ever have taken place.