Chavdar Dobrev

The development of contemporary Bulgarian literature and the emergence of various creative trends in it require an increasingly insistent consideration of the issues of style by our theoretical thought. We are far from the illusion that we will resolve the issue. We will be satisfied if we only manage to highlight some of its aspects. Style is a tough nut to crack. It does not obey dry dogmas, pedantic rationality. It must be approached with broader understandings of art. A separate formula cannot contain the wealth of styles. Before deriving laws about the essence, power and effect of style, we must penetrate the living tissue of artistic phenomena.

Recently, Minko Nikolov published his new book, dedicated to the work of Bertolt Brecht - the most significant playwright of the mid-twentieth century. This fact in itself shows how important the subject of the book is, what a gap this book fills in our contemporary art studies. The work on Brecht was also necessary because of a number of fruitless disputes about Brecht's methodology, which always revolved around Brecht, around arithmetic problems and never reached the heart, the meaning of the great creative work. These conversations created an atmosphere of suspicion in connection with the name of Brecht, they made gossip out of things that should be written about with the true mark of respect - with inner passion and civic conviction. I note this not only in connection with Minko Nikolov's book, but also because of something else. Because of that scientific conscientiousness that should be present in the assessment of great contemporary writers. It is true that Brecht does not fit into the needle's eye of narrow-mindedness and spiritual laziness, but this does not mean at all that we should deprive our socialist art of a Great Creator. Brecht may not belong to the geographical latitude that is closest to us, but he is a creature of the same forces that renew the climate, the spirit of our time. The struggle for Brecht, when it is led by a Marxist-critic, is not an apology for flat rationalism, it is only an affirmation of the rational, spiritual, active communist principle in Brecht's dramaturgy.

Issue 153 of "RLF" opens with a cartoon by Alexander Zhendov "The Path of Above-Class Art". The cartoon depicts an armchair on which Al. Tsankov is sitting with a bloody axe in his relaxed hand. An artist is crouching next to him, licking the bloodsucker's shoes with the tip of his tongue. This is the entire content of the cartoon. I don't know why, but this cartoon seems to me very characteristic of "RLF" - both with its definite attitude towards bourgeois writers, and with its hatred and sarcasm towards those who hide their cowardly desertion behind noisy and lush abstract-noble phraseology. This caricature also speaks of an artistic consciousness that judges the depicted fact as something foreign, from the other, "other" world, is proud of its assessment, of its ability to deny the servility, the pitiful conformism, the servility of the bourgeois priests of art.

In this article I will touch upon only some issues from the history of Bulgarian drama, related mainly to its striving to generalize, to reach the foundations of historical truth. Of course, a number of problems of the complex historical development of our dramaturgy will remain outside the scope of the article. I will begin with the already well-known fact that our national dramaturgy lags behind our poetry and prose. Our poetry has such representatives as Hr. Botev, P. K. Yavorov, Hr. Smirnenski, D. Debelyanov and N. Vaptsarov, in the field of prose Iv. Vazov, Al. Konstantinov, Elin Pelin, Yor. Yovkov and others have worked, and our best dramas have been created by writers for whom dramatic creativity has sometimes been, so to speak, a second or third passion.

Often in our arguments about contemporary Bulgarian drama we tend to fall into extremes. In moments of good mood we only praise it, in bad moods we pour reproach after reproach. The gesture of excessive tolerance in such cases suddenly turns into caustic and witty malice. However, if we abandon the paradoxes and one-sided analogies with the work of today's greatest European playwrights, we cannot help but acknowledge several important facts. First, after September 9, 1944, an internal explosion took place in Bulgarian drama. It came along the line of ideas, and this is already certain evidence of significant changes in the very nature of drama. Since drama is an active history of society, it could not remain aloof from the problems that were posed by the September 9th people's revolution. Even more. It found itself at the center of the socio-political struggles that decided the fate and future of the Bulgarian people. In this sense, it also appeared as a continuation of the basic spirit of our native dramaturgy - of its social tone and commitment. And yet, here one more circumstance must be taken into account. While in poetry, fiction, painting, even in the theater we had bright examples of ideological communist art - Smirnensky, Vaptsarov, Karaslavov, Zhendov, Danovski - in dramaturgy the peaks of social pathos after Vazov were marked by the art of Yavorov at the end of the ten years and that of St. L. Kostov in the thirties. That is, by the creativity that did not set as its goal the uncompromising and effective struggle against the bourgeois world, more precisely, that did not fight in the name of the most progressive ideal of the era. The only more categorical example in this regard is Vaptsarov's play "The Ninth Wave", but it, unlike his innovative communist poems, conscientiously follows the spiritual structure of the classical Ibsen line in modern dramaturgy.

The new book by Lyubomir Tenev is anything but a boring, preoccupied and dry conversation about the art of theatre. Here too, the critic reveals his strongest 1 Macedonia, year IV, issue 2, 1869. 2 Macedonia, year IV, issue 10, 1869, 3 Macedonia, year IV, issue 30, 1870. strengths - the ability to analyze and motivate precisely theatrical phenomena, to subtly feel art. The latter quality gives L. Tenev an incomparable advantage - to perceive the shades of the artistic fact, to penetrate its transparent and delicate matter. In the approach of the critic 167 there is rigor, consistency, despite the apparent ease of language. Here I am not talking so much about pedantic conscientiousness, but about an inner predisposition to sharply and precisely reveal the phenomena, to their methodical unraveling. The imagination in this case is directed more towards the internal laws of the spectacle, the image, the play, and not so much towards random and playful ideas.

Atanas Natev's book "Contemporary Western Drama" appears after a number of publications by the same author on the theory of art and some problems of the new Bulgarian drama. This circumstance provides an opportunity in advance for a combination of the general aesthetic aspects of the issues with the more specific and current focus of the analysis. And I must emphasize that this feature is clearly evident in Atanas Natev's new book. Here the author has managed to examine the various works and authors with careful insight into the characteristic features, the main trends and directions of development. In relation to contemporary Western drama, the author was faced with a specific difficulty: the fact that the matter he examines is insufficiently studied in our country and is only partially known to the wider public, and even to specialists. This also defines a new task for Natev: let's call it cultural and educational, when he is obliged, along with the analysis, to follow in quite detail the content of the individual plays, retell individual episodes, actions, etc. At a different level of knowledge of this material, such deviations would seem superfluous and unnecessary additions to the aesthetics of a new phenomenon in contemporary dramaturgy. But the author was aware that he was obliged to pave the way himself, to be to a certain extent a popularizer of insufficiently known phenomena.

Vakhtangov as a fully developed artist with his own concept of the art of theater can be spoken of mainly in connection with his two last masterpieces - "Khadibuk" by A. N. and "Turandot" by K. Gotsi. Here he already reveals his understanding of the tasks of the new Soviet art, of the place of the director and the actor in it, of the relationship between the playwright and the theater, of the need to reach new social and psychological depths. It is quite natural that with these productions Vakhtangov managed to immortalize himself, to remain a symbol of a unified theatrical revolution, of a renaissance in Soviet art. Therefore, it is precisely these two performances that give us the right to examine in a generalized manner a number of more general questions of the art of theater, closely related to modernity.

I will not hide that I was moved at the time by this book - The Price of Gold". I touched the exalted soul of the unknown author, the assertive, angry, music cut into sharp and metallic sounds that does not flow, but drags you along with it. As if everything is a revelation that is impossible not to make. And I did not dare to write a single line! This story was so intimate and personal that it forced you to listen to it rather than discuss it. Later I met the author. It turned out that the first impression of the book was not accidental. That it really poured out the entire subjectivity of this man - nervous and painfully acute, with a subtle sense of beauty. It is impossible to talk calmly with Gencho Stoev. He keeps you on your guard, always challenges you and makes you argue. He assesses every fact from his own angle, makes it more unusual, by taking it out of the usual order. Being in his consciousness becomes a movement towards his inner understanding of the beautiful. Always conflicting! Harmony blinds his eyes and this makes him desire it even more ardently. That is why reconciliation touches him less often. His suffering is as if second nature. I have the feeling that G. Stoev is constantly self-analyzing, but not only to make an accurate assessment, but also to provoke pain, self-torment, reproach to himself and the world, in order to experience irritation, which increases the internal tension of thought.

Boyan Nichev is one of our contemporary critics who shows a certain interest in problematic thinking, in the complexity of literary phenomena. He combines a subtle critical observation and a talent for generalizing, for getting to the root of the relevant literary facts. In his writing, he is not spontaneous in the least, passion does not pursue him frantically. On the contrary, you feel how the mind slowly but persistently spreads before us the picture of the relevant literary reality, in order to then reach the regularities and new features of the whole. B. Nichev simply revels in the opportunity to enter the literary phenomenon, for him this is equal to an aesthetic experience. Therefore, he strives for the spiritual discovery to receive a corresponding plastic equivalent, to become visible, "visible" to the reader.