Lyuben Georgiev

Of the entire literary heritage of P. Yu. Todorov, his idylls and dramas represent the most valuable, the most significant part. And at the same time - the most contradictory, the most difficult to explain, because all the strengths and weaknesses of the writer's worldview and method are intertwined in it. You read "Nesretnik" or "Zmeyno" and you struggle to determine where realism ends and romanticism begins, you struggle to distinguish the democratic from the individualistic trends, to separate ours from the foreign, the commercial, the imported. Vain efforts - there is no boundary between the one and the other; qualities and shortcomings constantly flow together. Because these are qualities and shortcomings for us, from our, from a modern point of view. For the writer, both democracy and modernism are creeds, his aesthetic understandings represent a strange mixture of contradictory elements, some of which we will accept, and others we will reject completely. We would not be able to deal with this complex and delicate matter if we remained only in the views of the author's plan, if we were content only with outlining his intentions. The work of a contradictory artist is always richer than his own aesthetic views and declarations. This is also the case with P. Yu. Todorov. Because it reflects reality, the vital content breaks the framework of the literary school and often presents us with nuances and suggestions that even the author did not intend to give. In such cases, we must look at the works more broadly, evaluate them according to the ideas and images embedded in them, according to their impact on the contemporary reader, according to the objective results that are often obtained regardless of the subjective intentions of the author. This is especially necessary for the idylls of P. Yu. Todorov. Because in many cases we will value the objective result more highly than the writer's intention, we will prefer the relative independence of the artistic image to the actual intention of the creator. For us, what he created is more important than what he wanted to create.

There is hardly another writer in Bulgarian literature whose life and work have sparked such irreconcilable disputes as Yavorov. As soon as his name is mentioned, polemics flare up, perceptions cross paths, it is difficult to find a common language and much more difficult to find a common assessment. Not that anyone today disputes his civic and creative work as a whole - the poet and revolutionary have remained forever in the hearts and memories of the people. But there is no other great Bulgarian creator so contradictory and so difficult to explain. Moreover, his life path is so strewn with twists and turns, intersected with so many destinies; his work confuses and upsets even the most perfect schemes and artificial constructions... It slips away every time someone tries to put some decent literary uniform on him. It does not fit into it, tears it apart at all the seams and continues to exist outside it and create endless difficulties for literary historians and theorists. This is so, it seems to me, because every time we struggle to see the poet and the man not as he is, but as we want him to be. Each of us knows Yavorov so personally that he has created his own idea of ​​him. And it is natural that it will very rarely coincide completely with what we constantly read and hear about the poet. We are impatient and strictly demand that everyone see in Yavorov exactly what we see ourselves. If such coverage is not obtained, we get angry and are ready to fight for Yavorov... It is quite natural in this situation that a book about P. K. Yavorov will arouse great controversy. Even more so a book like that by M. Kremen, which enters a delicate area where so many views and interests are intertwined. How difficult it is to take an objective and correct position, how painful it is to show elementary tolerance (not uncriticality, however) towards someone else's interpretation, how tempting the temptation is to fall into the position of a person who necessarily wants from researchers only what he himself considers to be the most correct... Now the disputes surrounding this book have subsided and, as the noise has died down, I think we can now calmly, without prejudice and critically approach M. Kremen's book, to see and soberly assess both its positive and negative sides.

The feuilletons occupy the most significant place among the poet's prose. Both in volume and in importance. If in Smirnenski's lyrics there are four humoresques and satires for every non-humorous poem, in his prose the number of feuilletons and zlobodnevki compared to that of stories and impressions is even greater. This shows that, in addition to being a poet, Smirnenski systematically, consciously and continuously developed as a feuilletonist. Here he also follows a tradition inherited from Botev. As a genre, the feuilleton is widely represented in Bulgarian literature. The active civic consciousness of our writers of the past directs them to use the most efficient satirical weapon for quickly and surely defeating the enemy, for instantly exposing vice. From a journalistic genre with a sharp publicistic focus, the feuilleton gradually turns into a work of art, in which memorable images and characters are concisely and vividly outlined. Incidentally, the elements of artistry and publicism are so closely connected with each other that it would perhaps be most correct to speak of artistic publicism in Bulgarian literature. There are no strict barriers and barriers; the genres flow into each other. Only in a conditional sense can one speak of artistic and publicistic feuilleton - to the extent that one or another element predominates in the individual work. Hristo Botev uses the feuilleton form both for the direct publicistic-satirical expression of his thoughts and ideas, and for the creation of negative human types. Aleko Konstantinov, who has made great contributions to the development and improvement of this genre in our literature, is also following in his footsteps. In the acute political clashes after the liberation, the feuilleton did not leave the pages of the newspapers. It would not be an exaggeration to say that there was hardly a Bulgarian writer of that time who did not leave his name or pseudonym under the regular column with the feuilletons. After Aleko's death, one name stands out brightly among the authors-feuilletonists - Georgi Kirkov. Botev, Aleko Konstan and Georgi Kirkov were Smirnensky's teachers, their traditions continued by his contemporaries in the new historical environment. Of course, he was influenced by Kyulyavkov, his proletarian feuilletonists (D. I. Polyanov, Krum).

The people are inseparable from their history, just as a person is from his past. You may meet people without a past somewhere, but there is no people without a history. They live with us and in us - the dead. Those who were not dead during their lifetime, who linked their lives with the fate of the people. Singers sing about them. Earth and sky, beasts and nature pity them. "The world of our dead is richer than the world of our living" - one of our writers wrote some time ago, discovering a truth. The fate of a person is the fate of the people. We work and go to the cinema, listen to the radio and talk on the phone with our loved ones on the other side of the world: we see familiar images on the TV screen, we hear their voices. In our modern everyday life, all this is completely natural and even a little banal. But do we live only with those who are around us? Is history only in museums? No, it has long since left there, it has entered the life and blood of our contemporaries, it is in their thoughts and hearts. Every day - sometimes imperceptibly - we hear voices from the past. The world of our living and the world of our Dead - this is actually one world, the world in which we live. We shake hands with some and talk, work or argue. The others look at us from portraits, stand in our way in the center of large squares and make you go around them, they float like ships, stretch out like streets, they even present themselves to you as the names of shops, cooperatives and football teams. And the cliché definition of publicists that they live with us is not an empty phrase. There is a deep meaning in their immortality. Otherwise, it would be terribly absurd that a turtle at the bottom of the ocean lives 400 years, and a person eight times less!

A huge amount of work lies ahead for our workers on the ideological front to explain the historical decisions of the XXII Congress of the CPSU and the November Plenum of the Bulgarian Communist Party, to resolutely clear away the harmful remnants of the Cult. The fulfillment of this important task is made difficult by some manifestations, the result of a lack of insight into the party documents or of ignorance.

The bulletin is published in two languages ​​(Russian and French) and aims to present with short annotations the scientific works published during the past year. On its cover, instead of the publishing house, the names of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the Committee for Technical Progress and the Center for Scientific and Technical Information and Documentation appear. In addition to the responsible secretary Zh. Doseva, the editorial board includes: B. Bozhikov (stenography), K. Genov (literary studies) and I. Gulbov (linguistics). As noted in a note to the reader, the individual issues do not include abstracts of selected scientific works published in the People's Republic of Bulgaria. The last issue contains information on the scientific works (articles, studies and monographs) published in 1961.

Recently, our young poetry has attracted the attention not only of reviewers and critics, but also of researchers and scientists. Works have appeared on the rhyme of the young, and the general regularities in their work are being studied. More is being written about young fiction writers. All this would be very nice if certain passions did not manifest themselves. On partial material from the young poetry, which would be sufficient for one newspaper article, some of our authors are trying to build kilometer-long scientific works. An example of such a clear passion is the article "Nikolai Ostrovsky in the ideological and creative development of Damyan Damyanov (Towards the question of the traditions of N. Ostrovsky's Bulga in the poem)", written by Yordan Tsonev and published in vol. 2 of 1962 of the magazine Language and Literature. On ten large pages of the magazine, the author "explores" the indicated topic. Perhaps some will ask: how is this possible? What are these entire 10 pages filled with?

Let a person not get a bad name once! A good name can easily be lost, a bad one cannot be erased. Let them not call a dog, that fuck it - he's done for. A bad wound heals, people say, a bad word remains. Do we realize that it's the same in literature? How much work, what incredible efforts are needed for a writer to prove that he is good, if criticism has already given him a bad name! He must come out of his skin, he must be born again. . . But there is something else. A literary name also depends a lot on external circumstances, on the situation, on the conjuncture, on the surroundings. How many charlatans have taken advantage of the moment to make a career in literature! Of course, when will the reckoning come?

A doctor of economic and political sciences, who once studied civil engineering in Czechoslovakia and law in Sofia, but did not become either a civil engineer or a lawyer, who took the first doctorate in political economy at Sofia University, an unknown scholar one day - about ten years ago - showed the manuscript of his voluminous novel. At a time when three or four novels were published a year, all by established and famous authors, this young man had dared to test his strength nowhere else, but in one of the most difficult literary genres - the historical novel, - which eminent writers not only in our country but also elsewhere, not only now, but also in the past had not found the courage to touch! ... But on the other hand, how few writers of all ages and professions are seized by the ambition to show such audacity?

The most striking feature of any lyric is contemporaneity. In poems, the poet depicts his feelings, thoughts and experiences, and he lives in society and this is reflected in his soul and consciousness. Every lyric in 99 cases out of a hundred is contemporary. We may not find historical figures, facts and designations in the poems of poets, but they contain - reflected from different artistic positions - characteristic features of reality, something of the spirit and atmosphere of the era is present. The fact that outside of society there is no and cannot be art does not mean that contemporaneity automatically arises in the works of the poet. No, it is introduced by him first of all through ideas and images, and then through all the verbal-expressive requisites, formal features, style, structure of the verse, etc. An important role in the manifestation of contemporaneity in the writer's work is played by his worldview, his ideological and aesthetic understandings. Therefore, when we talk about the principle of modernity, we cannot help but touch upon the issues of worldview and method, of ideology and mastery, of language and style, etc. Modernity is an aesthetic category that encompasses works of art in their entirety - both content and form. It is an intrinsic, essential feature that is carried not only by the plot or the concluding verse, but by the pathos of the work, by its tonality. Here, in the pathos, in the general sound of the work, the ideological and artistic elements are inseparably combined and form a single aesthetic whole.

On 5. IV. 1919, a fatal accident took the life of the prominent Bulgarian literary critic and long-time editor of the magazine "Thought" - Dr. K. Krastev. Returning home unwell, he swallowed a poison pill instead of medicine. Thus ended the life of the last of the famous "four" - not long after his three comrades: P. P. Slaveykov (1912), P. K. Yavorov (1914) and P. Yu. Todorov (1916). Since then and until now (and even during his lifetime) his work has repeatedly been the subject of high praise and unwavering denials. This is not about the principled struggle of the Marxist critics (D. Blagoev, G. Bakalov, T. Pavlov, G. Tsanev, P. Zarev, P. Danchev, St. Karolev) against the views of Dr. Krastev. He was also sharply attacked by representatives of bourgeois criticism itself, and these attacks expressed the internal differences within it, its striving to affirm and deny one or another name, the irreconcilable enmity between the individual groups and schools. Moreover, some bourgeois critics have sought most fiercely to destroy and liquidate Krastev's entire work without appeal. Read the book "Critics" by Y. Marinopolski (1910) or the surgical article by S. Radev (magazine "Khudozhnik", 1905), or the essay "The Work of Dr. K. Krastev" by A. Balabanov (magazine "Filosofski pregled", 1939) and you will see how much passion was invested in the attempts to liquidate the critic without a trace, so that there would be no need to rummage through the countless furious attacks against him in the yellow pages of the bourgeois press. But what to do - such is the fate of a critic: he is forced to endure the attacks of those he has denied, their friends, those wounded egos, about whom he has never written and who are considered neglected, and finally all the enemies of those whom he has affirmed with his articles. Dr. Krastev is also honored with greater attention. He is the main character of Vazov's story "Doctor Jan-jan", of "Japanese Silhouettes", and his close friend Kiril Hristov later dedicates bitter verses to him in the epigram "Doctor Stavri":

I will not talk about the poems of Parvan Stefanov, written before 1956 and not included in his first book - as is known, out of the numerous songs of enthusiasm, he included in "Falcon Feathers" only one soldier's cycle. Therefore, I will say that he started from a relatively high level. To begin with, I will take his first poems from the newspaper "Narodna Mlazed" (1949), his first book, which appeared in 1956. It was a time when he was one of the most popular young poets. His poem "The Stone Boy" (in Russian translation) received the prize of the Fifth World Festival of Youth and Students in 1955, it was read and copied, recited on every occasion, and the 24-year-old author left for Warsaw, from where he brought a notebook of poems and a love for Chopin's homeland, to whose fate and poetry he would permanently join. I say this because it is impossible to explain the entire subsequent development of Parvan Stefanov without the beneficial impact of his Polish meetings and experiences, predetermined by the happy decision of the festival jury. What made "The Stone Boy" appeal to the members of the jury and especially to its chairman - the prominent Turkish poet Nazum Hikmet? If we now read the collection "Falcon Feathers", we will find other, more mature poems, such as "Accident", "The Dance of the Negro" (it enjoyed success in literary readings), "Grass", "Ballad of the Three Fir Trees". Only now would it be the turn of "The Stone Boy" - it modestly takes its place among the good poems of the young poet. At that time, it bribed with its pure romance, connecting our dreams of today with the ideals of those who gave their young lives in the struggle. The concluding verse, revealing the true possibilities of the poet, has a special power:

In our political history, the image of Georgi Kirkov - the Master - is one of the most charming. Those who have seen or listened to him, from whatever background they come from, could not remain indifferent to the subjugating power of his word. Kirkov also respects with his books, which will always be republished. Because in them lives an entire period of the history of the party, an entire encyclopedia of thoughts and predictions. At a time when many other advanced countries are far from socialism, Bulgaria, which has just regained its sight, is illuminated by the first dawns of Marx's teachings. The Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party, created by Blagoev, is one of the earliest proletarian parties in the world. Even in the time of abbots and peasants, the first apostles of socialism predicted the path of economic and social development and sowed the seeds of Marxist enlightenment. No, these were not just seeds, they were sparks that, if they hit a stone, would be extinguished, but if they found awake and dissatisfied souls, they would blaze in uncontrollable torment. Along with Dimitar Blagoev, Georgi Kirkov is “the first trumpeter for the awakening and organization of the Bulgarian proletariat,” as his then young student and successor Georgi Dimitrov called him in the speech at his grave. Kirkov’s contributions to the building of the Marxist party are enormous. The unwritten history of the Bulgarian socialist movement fills an entire chapter with his activities; with a number of his manifestations (especially during the wars and the October Revolution) he also stands out as an actor of the international workers’ movement.

Until recently, Dragomir Asenov was among the young authors, but now a solid series of books respects anyone who dares to take up his work. The qualities of the best of them are undeniable. But there is something else that is undeniable. Dragomir Asenov is a very productive author, but because he successfully puts his efforts into different genres, high productivity is not a handicap for him. He could very well settle down in a single genre, say the short story or the novel - and after mastering the mastery of composition, start producing book after book in series. However, such productivity, even in the presence of talent, would be simply reprehensible. Why then should we consider it a handicap if the author writes a lot, but does not repeat himself either in plots and characters, or in forms? If he has something to tell us, if the vital content and the author's ideas are pressing, they will express themselves in various forms, each time in a new way. Only craftsmen and newcomers to art once take up the "turban" and produce ready-made books, at the same level, without surprises, equal and mediocre.

There are no other two problems so closely related and almost equivalent in aesthetics as modernity and innovation. Both begin with the ability to observe reality, to select and evaluate, and end with the technical techniques of measured speech. Undoubtedly, modernity is a broader category that includes innovation. It is simply implied and very often there is no need to talk about it, it is not necessary to emphasize it specifically. Emphasizing it through deliberate efforts often leads to artificiality and posturing in poetry. It is an elementary truth that true innovation has nothing to do with pretentiousness. Contrary to superficial impressions, it is not the external arrangement of the verse that determines the innovative essence of poetry. Discovery does not depend on meter and rhymes - it can be done with or without them. Although in practice avant-garde pursuits are more closely related to free verse, exceptions are not at all rare.