Efrem Karanfilov

The question of characteristic detail is connected with almost all the important problems of literary creation and, of course, to a considerable extent with the problem of conciseness in prose, of condensed, synthetic prose. It is needless to emphasize that the detail that enlivens the incident, the event, the character, that individualizes them, but at the same time typifies them, is the basis of what separates realism both from naturalism and from schematism and simplification in their various forms. It is known that the fiction writer, faced with the life that he has to recreate, first of all encounters a huge number of details. In the diversity of human actions, in the multiplicity of tones that fill the atmosphere, in the tangle of human experiences, the writer should orient himself and recreate them in his presentation. We know how complex reality is, both in the great of the infinite and in the small, in the fragment, even in the microscopic. In a single blade of spring grass there is so much life and color and meaning that, as is known, ancient Japanese artists created an entire school.

Much has been written about Don Quixote. There is rarely a great poet, thinker, writer, statesman, even a scientist who has not spoken about him on some occasion. And here - the most fantastic of all literary heroes has become a solid, unshakable reality. Long ago, more than three centuries ago, the Spanish hidalgo ceased to be a literary image and became not only a living person, but something more: a household name, a concept, a word in the languages ​​of all peoples, a symbol of human qualities. And this does honor to those sober, wise, logical minds who have directed their penetrating gaze at the drunken, unwise knight and have given him their praise throughout the centuries. We are not talking only about poets. Don Quixote has long been their true brother in spirit. There is rarely a great poet who has not sung sad or joyful verses about this ecstatic sufferer. Even in our literature, such poets as Raztsvetnikov and Liliev sang with love about the knight. But for good honor, not only poets, but also essayists, writers, critics paid their tribute to the funny hero. And not only writers. Also philosophers - and the greatest ones. Idealists Hegel and Kant wrote about Don Quixote. Marx and Engels spoke enthusiastically about the novel. Lafargue emphasizes that "Don Quixote was Marx's favorite book. Ever since Don Quixote was born, interest in him has not subsided. This joyful, beautiful phenomenon is no less interesting than the image of the hero himself. e But here the question arises: should we still write about Don Quixote today? First of all - because everything has already been said about him. It could only be repeated and compiled. And secondly: in the age of machines, robots, the cold triumph of logic, is it not an archaic obsolescence to write about an obsessive dreamer who cannot distinguish a barber's basin from a knight's helmet?

Staff Captain Mikhailov from the second Sevastopol story ("Sevastopol in May") by Leo Tolstoy is a modest man. His place in the sea of ​​critical writings about the great writer's work is also modest. There, the tall, stooped figure of the staff captain is almost invisible. It seems to hide behind the large silhouette of the slumbering Field Marshal Kutuzov, behind the brilliance of the restless, eternally out of breath Prince Andrei, behind the romantic charm of Hadji Murat, or finally - behind the gunpowder smoke that enveloped Captain Tushin. Of all the interesting characters of the writer, the least has been written about Staff Captain Mikhailov. There is something natural in this. Because he is one of Tolstoy's early favorites. In him, the writer concluded many of his innermost youthful observations and thoughts. But that is precisely why we will see how this character is repeatedly reincarnated with one or another of his qualities in various later heroes of Tolstoy. These latter characters overshadow the former.

The most significant thing in Kuprin's creative work is connected with the life of the Russian army at the end of the last century. He saw and artistically revealed the insurmountable weight of the then military discipline, which crushed feelings and thoughts in order to make people's souls dry and flat like barracks squares. He showed thousands of readers the age-old power of the then military hierarchy, which gradually turned commanders into tyrants and subordinates into automated executors. He peered behind the gilded prints of the so-called officer virtues and saw how hypocrisy, careerism, envy were cunningly creeping in. This quiet, modest man, a Russian tsarist officer, was forged from the same noble metal, perhaps, only not as shiny as the Decembrists, "iron men suckled by a she-wolf," as Herzen put it about them. And Kuprin managed to lift onto his weak shoulders the whole weight of cadet and cadet education, of garrison life in the backwater province, of regulations and discipline, and to rebel. There was a difficult, turning point in the writer's life: in 1893, when he failed the entrance exam to the General Staff Academy in St. Petersburg, he decided to leave the army. The young man had neither a salary nor a profession. All his life he had been in orphanages and barracks, all his life he had been taught discipline and obedience. And suddenly the officer felt that he could not take it anymore, that the regulations had become as heavy as lead, that he did not have enough air in the spacious barracks. And despite the peaceful life, the assured future, the beautiful uniforms, the garrison balls, he had to abandon all this in order to find his true essence.

The bombings have long been a thing of the past. They are only a memory that awakens with a distant but disturbing echo, at some new shot fired from an ambush from afar with a sniper's scope. But the time was different at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It is shaken by dynamite explosions. Individual terror penetrates not only the circles of nihilists and anarchists, but also among revolutionary organizations for national liberation. The terrible chorus of explosions tears the atmosphere of Europe, disturbs the digestion of the calm bourgeois, disrupts his enjoyment of Straussian melodies. The epicenter of these small volcanic eruptions is hidden somewhere in Petrograd and Moscow, where emperors, grand dukes and ministers from time to time fly through the air, and fear gnaws the hearts of their deputies. And although the shadow of the eternal Azev dances like a firecracker on the embers of the explosions, although their temperature never manages to ignite a revolutionary fire, they create a specific Decor of the era.

After his first stories, printed in the newspapers "Struya" and "Trud" in the period 1933-1935, Andrei Gulyashki published several more significant works of fiction: the novels "Don Quixote of Sylvester", "Death Sentence" and the sketches "Women". These works are without particular artistic value. They are youthful experiments. The author is still a young man - he has just turned 25, an age that is too early for a fiction writer. Usually at such an age literary influences are strongest. They can be difficult to overcome. The direct life observations, impressions, all that huge life material that a fiction writer needs to build his works, has not been collected. The originality of the artist almost always depends on the depth with which his gaze penetrates reality. Early fiction works are in most cases either autobiographical on intimate themes, or to one degree or another imitative. Exceptions like Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrooks" are few.

Tradition and innovation is a problem that has been discussed the most in the history of literature. This problem is infinitely broad and connected with the very essence of literature. When talking about it, one must take into account the questions of the national and cosmopolitan character of a literature, the traditions in this literature, the mutual influences between individual writers and individual literatures, schools and creative individualities, literary fashions and snobbery, the contemporary sensibility and worldview of the writer, the changes in the consciousness of the contemporary in view of social changes, the nationality and party affiliation, the role of social ideals, etc. In our country, this question is often understood narrowly and is limited mainly within the form of the means of expression.

Before us is one of the poet's early poems: "After the Interrogation" from his first collection of poems "My Songs". It is crafted sparingly. The point blossoms from the sparse emotional atmosphere at first glance. The sincerity of the experience overcomes the abuse of external effects. The words seem to have no other meaning than the ordinary one, but acquire the power of suggestion.

In 1942, the world-famous writer Stefan Zweig committed suicide in Brazil at the age of sixty-one. The reasons for this, as is often the case with the suicides of true artists, were of a spiritual nature. The writer outlined them in his deathbed confession. Here they are: "To begin my life again at the age of sixty - this requires special strength. And mine have been exhausted during the long years of homeless wanderings. That is why I think it is best to leave life in due time and with dignity, in which the supreme good for me was personal freedom and intellectual work that gave me immense joy. I congratulate all my friends. It is possible that they will see the dawn after this long night. I, the most impatient, am leaving earlier than them. Amidst the fanfare of military victories, amidst the bristled human hatred, this death of the great writer seemed to pass unnoticed. But it echoed painfully in the hearts of many people scattered on both sides of the trenches. It reminded them of the past gentle joys of the spirit, of the enthusiastic meetings with bright human characters, of the undying beauty of the human word. In the atmosphere of mass murders, which seems to oppress and dull sensitivity, sadness according to the beloved writer, it was too personal, too intimate and tender.

In the first serious article for "Selected Essays and Stories" Dr. Krastev (V. Mirolyubov), after almost completely denying Stamatov as an artist, emphasizes: "The satirical attitude to life is his element. He owes his narrow horizons to it." ("Young and Old" - p. 149). Since then, almost all notable Bulgarian critics have written about Stamatov. And they have always determined his place among the satirists. The literary critic Simeon Sultanov included his vivid and carefully crafted portrait of the writer in a book entitled "Satirists." And this is correct. Stamatov is undoubtedly a satirist. One of the most vividly expressed satirists in our literature. The main pathos in the work of this so original and lonely artist is the angry scourging of the vices that swarm in the human soul, and the angry tearing of the masks behind which these vices like to hide. Stamatov's literary work is filled with greedy, unscrupulous, lustful men and prostitutes who are ostensibly disguised behind the holiest bourgeois virtues. Let us recall all these Lili, Lina, Lida, Shurochka, the Countess, etc. Don't they smell "of taverns and men"? For the writer, "Man is the worst animal because he is smart. More predatory than a wolf, more cunning than a fox, more nasty than a hyena." He views the bourgeois reality in which he is forced to live with vigilant hatred, always ready to erupt in satire. And he lives in the most vulgar period of the bourgeoisie, its apparent flourishing and triumph, when the ideals of the Revival have been forgotten and when the vulgar optimism of "the worm in the cheese" has not yet evolved into the tragic optimism of "the mouse in the trap in front of the cheese from the bait."

"I love you, my dear Fatherland! I love your Balkans, forests, screes, rocks and their clear and cold springs! I love you, my dear land! I love you with all my soul and heart, even if you are doomed to severe suffering and misfortune! Everything that has remained good and holy in my orphaned soul so far is all yours! You are that blessed land that blooms, that is full of tenderness, with radiance and greatness. You have taught me to love and to cry over every human misfortune. And this is already a lot for one person!" These words were spoken by Lyuben Karavelov more than a hundred years ago, but it seems that even now we feel their sincerity. The Revival writer does not try to theorize, to search for bright images, original thoughts, unusual stylistic devices. He speaks simply and naturally about what lies on his soul, and his declaration sounds like a confession, and the inner excitement has imbued ordinary words with immediate freshness. This freshness has not faded to this day.

By the place that nature occupies in the work of a writer, we can reveal not only essential features of his appearance, but also some directions in the spiritual life of the era. There are authors who are insensitive to natural beauties. They are able to pass by a dazzlingly beautiful Alpine peak without interrupting their intellectual conversation, like the old Erasmus, or, standing in front of Niagara Falls, admire its energy more than its beauty, like the modern Steinbeck. We must not forget that writers from different schools and trends, as well as artists with different personalities, describe nature in different ways. The Romantics, for example, devoted a large place in their work to the delights of natural beauties. But how different are the hazy paintings of Chateaubriand - a dreamer and a contemplator - compared to the harsh, precise and strong descriptions of the officer Alfred de Vigny. Prishvin and Bianchi are almost contemporaries. But the lyrical excitement and confessions of the one are replaced by the bright, clear, full of philosophical generalizations of the other.