Liliya Kirova

The appearance of the book “On Some Peculiarities of Bulgarian Poetry 1923-1944” by Rozalia Lykova is an interesting phenomenon. This is an attempt to systematize the vast material on our poetic development for two decades, to outline the directions and give portraits of the significant representatives of our poetry at that time. The author Rozalia Lykova has studied the entire literary life of that time. She has encountered many problems, successfully and with arguments she has rejected a number of obsessions and errors in the evaluations of poetry. Her book has not remained at the level of what has been established and said so far. Although it is based on rich historical-literary and factual material, Lykova tries to supplement and enrich our ideas about the poets, to complete their creative image. In a certain sense, she moves forward the attitude of our literary history and criticism towards the work of these poets.

The work of Georgi Konstantinov comes to satisfy the growing interest in the personality of the poet Liliev. Liliev's poetry - gentle and ethereal, musical and airy, graceful and timid, died down along with the decline and overcoming of symbolism in our literature. New problems have emerged in modern times, and manly and strong artists have grown up. Who today reads "Hymns for the Superman" by Pencho Slaveykov, "Bulgarian Ballads" by Teodor Trayanov? Who is excited by "Regina Mortois"? In these works, the poets failed to find the key, they did not see "the truth that makes sense to write about", as B. Brecht expressed it in his essay on "The Five Difficulties". At the beginning of the century, our literature suffered heavy losses. Many artists were prisoners of a decadent aesthetics and philosophy hostile to realistic art. Liliev's talent also wandered in the labyrinths of symbolism. He closed himself in his own gloomy poetic tower. He burned the last bridges to hope and became a Sad Loner. Today we cannot help but be aware of the pessimistic beginning in Liliev's poetry. Through the mists and with difficulty the dawns of his native Thrace, the silver rays and the bright morning of life shine. But through the vague and semi-airy outlines of this symbolic Lyric, the virtuoso perfection of Liliev's verse is visible, transformed into a sonorous, expressive and gentle instrument. With its imagery and melody, with its virgin purity and snowy whiteness, this verse occupies a certain place in Bulgarian lyric poetry. The modern socialist reader finds in the poetry of the pale lilies hidden treasures of humanity and sublime ethics, a reverence for beauty and nobility, which still excite today.

Boris Delchev's new book is devoted entirely to the work of the generation of poets born between the two wars, most of whom developed their creative work after September 9th. This fact alone indicates that it has a direct bearing on the vital issues of our contemporary literature. Written with skill and argumentation, with intellectual nerve, the book draws the creative physiognomies of Veselin Khanchev, Bozhidar Bozhilov, Aleksandar Gerov, Ivan Radoev, Aleksandar Vutimski, Tsvetan Spasov. Delchev sheds abundant light on the complex problematics and contradictions of their poetry, on the winding creative and civic path of the main poets of the generation.

Recently, Alexander Nichev published a monographic study dedicated to the work of Aleko Konstantinov. Much has been written about the life and literary work of the citizen and writer Aleko. "Bai Ganyo" and "To Chicago and Back" are classic works of Bulgarian prose, a lasting artistic document against a denied world. A document that does not preach despair, doom and fear and, despite the denial of an ugly and deformed reality, has a purifying and ennobling effect. "The Lucky One" is a figure that attracted not only the writer's contemporaries, but still has a charm on us today.

After her book on Bulgarian poetry in the period 1923-1944, Rozalia Lykova published her study of fiction during the same period. Having correctly understood the specifics of the literary process between the two wars, she set about characterizing it comprehensively and shedding abundant light on the work of its main representatives, with her inherent temperament. Before us is a researcher with a certain profile, who is able to discover the physiognomic in the artist's art, to determine his place in the development of Bulgarian literature. Her work is an interesting study of literary material, which is still insufficiently developed by our literary science. The book impresses with its correct assessments, with its characterization of the authors and the atmosphere of their work, and with its overall picture of literary life. Lykova's work is defined in the publisher's note as "a brief literary history of our fiction between the two wars." It is essential to see what distinguishes the author's literary-historical method. Her study contains essays on various artists and five general chapters, in which the literary historian's approach manifests itself with its characteristic features. The author not only knows the literary facts. She is able to penetrate behind them, into the spirit of the era in which social strata had shifted so that people's lives were emerging from their old trough, the rusty locks of social conventions and retrogradeness were broken, and new truths and ideals were born. The events also echoed in the sphere of literary phenomena. The foundations of a new literary movement were being laid. Existing methods of depiction could not meet the imperatives of the new era, which taught writers to analyze precisely, to see the true essence of things, to assess their real value.