Elka Konstantinova

The purple covers of the book "Nikolai Liliev. Meetings and Conversations" are very reminiscent of the latest edition of his poems. But that is hardly the only reason why many people were fooled into buying it. The interest of a wide circle of readers in Liliev's personality, poetry, translation and theatrical activities is sincere and enhanced by the lack of serious research and detailed studies on a number of facts from the poet's biography and work. Petko Tiholov clearly felt this acute lack and firmly decided to fill it. One cannot fail to appreciate his exceptional persistence: for about thirty years Liliev regularly refused to talk about himself to him and only at the end of 1959 "after agonizing, prolonged hesitation" did he give in. The author himself, and in two different places in his book, admits: "Nikolai Liliev was stubbornly silent. He did not want to talk about himself." No less obvious is the undeniable warm and sincere feeling of love, deep respect and admiration that the author feels for the entire personality of Nikolay Liliev.

On the issues of the comic, a lot of theoretical literature has been accumulated. But comedy as a literary genre and, in particular, the development and contemporary state of Bulgarian comedy have not been studied in detail. Even the articles dedicated to the various manifestations of Bulgarian comedy can be counted on the fingers of one hand. That is why Ivan Bogdanov's initiative to study the paths along which this genre has developed in our country is commendable. He sought to be a pioneer in a complex and undeveloped field. And as the first, it was his work that aroused interest among both writers and theater figures. But despite the particular difficulties in such a first attempt, Bogdanov did not successfully solve his task.

The letters of Geo Milev to Nikolay Liliev, which are printed here, were written in the period between 1915 and 1919. They were taken from Liliev's personal archive. Of the 7 preserved letters, one was published as a preface to Geo Milev's translated poems by H. Heine - "Selected Songs and Romances". This letter is dated June 20, 1919 and is entirely dedicated to Heine. It is also included in volume II of Selected Works of Geo Milev edited by Mila Geo Mileva, S., 1940. Nikolay Liliev and Geo Milev were very close, cordial friends. Although Liliev is ten years older, the two feel like they are from the same generation, completely understand each other in life and literary problems, and live with the same joys and sorrows. They are related by their common cultural interests, love of art, and affection for their hometown of Stara Zagora. Geo Milev was born in the village of Radnevo in Stara Zagora, but he considers Stara Zagora his hometown, because he grew up there both physically and spiritually. During their youth, Stara Zagora held one of the first places in the country as a vibrant cultural center, as the birthplace of other contemporary writers and poets: Georgi Bakalov, Dimitar Podvarzachov, Ivan Kh. Hristov, Ivan Mirchev, Kiril Hristov. ..

Petar Pondev is the author of nine literary-historical and critical books, the most significant of which were created in the last ten years. This is not only a fruitful period for him, but also a truly new stage in his creative development. Over the last decade, Podev has further developed his concepts on the main issues of literary development, literary trends and works. The initial stage of its formation is painful and contradictory, accompanied by a long and persistent search for the right path. The struggle that the critic leads with himself to overcome the stifling dogmas, to clarify his research thought, to achieve logic and harmony in his presentation was crowned with success. The progress in Pondev's creative development in the second half of his literary-critical activity is obvious and undeniable. The book "Literature and People" contains selected works by the author and, of course, the most significant that he has created and which presents him as a serious literary worker - a fighter against dogmatic and stereotyped thinking in Bulgarian literary science. Everything in this book speaks of a broader view of the problems studied and of a conscious aspiration to analyze Literature not only as one of the forms of public consciousness, but also as a specific, complex area of ​​art. The important thing here is to establish to what extent the author of "Literature and People" succeeded in realizing this undoubted aspiration of his, to what extent he succeeded in revealing literary processes precisely as literary, to enter into their complex essence, to understand and feel the world of the artists he writes about.

A warm friendship has connected Georgi Raichev and Nikolay Liliev since 1908. Then the twenty-six-year-old Raichev left the dusty provincial offices forever and arrived in Sofia with the foolish thought of becoming a "great writer". But the capital did not welcome him with open arms, but with complete indifference and unemployment. With seventy-four leva in his pocket, a large suitcase full of manuscripts and a head clouded by the vague ideas of modernism, he wandered helplessly through the cold city, quickly running out of money and starving for several months. The only people he knew and cared about him were the two poets from Stara Zagora, Nikolay Liliev and Dimitar Podvarzachov. They diligently looked for work for him and finally managed to appoint him as a clerk at 111 Sofia Boys' High School "Gladstone", where Liliev was a teacher in the commercial department and Podvarzachov was a secretary. Raichev deeply valued their friendship until the end of his life. From the remote province, he suddenly found himself in the very whirlpool of cultural life in our country, among the elite of our then spiritual intelligentsia.

This is the tenth book in a row by Efrem Karanfilov and is yet another proof of his diverse literary interests. This time, the subject of study is only Bulgarian authors - poets from different eras and generations, from Paisius to our contemporaries. In Paisius's story, the critic is struck by a twisted revolutionary passion and an unquenchable, eternal youth, which captivates him with its irrepressible drive. It forces him to express in one breath the fascination of the immortal Paisius' work over the modern reader. This work sounds to him like a heroic poem, it carries him with the violent strength of the Hilendar monk, it ignites him with his patriotic flame. He writes about Paisius in an uplifting manner, with a romantic coloring in the style and diction. Efrem Karanfilov is most strongly and sincerely moved when he discovers fighting moods in the poets. The deepest experiences and immediate excitements in his soul are awakened by the fanfare of the martial lyre, the revolutionary flight of poetry sparkling with youth and vitality.

Dimcho Debelyanov and Nikolay Liliev met in the summer of 1907 in the village of Dolna Banya, Ihtiman region. There, Liliev worked at the Srebarnikovi sawmill - he kept the commercial books. Dimcho Debelyanov - a young man, almost a teenager, who had just graduated from high school, arrived during the holidays to visit his sister Maria Grigorova. He had already read several of Nikolay Mihaylov's printed poems and immediately became friends with him.

"I am sad that I am leaving without having given the people what they should have"... - these are the last words of the writer Georgi Raichev, spoken in the hospital room a few hours before his death. There is nothing more painful and depressing for a creator than the consciousness that he has not fulfilled his task, that he has not given his people all his strength, all his talent, all his heart... Georgi Raichev dies with such a tragic consciousness of an unfulfilled duty, tormented by the thought that he has wasted something of himself, something of his talent. Is there any reason for the writer to make such a confession in the last moments of his life? Did he really not create "what he should have" and what he could have created? The author of "Tiny World", "Lina" and "Sin" occupies a prominent place in our fiction. He is not one of our greatest writers, but he is one of the most original and diverse. Nature has generously endowed him with a true, subtle sense of what is significant in life, and with a bright, original gift for embodying the manifold manifestations of the human spirit, and with a true, artistic sense of color and language... But the overall creative development of Georgi Raichev convinces us that he has not fully realized all his talents. Only in his most beautiful works, and they are not very numerous, does he remain true to himself. It is not uncommon for him to betray his talent, take foreign, steep and impassable paths that tire him with their sharp turns, their dangerous winding paths and their insurmountable obstacles, unnecessarily enslave himself to fashion, throw himself headlong and recklessly into contradictory passions that suck out much of his vital creative forces. It seems that he did not want to remain within the limits of his capabilities, he strove to break them and go beyond their limits and beyond the limits of Bulgarian literature. This ambition of his to surpass in the field of fiction not only his predecessors and contemporaries, but also himself, is perhaps his most positive trait. In this respect, he is very similar to another of our writers, who is his first teacher and mentor in the literary field - Anton Strashimirov, whose work also arouses a disturbing feeling of something unfulfilled. But Strashimirov is by nature spontaneous and contradictory, extremely active and deeply social. His rebellious spirit draws him not only into contradictory literary whirlwinds, but also into all the social hurricanes of the era. His insatiable curiosity pushes him towards the most diverse activities.

The October Revolution, which shook the entire world and caused radical changes in the socio-political life of a number of countries, also pushed the spiritual development of the peoples onto a new path. For the Bulgarian people it played a fateful role, largely determining their further economic and cultural development. It is enough to glance at the Bulgarian literature of those revolutionary years to feel the irresistible power of the new spiritual engines of our national consciousness, created by the Russian Revolution. After 1917, the entire cultural and literary life in Bulgaria radically changed, the people and the homeland again invaded the works of literature, the worldview of the Bulgarian writer changed, a qualitatively new literature of socialist realism was created, the democratic-realist principle in the work of almost all significant artists strengthened... These processes are very deep and complex, they affect different artists to varying degrees and become accessible and understandable only through direct acquaintance with the works of art born directly or indirectly from the Great October. In this regard, the newly published fiction collection "October" is a significant contribution. It illustrates the basic, irrefutable process of a deep ideological and aesthetic transformation in Bulgarian literature and the revival of its revolutionary traditions. This collection is published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, edited by Zdravko Srebrov, Yordan Radichkov, Kamen Kalchev, Neviana Stefanova and Rozalia Lykova, and contains one work each by thirty-seven prominent Bulgarian fiction writers.

The First World War and the October Revolutions changed the entire course of world history and inevitably gave a new direction to art. The blow that shook and changed the world fell on the bourgeois-aesthetic thought of the pre-war decade and cleared the way for new ideological and artistic searches. In Bulgarian literature, a new, deeply reviving process of returning to real life, to the fighting cries of the street, to the baked soil of the black earth, to the life-giving juices of the earth began to mature. The October Revolution, which pushed the spiritual development of the peoples along a new path, played a fateful role for the Bulgarian people as well, determining to a large extent their further economic and cultural development. It is enough to glance at our literature of those years to feel the irresistible power of the revolution, to feel the reviving power of the new and spiritual engines.

Our historical fiction underwent qualitative and quantitative changes after the people's victory on September 9, 1944. It became a leading genre in our contemporary literature and rose to previously unknown heights. Following the sound realistic traditions, carried out by such masters of the artistic word as Ivan Vazov, Zahari Stoyanov and Stoyan Zagorchinov, contemporary authors of historical works assess and make sense of the past through their contemporary understandings, seek in it similarities with our time, fight for the complete triumph of socialist ideals. The development of the historical theme throughout the entire twenty-five-year period yielded rich and fruitful results, and for this, of course, there are profound objective-historical and aesthetic-literary reasons. The new time imposed the need for a new, Marxist reassessment of the historical past, especially of the recent revolutionary events. Thus were born some of the most significant works of our contemporary literature: the historical tetralogy of Dimitar Talev, "Ordinary People" by Georgi Karaslavov, "Ivan Kondarev" by Emilian Stanev... all large, widely developed reflections of life that summarize the panorama of a given historical era, introduce its regularities, trace the trends of social development through the development of bright individual human destinies and deeply dramatic life situations, and solve contemporary ideological-educational and literary-aesthetic tasks. It is in this area of ​​our fiction that the artistic achievements, achieved thanks to the unlimited possibilities that the method of socialist realism provides to contemporary artists, are most obvious. They possess the surest compass for penetrating the dark depths of the past, for understanding the hidden meaning of historical events: a harmonious and vital philosophical system that organizes and interprets the artistic material, spiritualizing it with deep contemporary thought. At no other time have Bulgarian authors of historical works been so close to the tasks of today, to the spiritual needs of modern man. In no other period of the development of Bulgarian literary prose have so many and so significant works on historical themes been created. It is difficult to outline even the most cursory individual characteristics of the galaxy of historical contemporary authors, to reveal the originality of their writings, of the original interpretation of historical events and characters - so rich is their diversity.

The most significant part of our fiction is dedicated to the Bulgarian village, to its sad past and its radically transformed socialist present. It is difficult to list all the names of those of our writers whose work is closely connected with the life of the village: Anton Strashimirov, Todor Vlaykov, Mikhalaki Georgiev, Elin Pelin, Yordan Yovkov, Georgi Raichev, Georgi Karaslavov, Iliya Volen... Among them, the most prolific is undoubtedly Stoyan Daskalov. By his sixtieth birthday, he has already authored about forty books, ten of which are major novels about the life of the new, socialist Bulgarian village. He has tried his hand at all genres of fiction, achieving the most significant successes in the field of the short story, the novel and children's literature.