Книжка-1

1961 Book 1 Contents

The Declaration of the Representatives of the Communist and Workers' Parties and the Address to the Peoples of the World, discussed and adopted at the November Conference in Moscow and published in the press of all countries, are two historical documents that have excited the honest and peace-loving people of the five continents of the globe. With their analysis of the historical moment in which we live, they illuminate the path of humanity in our era and point out the most important problems facing it for solution, presenting a developed program for the fulfillment of the most human duty: eliminating the danger of a new, terrible war. As the vanguard in the development of humanity, communists from all over the world can best understand this model of creative Marxism-Leninism. The wisdom of the documents enriches their understanding of contemporary reality; the tasks set are close to them, and in their fulfillment they see the meaning of their lives. Clarity of the situation has always been a primary ally for communists, and decisiveness of action is measured by the magnitude of the task set. The statement speaks definitely of the historical mission of communists: "Communists see their historical mission not only in eliminating exploitation and misery on a world scale and forever excluding from the life of human society the possibility of any war, but even in the modern era to deliver humanity from the nightmare of a new world war. The communist parties of all countries will devote all their strength and energy to the realization of this great historical mission."

The viewer gains the right to like or dislike a drama very easily - in exchange for the detached control of his theater ticket. But who gave a critic the right to occupy readers at length with his impressions of one or another work? His acknowledged aesthetic taste Or his ability to present his considerations in an engaging manner? It has always seemed to me very immodest to some people to pass harsh judgments on the taste of others - this one did not have good taste, that one did! It is immodest because in such cases a person silently turns his own attitude towards art into a unit of measure of taste. How could you judge whether the critic's artistic sense is good if you yourself are not convinced that your aesthetic taste is not inferior to it? A significant work of art affects many people not because they have "unified" their tastes, but because it has discovered such an aspect of life that can excite people with the most diverse thoughts, feelings and moods. We often say that art is not a "world closed in on itself." But we do not always think to add that the work of art becomes "world for us" thanks to its ability to connect with the personal, unique life (emotional and intellectual) experience of each of us. And from this it follows: there is no "authoritative" personal taste. Personal taste is the inalienable right of the reader, viewer or listener to experience the work of art - to connect it directly with what he himself was, is or strives to be. This is why in art several different and yet correct interpretations of the same image are possible. Hence the rights of one's own opinion in criticism. It would be risky to demand from it a single "interpretation" of the work of art. But does this mean that there is complete relativity of critical assessments, almost reaching arbitrariness? Is there not a limit beyond which interpretations cease to be well-founded and correct?

Among the major problems facing our literary science today, a particularly important place is occupied by the problem of the emergence, formation and development of socialist realism in Bulgarian literature. And this is quite natural. Because the further development of our entire contemporary literary art is closely linked to the solution of this problem. That is why for a number of years now literary theorists, critics and historians have been devoting special attention to this problem. And it is no coincidence that their efforts are increasingly directed towards clarifying the essence of the artistic methods used by proletarian-revolutionary poets and writers - precisely where the very core of the problem lies. The works of Georgi Bakalov, Todor Pavlov, Pantelei Zarev, the Soviet literary scholars Dmitry Markov, Nikolai Kravtsov and others contribute to mastering this difficult area to one degree or another. First of all, in our and Soviet literary science and criticism, there is no dispute that in our country the method of socialist realism was formed as a result of a certain socio-historical, ideological-political and literary development - inextricably linked with the growth of class consciousness and struggles of the Bulgarian proletariat under the leadership of the Communist Party, under the influence of the Great October Socialist Revolution and of young Soviet literature (in the beginning - mainly from the work of Maxim Gorky). As pioneers of proletarian-revolutionary literature in Bulgaria, Dimitar Blagoev emerged - in the field of theory and criticism, Dimitar Polyanov and Georgi Kirkov - in the field of lyric poetry and fiction. In a historical-literary sense, Polyanov and Kirkov stand in the closest kinship-genetic relationship with the social-revolutionary traditions established in Bulgarian literature by Lyuben Karavelov and Hristo Botev, as well as with the critical realism of Aleko Konstantinov and Stoyan Mikhailovsky. With their creative activity, Dimitar Blagoev, Dimitar Polyanov and Georgi Kirkov gave shape to the first - "propaganda" - stage of the development of our proletarian-revolutionary literature (until the end of World War I). The poetry of Hristo Smirnenski marked its second stage - with the manifestation of socialist realism as a new method in our national literature.

It is unlikely that a significant artistic problem could be exhausted only by the development of the main conflict. In a dramatic work, as in life, a major event gives rise to a multitude of different incidents and conflicts, each of which, to one degree or another, depends on the central event. And indeed, the development of the action is significantly enriched if various additional conflicts are included in the central drama. But when some of the auxiliary dramas with their sub-themes overshadow, even for a short time, the main theme, then disharmony sets in in the play, because the principle of unity of action is violated. In the plays of the classics, each character, even a minor one, has his own drama, which is at the same time firmly connected with the main theme. The different moments of the development of the action, the many plot threads and the diverse dramatic characters in a true dramatic work are united by the single theme that the playwright wants to defend. According to Belinsky, unity of action should not be understood as a technological process at all, it means unity of ideological content: "Simplicity, uncomplicatedness and unity of action, in the sense of unity of ideological content, should be one of the main conditions of drama: in it everything should be directed towards one goal, towards one direction... The unification of all plot threads, clashes and vicissitudes by one main idea gives harmony and clarity to the composition - regardless of whether it is open or closed, whether it consists of many scenes and actions or only a few acts. And that is why often an insufficiently clarified dramatic theme is the cause of many compositional imperfections. Unity of ideological content leads to a harmonious and harmonious composition, where each individual part, in the lemina.

The present notes on the latest English novel are by no means exhaustive and are intended rather to outline some common and interesting features in the literary life of contemporary England. They are limited to four or five works by younger novelists: "Happy Jim" by Kingsley Amis, "A Place at the Top" by John Brain, and "This Is Love, After All" by Stan Barstow, "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" by Alan Sillitoe. All these authors belong in spirit to one trend - they are more or less among the so-called "sirdites" or "angry young people" - and they are connected by a certain community in concepts, and even in their means of expression. Whatever shortcomings the "angry ones" may have, however justly they may suffer attacks on many points, they have nevertheless managed to assert themselves in English literary life and even, in a certain sense, to occupy a commanding position, to set its tone. With all reservations, they remain, both as a whole line and as separate achievements, the largest, central phenomenon in English literature of the last few years. On the one hand, they are very indicative of the moods and psychological reactions of the young English intelligentsia, they expressed a certain stage in the development of its thinking; on the other hand, both criticism and the large circulations of the above-mentioned novels point to them as the best among all the rest of the production. That is why it would not be entirely arbitrary to limit an analysis mainly to them - it would indeed not illuminate the whole problem, but it would cover the core of the problem. Of course, it should be immediately reminded once again that this is not a comprehensive review of the English novel and that a number of novelists known to our reader, such as Graham Greene, James Aldridge, Jack Lindsay, are beyond their scope.

In the second half of August of last year, the first international conference on poetics was held in Warsaw, on the initiative of the Institute for Literary Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, in which literary scholars, linguists and folklorists from the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, the United States, England, France, the Netherlands, and Israel took part. The conference program included reports by prominent Soviet scholars, academicians and professors V. V. Vinogradov, A. I. Efimov, N. I. Zhinkin, and D. S. Likhachev, but only the latter two took part in the conference. Polish literary scholars and linguists, led by the organizers of the conference S. Zhulkowski, M. R. Mayenova, and K. Vika, took part with reports from all areas of poetics. The world-famous Polish linguist Prof. J. Kurilovich was very active in the work of the conference. The largest was the US delegation, led by the prominent linguist and Slavicist Prof. R. Jacobson, who took part in the discussions on most of the reports. Among the participants in the conference were the well-known Czech Slavicist and Bulgarianist Prof. K. Horalek, the Romanian academician-literary critic T. Vianu, the German Slavicist and folklorist, professor at the University of Jena H. Peukert, the Dutch Slavicist, now professor in California Schonefeld, and many others. Bulgaria was represented by Petar Dinekov, Lyubomir Andreychin, Stoyan Dzhudzhev and Emil Georgiev. Over the course of 10 days, in morning and afternoon sessions, 50 reports were read and about 120 speeches were made on them. The reports were grouped thematically, so that each day reports from a specific area were read and discussed. It is difficult to cover the problems raised at the conference in a report like ours. They were truly numerous and diverse and affected all areas of poetics, as well as being connected to related areas. A suitable atmosphere was created for productive scientific work. The method of persuasion and arguments prevailed. Only rarely did a sharp polemical tone sound, revealing fundamental worldview contradictions and different understandings of the issues raised. Since the term "poetics" is not particularly popular in our country, and some even consider it outdated, including the content of this discipline in the theory of literature, it is not uninteresting for our reader to clarify the very concept and the content of this branch of literary studies. The subject matter of the reports that we outline in our report clarifies this quite fully. The German professor H. Peukert (GDR) in his report formulated the concept of the term that he accepts: the study of the essence, genres and forms of poetic creativity and their inherent content and visual means, which, through comparative observation of individual works, leads to the definition of typological features and genre regularities.

We simply did not feel when the anxious October rain restlessly pounded on the poetic window of Lyubomir Levchev, we simply did not see when the gentle youth matured into a serious young poet who persistently sought his own style in poetry. L. Levchev's first poems on the pages of the youth press were sprinkled with many stars, with very gentle romance. But he quickly stepped back to earth. He looked around. He saw the restless face of our modernity, he sought new paths to poetic truth. Very soon he turned into a proud contemporary of ours, who is admired by the majestic victories in Space, who is no longer carried away by the sweet, ancient sounds of grandfather's gadulka. He wants to live with the rhythm of a hurried, breathless, dynamic time. He brings something new with his verse, energetic and expressive, punchy and spiteful, he wants to capture the complex diagram of the psyche of the contemporary, the fragmented, impressionistic thinking of the civilized urban man. The lyrical hero of L. Levchev's poetry lives with the disturbing changes on our planet, with the profound changes that are taking place in our socio-economic life. This social unrest is one of the attractive features of Levchev's poetry. Unlike other young poets who waste time on the detailed and insignificant, L. Levchev is looking for a new civic voice in poetry, but expressed already with newer linguistic means. And L. Levchev's new collection of poems is entirely turned towards modernity, towards construction, towards the life of our youth. He wrote some interesting poems about construction. His poetic chronicles of our construction days are not boring protocols, but verses distinguished by a fresh construction romance, a life-affirming feeling, a constructive pathos. L. Levchev manages to poetically elevate our labor construction reality, to poeticize everyday labor, to break the banal framework in its depiction. And in this direction he managed to write a number of interesting poetic works. In the poem "Kremikovsko nacholy" there is a nice atmosphere, a new figurative vision: The picture is not at all beautiful - A field. A brown fallow. Above it the sun - low and foggy. And nothing else. Who dared to sow the seeds of dreams here instead of wheat?... The furrows smoke, smoke mysteriously, like the hearth of a proto-Bulgarian fortune teller.

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.

Main problems: a) Historical, comparative-historical and typological study of the Slavic languages, b) Study of the interaction of Slavic and non-Slavic languages ​​and the question of "language alliances" and c) Problems of descriptive Slavic linguistics in relation to applied linguistics.

The past 4th anniversary of the magazine "Questions of Literature", an organ of the Writers' Union and the A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, marked new serious successes in efforts to examine and clarify a number of major problems of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics, theory and history of literature. For our reader, the magazine "Questions of Literature" is like a large and bright window into the world of literary theory, as the most authoritative organ of Soviet literary thought. The political and spiritual upsurge of the Soviet peoples after the 20th and 21st Congresses of the CPSU is reflected in the pathos of the magazine. The first booklet of "Questions of Literature" from 1961 opens with I. Vinogradov's article "Za beguštim dnem" - notes on the novel by V. Tendryakov. The author dwells on the contradictory statements about the novel made by a number of Soviet critics, rejects some of them and, after a detailed analysis, clarifies some of the author's peculiarities with his tendency to portray an "intellectual hero", in which the main thing is "the struggle of ideas, the persistent search for a living, complex and significant thought". And insofar as this material is "new to the writer, he is not able to relate to it freely enough, to clearly separate it from himself. . . " This partly explains the contradictory perception of Andrei Biryukov, the main character in "For the Running Day". In the article "Poets of the Antilles" E. Galperina traces the stages of emergence, development and the current state of poetry in the Republic of Haiti, in the West Indies (the islands of Jamaica, Trinidad, etc.) and in British Guiana. The desire for national and political freedom, interest in the past and folklore, anger and contempt for the colonizers - 110 these features characterize the poetry of the Antilles. The questions of purity, euphony and creative use of modern literary language attract the attention of writers, critics and readers. E. Khanpira focuses on them in his short remark "Let's talk about our speech". In our attitude to language, breadth, a sober understanding of the peculiarities of artistic speech are obviously necessary, since any extreme purism can lead to the impoverishment of speech. In support of these thoughts, E. Khanpira cites convincing examples from the literary work of M. Gorky, S. Sergeev-Tsensky, Vl. Mayakovsky, V. I. Lenin and others.

The editorial office received a letter from Dr. Penyo Rusev, which says: I would like to draw your attention to the following: 1. While examining the story "Andreshko", on page 51 (vol. 5, 1960 of the magazine "Literary Thought") M. Dragostinova writes that in my book "The Creativity of Elin Elin up to the Balkan War" a methodology was manifested that seeks to closely link the image with some real prototype; that in my opinion the spontaneous rebel Andreshko is a member of the Agricultural Union" and that by studying and observing the life and activities of this organization, Elin Pelin discovered his hero precisely in its ranks". By forcing and attributing all this to me, M. Dragostinova concludes: "Such an automatic application of historical facts will lead us to a completely empirical approach to literary phenomena". The statements attributed to me by M. Dragostinova are not in my book. On the contrary, in it I write: "The question of whether Andreshko belongs to the farmers or the socialists must be relegated to the circle of fortune-telling" (pp. 114-115). Moreover, I claim that "it is irrelevant" whether we attribute Andreshko to the farmers or the socialists of that time.