the journal zlatorog and modern bulgarian letters

American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

The Journal Zlatorog and Modern Bulgarian LettersAuthor(s): Charles A. MoserSource: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Summer, 1963), pp. 117-133Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/304605 .

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The Journal Zlatorog and Modern Bulgarian Letters

By Charles A. Moser Yale University

In the second decade of this century the Bulgarian nation under- went a series of convulsions which strained the fabric of its society. Out of three wars in which Bulgaria was involved at this time, she emerged victorious only from one: the First Balkan War (1912-1913), fought in collaboration with her Balkan allies, Serbia and Rumania, against Turkey, for the purpose of liquidating the remnants of the U Turkish yoke." Upon the successful conclusion of the First Balkan War, Bulgaria turned against her former allies in a squabble over the division of the spoils and soon found herself soundly trounced (1913). Finally, when the First World War erupted, Bulgaria placed herself on the losing side, that of the Central Powers. By the time that con- flict had reached its end, Bulgaria was prostrate, a state of being which naturally affected the hopes nurtured by educated Bulgarians for the continuation of the cultural flowering which had occurred just before the beginning of all these calamities.

Following the partial liberation of Bulgaria from Turkish over- lordship as a result of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 (the war of which Gar'in wrote so bitterly), this small Balkan country gathered its cultural forces until, from about 1890 to 1910 or so, it produced what could be designated as a Golden Age of Bulgarian letters. Bul- garian literature had never been very significant on a European scale before then, and it would be an exaggeration to say that it became so at this time, but at least it was less unimportant than before and even boasted some writers worthy of notice beyond Bulgarian borders. The work of Ivan Vazov ( 1850-1921), now considered the classical Bul- garian author, came into prominence as early as the 1880's, but even when the new currents became predominant, he continued to preside as the patriarch of Bulgarian literature. The famous humorist Aleko Konstantinov ( 1863-1897) did much of his writing in the 1890's and

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118 The Slavic and EastEuropean Journal

the sardonic, embittered poet Stojan Mixajlovski (1856-1927) also flourished over this period. The most important single factor inthe belated flowering of Bulgarian letters, however, was the literary journal Misal, edited by Dr. Krestju Krastev, which existed from 1892 to 1909, gathering to itself a number of the most outstanding literary men of the period. Among its contributors were to be found the poet and critic Pendo Slavejkov, once a candidate for a Nobel Prize; the poet Pejo Javorov, who produced two of the classical Bul- garian plays; and Petko Todorov, a Western-oriented writer best known for his Idylls. Krestev himself, in addition to managing a forum for such leading authors as these, endowed the art of criticism with a heretofore unattained standing in Bulgarian letters through his articles in Misal and his collections of critical writings. The rise of criticism was both a contribution to and a symptom of the general surge in Bulgarian literature. All in all, these men formed a highly competent group of writers.

Unfortunately, this pleasant situation was harshly dispelled over the years immediately preceding the First Balkan War and during the conflicts which followed. Misal ceased publication in 1909, Pendo Slavejkov left the country for political reasons and there died in 1912, his death coming as an enormous shock to Bulgarian society, Javorov committed suicide in 1914, the gifted young poet Dim'o Debeljanov was killed at the-front in 1916, Todorov died abroad in 1916, Krastev's demise occurred in 1919, and finally even Vazov left the scene in 1921. A sizable segment of Bulgaria's literary slate had been wiped clean and it was up to the postwar generation to do what it could in the way of salvage and reconstruction. Although this may have seemed to some a well-nigh impossible task, in fact intellectual life was resumed after the World War with a rather high degree of continuity. The traditions of the immediate past were built upon and continued in many cases, although of course new currents arose to modify or replace the old ones. In particular, the intellectual heritage of Misal was nurtured during the period 1920-1943 by the journal Zlatorog, which played nearly as important a role in its time as Misal had before in the development and guidance of Bulgarian literature.

Zlatorog began to appear in January of 1920 and continued to be issued in almost precisely the same format and dimensions, ten times per year, for the rest of its existence. It is striking how constant Zlatorog's approach, as well as its appearance, was over the years. As the number of pages in each issue was relatively small, usually not more than sixty, it could not and did not attempt to handle large works of fiction, such as novels, although it might on rare occasions run series of articles on a single topic. The bulk of its space was given over to short stories and to literary criticism, though in each issue there would be a small and nearly invariant number of pages devoted to verse by some of the best poets of the period. Zlatorog did not confine itself exclusively to belles-lettres: almost every issue contained articles on art (painting, sculpture, architecture,



The Journal Zlatorog and Modern Bulgarian Letters 119

the theater, the cinema) and on general philosophical or sociological questions, written by outstanding Bulgarian scholars and journalists. A section at the rear was reserved for reviews of current books, comments on the theater and the state of the arts both in Bulgaria and abroad, and remarks of general interest to the cultivated reader. Zlatorog's approach was not in the least provincial: it ranged over the breadth of western culture, paying especial attention to the intellectual life of Russia, France, and Germany,' but it also kept up with developments in neighboring Serbia, Greece, and Rumania, gratefully noted the numerous books and articles on Bulgarian literature which appeared, particularly in the 1920's, in Italy, and harbored at least one contributor (Anna Kamenova) who made it her business to keep the Bulgarian public informed of literary happenings in Eng- land and America. The journal published articles by foreign scholars or translations from foreign writers and essayists in moderation. This type of reading program, then, with approximately the same "mix" of literature, literary criticism, and other types of writing, was maintained throughout Zlatorog's existence. In the last few years a small number of reproductions of paintings and photographs of sculpture were introduced, but Zlatorog still maintained its primarily literary character.

Zlatorog exhibited the same steadiness with regard to its editors and contributors. The founder and guiding spirit of the journal all during its existence was the critic Vladimir Vasilev ( 1883- ), who may be regarded as a creative disciple of Krastev. It was Vasilev who set the general tone for Zlatorog. The poet Nikolaj Liliev ( 1885- 1960) acted as coeditor from the beginning to the end and Sirak Skitnik (1883-1942) , artist, art critic, and man of broad interests, also served as coeditor from the journal's inception until 1940, not long before his death. Generally speaking, the critics who wrote for Zlatorogwere sufficiently satisfied with that organ that only death separated them therefrom, although this should not be taken to mean that there were no defections to, or splits from, thezlatoroci, as the contributors to Zlatorog were called. One of Zlatorog's principal critics, Georgi Canev ( 1895-), now head of the Department of Bul- garian Literature at Sofia University and director of the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Bulgarian Literature), together with the writers Nikola Furnad'iev, Asen Razcvetnikov, and Angel Karalijcev, seek- ing the opportunity to cultivate " 'personal, ' 'independent, ' 'free' poetry of high quality, "? left the communist organ Nov pat and mi- grated to Zlatorog. As the author of an article on Canev remarks, "after the 9th of September [ 1944, the revolution] Canev himself evaluated this step as 'an error, which had a negative political effect, unforeseen at the time but which became clear later:"3 These reinforcements bolstered Zlatorog's forces markedly. However, the journal likewise suffered some defections, perhaps the most important being that of the critic Konstantin Gelebov, who wrote a couple of articles for it in 1922 and then broke away to become an opponent of



120 The Slavic and East European Journal

Zlatorog. Boris Jocov remained among the zlatorofci for a longer time, but what he accomplished then, if Vasilev is to be believed, was largely the result of careful editorial work. As Vasilev wrote, after Jocov's departure, in a polemical article,

It seems to me that B. Jocov's ability at chattering and talking nonsense is very well known...

"But he was a contributor to Zlatorog, how could you have published his pieces then? "

The explanation is simple: among other items an editor has a blue pencil, a very necessary and useful weapon in certain circumstances.4

On the whole, however, Vasilev maintained such a tolerant atmos- phere in his journal that those who once contributed to it did not leave it or at least did not turn against it.

Another achievement which deserves emphasis is the surprising universality which Zlatorog attained in collecting outstanding critics and writers of the inter-war period. As an investigator of Bulgarian criticism has written, "cette revue[Zlatorog] a le m6rite d'avoir, pendant un quart de siecle, donne l'hospitalite

' la plupart des bons ecrivains. Elle reussit

' creer un climat de tolerance et de camarad-

erie entre des ecrivains de trois generations." 5 The list of creative writers who published their work in Zlatorog's pages is indeed long and distinguished; those missing from it were principally authors whose ideological convictions kept them from sympathizing with its approach. The most important non- zlatorozci were Elin Pelin, the describer of peasant life, the communist poet Xristo Smirnenski, the symbolist Teodor Trajanov, and the poet and critic Ljudmil Stojanov. But then Zlatorog sheltered such lights of Bulgarian literature as T.G. Vlajkov ( 1865-1943), who had by this time occupied the place of elder statesman of Bulgarian letters vacated by Vazov; that mainstay of the Zlatorog group and outstanding realist, depicter of the life of the Bulgarian countryside, Jordan Jovkov (1880-1937), whom an un- timely death removed from the ranks of the zlatoroici; Georgi Rajcev ( 1882-1947), probably the best psychological writer yet to appear in Bulgaria although the narrow range of his interests precludes his assuming a very eminent position in European literature; Nikolaj Rajnov (1889-1954), who conducted interesting stylistic experiments in prose; the poetess Elisaveta Bagrjana (1893- ), who produced probably the best verse written during the inter-war period; the poetess Dora Gabe ( 1886- ) ; and the poets Nikola Furnad'iev ( 1903- ), Nikolaj Liliev, and Nikola Rakitin (1885-1934) . The creative poten- tialities of the Zlatorog authors were truly great and it can be said that the journal cornered a huge proportion of the literary talent then to be found in Bulgaria. This fact alone would have made it quite certain that the magazine would assume an important place in the intellectual life of the time. But Zlatorog, as we have seen, did not limit itself to the publication of original writing; it also boasted a




highly qualified group of Bulgarian critics. These were primarily: Bojan Penev (1882-1927), Georgi Konstantinov (1902- ), Georgi Canev, and Vladimir Vasilev himself. In addition there were a host of other, more minor, authors and critics whose articles appeared in Zlatorog. It goes without saying that no hard and fast line can be drawn between poet, prose-writer, and critic in general, and this is true in the case of Zlatorog. Bagrjana wrote memoirs as well as poetry; Lilievcomposed a number of essays and critical articles in addition to verse; Nikolaj Rajnov, though primarily a prose-writer, produced poetry and several critical pieces, including one or two theoretical articles (" 2ivopisen i dekorativen stil v razkaza, " " Ka- bareten stil") which could be applied to that which he himself, as a creative artist, was attempting to accomplish in the area of style.

Although to a certain degree the members of the Zlatorog group were thrown together only incidentally, because they happened to publish in the journal, intercommunication between some of them was more immediate than that to be derived from reading the printed word. Thus the Sofia coffee houses, especially "Car-Osvoboditel, " served as centers where those zlatoro'ci living in the capital would gather and converse. But sometimes the ties were stronger than this. Bagrjana early came under the powerful influence of two of the men who were to be, along with her, leading contributors to Zlatorog, Penev and Jovkov. Thus Bagrjana's character was shaped during the First WorldWar, at the time when she was studying Slavic philology at Sofia University and fell under the sway of Penev, who was her professor. 6 Jovkov influenced her life even more directly in a way described by her in brief memoirs written just after his death in 1937. Bagrjana recalls how, from 1913 to 1918, when she was a student writing verses and dreaming of being published, she became a mem- ber of a group of young writers which included Rajev, Liliev, and Konstantin Konstantinov. Being shy, she never hinted to them that she wrote poetry. Through this group she met Jovkov, to whom she was especially close in 1915. Somehow Jovkov divined that she was producing verse secretly. One day he came to see her and refused to leave until she showed him her work. "I went into the other room,

" Bagrjana writes,

gave a batch [of poems] to my sister to take out to him, but didn't dare to appear myself until he called me.

Then he gave me my first encouraging words, told me that I should begin publishing, and first took two poems from me, which he placed in the May and June issues of Savremenna misal .7

This segment of the Zlatorog group, then, was bound together by ties more intimate than usual. In his capacity as editor, Vasilev tried to create something of a comradely spirit for the journal as a whole, and when such contributors as Penev (1927) and Jovkov (1937) died, a large part of the issues appearing after their deaths would be given




over to tributes to them, reminiscences about them and analyses of their work. Even when a lesser contributor died, Vasilev would always include at least a page or two in m emoriam in the issue following his demise.

Zlatorog fostered esprit de corps on the intellectual and artistic plane as well as on the personal level. Not only did authors possess in it a journal where they might publish their work and compare it withthatof their contemporaries and equals, but on top of this Zla- torog's stable of critics, although they were by no means forced to, often wrote about those colleagues of theirs who published in the magazine, attempting to analyze their strengths and weaknesses and generally to aid them in their literary development. This meant that to some extent the Zlatorog corporation was a closed one, one able to encourage a spirit of intellectual community, which magnified its influence on the Bulgarian literary milieu.

Obviously Zlatorog did not operate in a vacuum in Bulgarian life between the wars. Two of its chief opponents were Vezni, a short- lived journal, edited by Geo Milev, which espoused symbolist views of a sort; and, more important, Xiperion, edited by Teodor Trajanov with the active assistance of Ljudmil Stojanov. Trajanov was the one major representative of the symbolist current in Bulgarian poetry who remained faithful to his original calling, for Milev and later Stojanov moved far to the left. Trajanov made his journal the organ of Symbolism as a creed, and indeed Xiperion became one of the most important journals of the 1920's, but it proved not so viable as Zla- torog and failed after about ten years. Konstantin Galabov, after breaking with Zlatorog founded the journal Strelec, which agitated for the Europeanization of Bulgarian literature but which turned out not to be very sturdy either. There were a number of other rival or- gans, including the communist ones, appearing at the time, but of all these Zlatorog emerged as by far the most important. 8

As other journals foundered one after another and Zlatorog continued serenely on, its editors, in addition to publishing occasional programmatic statements or articles, established the custom of clos- ing each five-year span of their activity with a brief piece summing up their achievements to that point in time. Such statements were printed in the tenth, fifteenth, and twentieth volumes of the journal. According to articles of this type, one of the magazine's cardinal principles was that of political and intellectual independence. "In literature we have never fallen into any inclination to adapt ourselves to the regime, which has been very easy, which has happened and does happen to other journals."' Literary judgments rendered by the magazine were not based on any party line: "We are not going to negate any great poet or novelist... regardless of what 'camp' he belongs to. "10 The journal has striven to create a "standard," founded on quality and artistic worth alone, to which all critics can adhere. Thus art must be judged independently of the ideas which it contains, though these are also of importance, for art cannot be




subservient to a political ideology: "This is the beginning of stan- dardized literary production, when art ceases to be a mystery. "i The Zlatorog critics therefore try to define the intellectual currents of the day and make efforts to direct literature into desirable channels, but donot concoct formulas for success. Zlatorog would have nothing to do with partisan ardor and exalted declamations, preferring to think that its most characteristic trait was "composure. " But of course art could not be looked upon as something abstract and di- vorced from life; it had a broader social purpose and, as a conse- quence, so did the journal. The editors formulated this purpose in the article " 15 godini Zlatorog, " where they stated that their aim had been: "the serving of something more than the individual personality: the cultural consciousness of the Bulgarian. This service is the thing which can mediate individual rivalries between writers in order to deflect them from their natural path, one against the other, so as to guide them in parallel order, toward a common aim-outside of themselves." 12 At the same time, the individual authors contributing to Zlatorog were not to be forced to do violence to their artistic convictions.

Although the journal's overall program was as outlined above, the Zlatorog critics were allowed variations to suit their temperaments. The most important of the contributing critics aside from Vasilev himself was Bojan Penev, the pervasiveness of whose intellectual presence must be acknowledged even by Marxist scholars who have no use for his conclusions: "Bojan Penev was one of the outstanding representatives of bourgeois-esthetic literary criticism. Although his attention was directed primarily toward literary history, he emerged also as a literary critic of great influence. " 13 Since Penev figured so markedly in Zlatorog councils during the first years of its existence, a few words should be said about his literary critical approach, even though, as the citation given above indicates, his chief fame now rests on his accomplishments as a literary historian. In this latter area, he contributed a number of studies to the history of Bul- garian literature and authored four volumes of an extensive Istorija na novata balgarska literatura; he was always in command of his facts and conscientious in piecing them together to form a coherent whole. In his approach to criticism Penev, like many other Zlatorog critics, may be considered a creative follower of Dr. Krastev and, through him, amore distant descendant of Ne'o BonEev (1839-1878), the first Bulgarian critic who tried to bestow upon criticism a value of its own. Penev's critical standards were so high that, as one of his admirers has written, he demanded of Bulgarian literature feats which it could probably not have accomplished for another fifty years.'14 Penev's most general article published inZlatorog was"Osnovni carti na dnesnata ni literatura" (II, 225-247), in which he had sharp words for the predominantly realistic character of Bulgarian literature! "Our realism," Penev wrote, "deprived of internal content and creative power, even to this day remains a lifeless form which must be




overcome as soon as possible." The fact that Bulgarian humor never gets off the ground stems precisely from its coarse realism, for ex- ample. In Penev's opinion, extreme realism was a sign of "impov- erished, unproductive fantasy." However, the appearance of a strong individualistic current among Bulgarian writers in the first part of the century gave one hope that something of the "infernal and demonic," something of Poe's world which up to that time had been inaccessible to Bulgarian authors, would begin to appear. Only then would Bul- garian letters produce something better than descriptions of the dully normal and the completely ordinary. Let us hope, Penev wrote in conclusion, that in the future our literature "will overcome the internal obstacles to the creation of a higher spiritual culture, will rise to those general ideas and problems of religion and philosophy by which the great poets of world literature are inspired.... It is essential here that the spiritual should flow from a deeper coalescence between the poet and the world, from a more intuitive penetration into the essence of being, from a fuller, to the extent that this is possible, liberation of art from the coarse and external. " (II, 247.) The Zlatorog group never ceased to be aware of the necessity, in the realm of art, for the irrational as opposed to pedestrian reason, but Penev adhered to an extreme view in this regard, his revulsion from realism leading him to denigrate the work, not only of Aleko Konstan- ov but also of Vazov.

The Zlatorog critics in general, prompted by attacks on them from other literary camps and impelled by their own curiosity, made at- tempts at defining the relationship between art and life. Two of the more important articles on this subject were G. Konstantinov's "So- cialnostna izkustvoto" (XVI, 433-440) and Vasilev's "Ot izkustvoto kem

.ivota" (XX, 161-174) .6 Konstantinov defends the view that

the artist's chief justification is art itself, although he does not extend this so far as to preach "art for art's sake, " a doctrine which the journal's opponents often tried to claim it propounded. As Kon- stantinov put it, "the writer, the poet, when he works as a writer or a poet, has no other aims beyond the aims of art. If he attains them, if he constructs his own world as an artist-then he has achieved the civic justification for his work as well. And his 'use- fulness' from then on is evaluated by the vitality of the ideas which he arouses..." (XVI, 434-435. ) If a writer starts with the purpose of inserting ideology into his work, from the artistic point of view his labors are almost certain to be worthless. Vasilev expounded similar ideas in his article, denying that Zlatorog supported the theory of "art for art's sake, " although he did admit that he always started with an evaluation of the artistic qualities of a literary work. If art becomes propaganda, it ceases to be art, although in a real sense a great writer is always "progressive, " ahead of his time. "The negation of tendentiousness is not the negation of a tendency in general, which, whether consciously or not, is contained in any artistic work. There never has been an author who in the last analysis




does not lead us toward something. But tendentiousness is an arti- ficial montage of life, whereas a tendency is its inspired idea, born and discovered in its bowels, into which the work of art penetrates.. " (XX, 168. ) Obviously the classics of literature must retain something of enduring value, or else the Soviets would not be reprinting the great nineteenth century Russian writers in such monumental edi- tions. Analogously, Baj Ganjus (Aleko Konstantinov's satirical creation) exist everywhere and are not merely representatives of bourgeois society, as some Soviet scholars would have us believe. Art has a definite effect on life and is certainly a force to be reckoned with, Vasilev argued.

This same problem of the relationship between art and life was a central issue in the most extensive debate to take place between Zlatorog and one of its ideological opponents. On the occasion of the journal's twentieth anniversary, the Marxist critic Todor Pavlov published an article entitled " Pozicijata na Zlatorog, " in which he hacked away at a number of its intellectual assumptions.. The Zla- torog group claimed to be universal in its appreciation of art, wrote Pavlov, but it rarely found the " presence of creative personality" in writers whose ideology was foreign to that of the journal. Pavlov decided that Zlatorog's approach could be most accurately defined as one of "esthetic formalism, " a position which could not be ac- cepted by the Marxists, who contended that art consists principally of the "subjective image of objective things. " Nor could Pavlov approve of the subordinate position to which the zlatoro?ci relegated ideology in a work of art: "In other words, the social-ideological content of art does not stand, so to speak, on a subordinate level, it is not some sort of addition to the artistic-ideological content of art; rather it is an extremely important, first-rank, basic, essential aspect of artistic creation, so that without it one can simply not even conceive of a truly talented, truly effective, and truly meaningful artistic creation.""17 Vasilev replied to Pavlov's strictures in a series of four articles, published in 1941, collectively entitled "Barat otliteraturniformuli." In these pieces Vasilev subjected all of Pav- lov's literary criticism to a detailed analysis, probing the weaknesses of the dialectical materialist approach to literature. Vasilev would not yield the field, continuing to insist on the primacy of the pyschological factor, the fantasy, in art, and arguing that art was not a reflection, but a transformation of reality. This clash, need- less to say, was the sort of quarrel in which neither side emerged victorious.

Other contributors to Zlatorog addressed themselves to the more specific problem of the critic's responsibilities and qualifications. Georgi Canev, in his article "Za literaturnija kritik" (XII, 20-30), dedicated to Vladimir Vasilev, found some interesting things to say on this subject. While writers often consider critics to be wreckers, actually no critic can demolish the reputation of a genuinely talented writer. The critic has nothing to do with creating a writer, continued




Canev; all he can do is analyze the attributes of a given talent and define the features of his "creative personality. " The critic labors "in order to point out that form of the beautiful which has aroused his enthusiasm in a work or... the falsity which he has discovered within it. " Since love for art is the critic's only motive, he must be completely unselfish and disinterested and exclude personal feelings and opinions from any decisive role in literary evaluations. In spite of all the effort which a critic may expend on analysis, still "there are works which [the critic] comprehends surely, without being able to interpret them and prove anything to others. In art there always remains an unexplainable, mystical aspect ... ." Finally, the critic must recognize the heavy responsibility he bears for his judg- ment of literary works and not pass these judgments lightly. Ivan Bogdanov, however, in his article "Poetat i kritikat" (XXIV, 453- 461), enters a plea for more engaged criticism. The critic can no longer be so dispassionate as he once was, but rather he must become involved in the currents of his day and approach a work of art from all possible points of view: "Man's consciousness expresses itself through cognitive, social, legal, moral, religious and esthetic aspects. Furthermore, the viewpoint and methods of esthetics are not sufficient to elucidate the full value of a work of art. In order to comprehend it, we must study it from as many points of view as there are types of experience embodied in it and as there are categories of values displayed through it. " (XXIV, 455-456.) This approach runs counter to the general spirit of Zlatorog criticism, but this may be attributed to Bogdanov's personal convictions, which were allowed scope in the journal.

Zlatorog's liberal attitude toward literary creation and literary criticism caused it to look askance at those who would regiment literature for ulterior purposes. The Zlatorog critics, especially Jordan Badev, observed with a negative sort of interest demands of a totali- tarian type made upon authors. Badev noted that both Radek in the Soviet Union and a leading royalist in France were vociferously calling for literature to be activist in spirit. Such statements were the mark of a dictatorship, for the same requirement for literature engage was also issuing from Nazi Germany. The important thing, in Badev's view, was that a writer should not become a propagandist, although neither should he strive to be absolutely indifferent to all parties.'8 In another article Badev remarked that Bulgaria had no need of the government-directed literature existing in the USSR: if French classical works seem untrue to life, he claimed, this was because their authors wrote under government protection and control. Nor is there any necessity for a novel's heroes to belong to a specific social class. 19

Much attention was paid by the Zlatorog critics to the history and theory of literature, including Bulgarian literature. For instance, Georgi Canev, in his article "Romantika i realizem" (XVII, 6-16), took issue with opinions on realism like Penev's discussed above,




and contended that realism was the approach which best served the purposes of literature: "In general, realism remains an invariably valuable method for an art which does not wish to be merely enter- tainment, but which would like to stir the reader's soul, bestow upon him artistic cognition of people and events" (XVII, 16. ) Romanti- cism is sufficiently distant from everyday life that it cannot be ac - cepted, in Canev's opinion, as the basis for art: it can be tolerated only when it comprises "merely elements, and not the essence, of literary art" (XVII, 16). Such elements, if present at all, must be embedded in a firmly realistic approach. The center of gravity of Zlatorog's critical credo, it is probably safe to say, was closer to Canev's position than to Penev's.

Jordan Badev tried to give a more theoretical grounding to the journal's critical and artistic position in arguing that Zlatorog, bynot forming what could strictly be termed a literary " school" or literary "grouping, " was contributing to the most rapid possible development of Bulgarian literature. "In countries with a life which has been freed late, with an immature culture, " Badev wrote, "literary schools are mainly an imported product and in all cases are an impediment to literary development. They, these schools, are brought in and received in such countries as dry doctrines and are almost never fully adaptable to the forms of local literary production. " zo Vasilev had complained in one of his polemical articles of an earlier date that the symbolists, who represented a definite " school, " went too far in proclaiming that all of Bulgarian literature began only with Teodor Trajanov, that symbolism embodied the eternal aspirations of the Bulgarian soul, and so forth. Vasilev made remarks similar to Badev's on the subject of the harm done by literary schools, which, in spite of their bepeficial aspects, introduce into a developing literature "the spirit of limitation, of one-sidedness-at a time when souls should be opened wide to the many-sidedness of foreign artistic achievements. " 21 To the extent that the literary " schools" referred to here included symbolism, Vasilev and his followers were probably right, for symbolism never did succeed in sinking extensive roots into Bul- garian soil. It arrived late, for one thing, and then the practical, "healthy" Bulgarian spirit proved to be too much for it.

The Zlatorog critics traced certain guidelines for the purpose of facilitating analysis of Bulgarian literary history. In "Poeti na smirenieto" Vasilev summarized the approach to this problem by offering a scheme which is still largely acceptable. The leading artistic motif during the period from 1895 to 1910 was defined as "individualism, " an intellectual attitude called into being as a reaction to the rapid material development of the country with its concurrent suppression of individual rights and the " deprivation of personality. " Whereas Aleko Konstantinov and Stojan Mixajlovski confined themselves to the exposure of vice, Penio Slavejkov felt that something positive should be opposed to the negative sides of Bulgarian life, that individuality, which up to then had been an object of derision,




should reassert itself. "Without the development of the personality which [Slavejkov] gave us, today we would have people without pride, without a feeling of worth, without an ideological axis, without gallantry-just simpletons, careerists and scoundrels (XVII, 479)." After 1910, however, the masses, with the aid of education, began tocome into theirown, and so they had to be taken into political and artistic account. The bit (milieu, way of life) of the common people, which meant predominantly the peasantry, began to attract attention: "In the short story we already have a more original theme: the way of life and the soul of the countryside and of the people, though treated, not as material for arbitrary poetic constructs and symbols, but rather as they are given: Elin Pelin, Jordan Jovkov. ... A greater modesty, more humanity have become the sign even of the utterances of the personality. " (XVII, 480. ) Zlatorog was cultivating such literature by printing the writings of Jovkov, Rajcev, and others who investigated the ways of the countryside in their prose.

Theories on the course of the national literary development could be applied to genres within Bulgarian literature. Badev, in his " Misli verku balgarskija roman," comments that the Soviet Union and France have both been inundated by an over-production of novels, and the same happens to be the case in Bulgaria. Badev remarks that in the case of recent production "ninety percent of our novels suffer from two basic complaints: the tendency for the author to be a literary poseur and composition for the mere sake of composition" (literaturno poz'orstvo i sayinitelstvo) (XVI, 16). He distinguishes two main lines of the Bulgarian novel's development: novels treating political and social struggles and the rural and urban milieu, and the historical novel. The psychological novel of significant dimensions is little developed, and what there is tends to be autobiographical (XVI, 18- 19).

Badev likewise turned his attention to the development of poetry since the First World War, advancing the following reasons for the flourishing of lyric poetry in Bulgaria right after the war (these comments were written in 1922): "First-[ lyric poetry] is the straightest route to direct expression; second, it does not exact the difficulty of complex artistic composition; third, it does not assume the need to gobeyond one's self in order to refract a world outside of oneself; and finally, in the process of searching for artistic means it repre- sents the path of least resistance. " zz Malo Nikolov, writing twelve years later, added to Badev's analysis the conclusion that postwar lyric poetry, although its roots were in Bulgarian soil, received its stimulation from abroad, primarily from Russia, and therefore should not be explained as a reaction against native symbolism. Bulgarian poetry was too derivative to be analyzed solely in terms of itself. 23 Badev also traced two lines of development in the lyric, just as he had done for the novel. The first followed European modernism and strove to be original. Its chief representatives were Trajanov and Liliev, but others of this school were Ljudmil Stojanov, Geo Milev,




and Xristo Jasenov. Where the more minor writers of this group were concerned, there was a tendency for poetry to be transformed into "empty rhyming or a monstrous piling up of words. " These authors became over-enthusiastic in their search for original meters and striking word-combinations. Thus one of Stojanov's weaknesses, according to Badev, was his use of exotic proper names without any better justification than that they pleased him. The second group of writers consisted of such poets as Dora Gabe, Mara Believa, and Nikola Rakitin, who believed in the simple and the natural. 24 Of course Badev's classification was his own, and different critics, in writing surveys of Bulgarian prose and especially poetry, would select different authors as representative of the best which Bulgarian literature had to offer, though it is true that certain names ( Bagrjana, Rakitin, Liliev) might be found on all the lists.

In one programmatic statement the editor of Zlatorog remarked that a primary purpose of the journal was the "formation within society of a literary conscienceand the creation of a standard." 25 This attempt to create a standard for the whole of Bulgarian literature natur - ally led to disputes with other journals. These arguments were or- dinarily carried on by Vasilev, who rather seemed to revel in dispu- tation-the titles of two of his polemical pieces were "Xuliganstvoto v literaturata ni" ( 1927) and

"Me.du sektanstvo i demagogija"

(1923). In the latter article Vasilev attacks, among others, Alek- sander Balabanov and his paper Razvigor, accusing Balabanov of being a braggart who filled his publication with his own articles and poured contempt on practically everything he wrote about. His literary evaluations were hardly very valuable, according to Vasilev. Several years later Georgi Canev, disturbed by the incorrect assessments so prevalent on the Bulgarian literary market, wrote a "Neprijatna statija" (XII, 244-253), in which he pointed out that the public was being misled by critics with no sense of measure. "Values are being devalued, cried Canev. "Dogged artisans are being held up as creators, mediocrities are becoming artists, and street agitators, prophets. Born poets are negated or made equal to dilettantes. If somewhere the riches of a true talent are pointed out, immediately, the very next day, there appears a negative article on the same writer for the purpose of destroying the good impression. " (XII, 245.) In such polemical articles the author frequently gave no examples, leaving the reader to infer the identity of the objects of his wrath. Inthis case, however, Canevtrains his fire on some concrete things: certain of the literary papers, which had been publishing articles comparing Bulgarian historical novels to War and Peace; A. StraMi- mirov, who possessed so little sense of proportion as to compare a "dilettante like L. Kasarova with Bagrjana; " and Aleksander Bala- banov, who tried to denigrate Penev's work by calling one of his articles a " student essay. " Aware that he was overstepping the bounds of literary custom in citing these examples, Canev defended himself in conclusion by quoting the words of Nero Bondev: "The




literary arena is not a dance hall where we should caress one another and pay one another compliments. " The zlatoroici, then, were not slow to defend their views and launch counterattacks against those who assaulted them. And the number of the latter was not small.

An ingredient of Zlatorog's creed was the objective criticism of its own writers, which was equivalent to the objective criticism of a large portion of the literary community of that time. Zlatorog did not deny the worth of such non-zlatoroicias Elin Pelin and even Xristo Smirnenski, although it considered that most of the communist writers were uninteresting because of the fetters placed upon them by the "sectarianism" of communist literary theory. The journal devoted a number of critical articles to its own writers, and a brief in- vestigation of how they fared at its hands will be of interest.

Perhaps Vasilev's estimate of Nikolaj Rajnov in the article "Ot 1920 do dnes" (1932) furnishes one of the best instances of the dispassionate treatment of one's own. After discussing the work of Elin Pelin and Jovkov and deciding that their approach could be defined as "milieu realism" (bitovijat realizam), after coming to the conclusion that Rajiev's chief virtue lay in his "milieu psychologism" (bitovijat psixologizam) and his depiction of people brought upin rural surroundings and transferred to the city who cannot adjust to the change and therefore perish, Vasilev turns his attention to Rajnov. Rajnov, according to Vasilev, is one of the major latter-day promul- gators of individualism in Bulgarian literature because the " problem of the personality" is at the focus of his work. Vasilev concludes, attempting to predict rather than to prescribe, "it seems to me that "The Drama" and "Poor Lazar" mark out Rajnov's future possibili- ties.... In spite of his philosophy that the truth of life must be com- prehended through feeling, in these [ stories] Rajnov seeks it with a great deal of intellect.... But for the time being Rajnov's place in our literature is based on his other books [i. e. those in which analysis through feeling is the predominant ingredient]. " (XIII, 426. ) Thus, though there may be an element of "prescription" in. this judg- ment, still its main tendency is toward definition and understanding plus advice to the author as to what direction his labors might best take. By way of contrast, in this same article Vasilev seems to considerthat Jovkov has already discovered the right channel for the development of his talent: "Jovkov's humanitarian viewpoint is clear. Jovkov refers to those spiritual forces which define man as a rational and moral being. Material things will not bring happiness. The human eye is insatiable, always wants more, will never be sat - isfied or rejoice. " (XIV, 195.) There is no need to say anything about the direction of Jovkov's possible future progress because he has already found it.

The Zlatorog critics produced a number of articles on their poets, especially Bagrjana and Liliev, as well as their prose-writers. Maldo Nikolov commented on the feminine power of Bagrjana's poetry and remarked that her emotional approach did not prevent her from being




wise. Calling her a "worthy disciple of Anna Axmatova, " 26 he concluded: " In the steps of Botev, Javorov and Liliev, she contradicts the concept of the sobriety of the Bulgarian spirit. Even in an era of the greatest mechanization and automatization she discerns such a great quantity of spirituality and romanticism and persuades us that the achievements of technology do not impoverish, but rather give wing to the human spirit. " 27 Liliev's poetry was the object of some rumination on the part of the critics, and in most cases the writer attempted to approach Liliev's difficult verse from the author's point of view. Vasilev, striving to define the essence of Liliev's art, concluded that "selflessness" was at the core of his work. At that date (1922) Liliev faced a number of possible directions for his poetic development, but Vasilev was sure that he would eventually choose the one which gave the greatest scope to his selflessness. 28 Boris Jocov wrote in 1926 that the reader must make an effort to "live more deeply. . . with Nikolaj Liliev's poetry" in order to comprehend the "irrational forms of his consciousness" and appreciate his "esthetic absolutism. " 29 Even Canev, who by and large defended the priority of realism in literature, commented that " Liliev's poetry is the highest and most direct expression of those moods and feelings which symbolism after Javorov has introduced among us. "30 Thus we see that when Zlatorog treated of its own, it did indeed adhere to its belief that no prescriptions should be handed to authors whether they wanted them or not. A friendly and sympathetic discussion of a writer's work was the norm for the Zlatorog critics.

We may, then, look upon the journal Zlatorog as a powerful influence in the literary and intellectual milieu of Bulgaria between the First and Second World Wars. It attempted to enforce high standards of attainment, and if it did not always succeed in this, it should at least be given credit for trying. It offered shelter to a truly as- tounding percentage of the best Bulgarian writers and literary critics, giving them the opportunity to mature freely, offering guidance but not forcing it upon an unwilling recipient. Zlatorog tried to devise a standard of literary worth valid for all and by its critical policies it was able to encourage the raising of the level of Bulgarian literature. It cultivated a tolerant approach in an era of intolerance and a spirit of comradeship among its contributors. Bulgarian intellectual life between the wars would have been significantly poorer had Zlatorog never existed, and it would almost certainly have been much more sectarian. From 1920 until the summer day in 1944 when the last issue for 1943 appeared-it had been delayed by Allied bombings- Zlatorog was a bastion of literary reasonableness.

NOTES

1. It might be remarked that even during the later 1930's, when Bulgaria was being drawn into the German orbit, it was difficult to tell from the pages of Zlatorog that Bulgaria was any closer to Germany than, say, France.




2. Pantelej Zarev, "Poezijata na Nikola Furnad.iev,"

Septemvri, 1951, No. 1, p. 162.

3. Minko Nikolov, "Prizvanieto na kritika, " in Georgi Canev, Kritika (Sofia, 1961), p. 7.

4. V. Vasilev, "Katedra po kovarstvo, " XX, 372. In this article all volume and page numbers standing alone refer to Zlatorog.

5. Pierre Christophorov, "La conception de la critique litteraire en Bulgarie, " Revue des 6tudes slaves, XXXIII ( 1956), 63.

6. Pen' o Rusev, Istorija na balgarskata literatura ot Smirnenski do nafi dni (Sofia, 1957), p. 155.

7. E. Bagrjana, "Iz mnogoto mi spomeni za Jovkov, " XVIII, 311-315.

8. Jordan Badev, "Literaturni ?koli i literaturni grupi," article 2, XX, 261-268.

9. V. Vasilev, "Imenno, na jasni posicii, " XXI, 160.

10. Ibid., XXI, 167.

11. V. Vasilev, "20 godini Zlatorog," XX, 474.

12. " 15 godini Zlatorog, " XV, 433.

13. Pantelej Zarev, "Za kriti-eskite vezgledi na Bojan Penev, " Problemi na razvitieto na balgarskata literatura (Sofia, 1949), p. 55.

14. I. Bogdanov, "Bojan Penev-literaturen kritik, " XXIII, 277.

15. The adjective usually attached to the realism of this type was "healthy, " by which was meant a realism which excluded mysticism, of course, and concentrated on events which could happen to quite ordinary people.

16. These critics in their writings often quote Belinskij, Benedetto Croce, and T. S. Eliot with approval.

17. Todor Pavlov, "Pozicijata na Zlatorog, " Za marksideska estetika, litera- turna nauka i kritika (Sofia, 1954), I, 65.

18. " Pisatel i gra2danin, " XVII, 245-251.

19. "Misli verxu belgarskija roman, " XVI, 17-18.

20. "Literaturni -koli i literaturni grupi, " XX, 119.

21. "MeOdu sektanstvo i demagogija, " IV, 117-119.

22. "Literaturni zigzagi, " III, 591.

23. "Misli verxu naj-novata ni poezija, " XV, 123.

24. "Literaturni zigzagi, " III, 592-596.

25. V. Vasilev, "20 godini Zlatorog, " XX, 475.

26. Bagrjana's poetry of the earlier period is highly reminiscent of Axmatova's work: the former's religious concern and her treatment of romantic love recall the latter very clearly, but Bagrjana is a sufficiently outstanding poetess herself that she rarely if ever falls into imitation. Bagrjana translated a few of Axmatova's poems in the 1920's (and some of Cvetaeva's as well); in addition, the two writers share an abiding love for Pu-kin.




27. "Bagrjana, " XVI, 74.

28. "Nikolaj Liliev, " III, 287.

29. "Stixet na Nikolaj Liliev, " VII, 88.

30. "Nikolaj Liliev, " kIII, 81.



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