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For Nikola Vaptsarov a lot has been written. For the poet, antifascist, communist, revolutionary and the man, who brought fame to Bulgaria all over the world, devoting the most precious – his life in the struggle against the hitler-fascism. Thus he entered forever the Bulgarian history and the memory for him will not be covered in the time by the patina of the oblivion. Despite the sad fact that his own relatives deprived him of his eternal home... Vaptsarov showed to us all, that the road of history passes through what one has created and left for the generations with his personal model. And to be a personality supposes to bear a responsibility. And not only to occupy a temporary place in the space, chosen by you only because it provides you moral hygiene of non-intervention. The stereotypes are a calming thing. They save the necessity for thinking. But this huddling in the shell cannot protect anybody from today’s life, ploughed basically by unheard and unseen collapse of the moral and cultural values, of the personal dignity and full absence of stability of the way of living.
Among the hundreds of articles for Vaptsarov the first place is occupied reasonably by those, devoted on his creative works. Here there are no and cannot be any casualties. Because this is the centre of something that is really very indicative – we are speaking for one single volume of poetry! Its content reveals creative intensity, distinguished with its value, not with its volume. The time, when Vaptsarov creates, gives the title of his literary works. But not his consent… An old truth is the fact that for each piece of art an appropriate material is the one, which has conquered the hearts of the people. That’s why there are two types of poetry – good and bad. The first one lives a very long time, while the second – dies due to its own dissatisfaction. Just this conclusion should give us the grounds to put forward the other important question: whether everything is written and studied for the last political part of Vaptsarov’s life – the heir of a great revolutionary family, not an offspring of a worn out fellow from a village hidden among the rocky peaks, in which the time quickly melts the memory for everyone who had walked along the rough cobblestone roads? Things are clear when the reply is positive. T.e. there is nothing to add. But when the answer is “no”? Then quite naturally we have to ask – what has not been pointed yet? Not incidentally, when the name of Vaptsarov is mentioned, most people underline, that he is one of the territories of the battles, which never end at our Bulgarian endless war among the generations, starting in that tragic-miserable 1923 and dividing our nation into two opposite political halves. Because since then hard positions and points of view exist, which have long ago not only blown up, but have completely burned away all bridges for establishing of a common acceptable national opinion. But we should not forget that Vaptsarov is an embodiment of the dream for a better future, born by the insuperable human feature named ability to dream and love. Further to this, when we speak concretely for him, there is hardly a similar case when the life of such a notable Bulgarian poet is in details preserved in archive documents… for all that in the Ministry of Interior. Each sheet from them has become yellow. But all of them have preserved the unequal “duel” of the poet at the age of 33 with the state, which has taken diligently notes for all his political steps. Let us make it clear! The documents do not reveal walks along inoffensive paths during the holidays. And the fact that they exist for decades past does not mean that they have succeeded to push down everything which breathes the air of the human aspirations, nor they have faded the hope and the fear with the composing them paper and ink. In quantity they are just 10 great volumes. An in each of them – between 350 and 400 archive units. As obvious – a sufficiently solid base for each research worker, who has ventured to restore this unequal fighting without prejudice, following only the authentic chronological order of awful facts and police reports, which have broken down one human life.
Each research work in the archives is a glimpse in that part of the life, behind which we see the outlined great human deeds, accompanied often by excessive risks and with dear victims and the bottom of the human disgrace as well. The touch of such a sheet is a real sensation for the authenticity of the acting shocking events accompanied by heroism, belief and mean actions. But also a measure for defining both the generally accepted ethic norms and social moral, and the given ability in our contemporary life to see the law-governed steps of the next days. The work with archive documents means objective study. And not an impudent insight, seeking only sensation. Because behind each line, written there, leading us behind in the time, we see the real souls of the people such as they are – crystal clear or fallen to the bottom of the moral slime.
As far as it concerns the giving of a definition for the essence of the deed and life of Vaptsarov, we have to say, that it this respect we fall in the quite contradictory and complicated matter of the assessments. In principle, in front of each valuable literary work the theoretical disagreements regarding history and politics should keep silent. In the case with Vaptsarov this does not happen at all. Because they are so different, that they exclude each other. I feel myself obliged to give all basic opinions, sticking to the wise words of the great Voltaire, who points out: “I do not approve what you say, but I will defend to my death your right to say it”. And so, let us trace these heterogeneous points of view. According to some authors at each sharp change of the political system the ideological prints go to non-existence. Others consider that after 1989 the thirsty for democracy element has dealt successfully with the socialist literary creative works, while the last have degenerated in propaganda. According to other assessments, only two authors from the revolutionary poetry were left untouched – Vaptsarov and Smirnenski. Because they have proved to be extremely great – like a breakwater in which each puffed up wave is wrecked and confused withdraws back. On the other hand, according to another group of opinions, in Vaptsarov’s personality leaks a very serious contradiction, which has embedded in the dilemma “poet – party functionary”. In accordance with their interpretation this is an inexcusable and insurmountable obstacle in order Nikola Vaptsarov to be put in the pantheon of the nation’s respect and honour. Which reminds us, that in today’s Bulgarian historiography there is no officially declared position, contrary to the example in France, Italy or Yugoslavia, regarding the contribution of the armed communist opposition against fascism. It seems to me that in the row of these attempts to cover all possible assessments, referring directly to Vaptsarov, we have to note several more opinions, which have their place in the public space. They show the obvious according to them clash between two political patterns and none of them nowadays is in a position to be applied. On one hand during the time of the totalitarian socialist epoch, Vaptsarov has been unnecessarily crowned as an incomparable majestic hero, while in the period of the authoritarian war-time dictatorship – pointed as a terrorist, who has to be convicted for edification and most severely in accordance with the fierce war-time amendments of the paragraphs of the Law for defence of the state, each of which envisaged death penalty. There is one more tendency. It pursues the digging of deep like the Grand Canyon in USA trenches, by the help of which to divide categorically the antifascist Vaptsarov from the communist Vaptsarov. In practice he, the stoker-intellectual makes only one, most decisive step in his short life – he considered important to stand at the barricade, erected by the public cataclysms of his time. And because he had decided to follow steadily his conscience and the impulses of his pen. Here we have to add something else. Vaptsarov had all chances to remain and ordinary and mediocre personality like winnowed through a sieve rice. But as we well know he chooses another way. Putting at a higher place the convictions of his mind than the safety of the body. And because he proved, that in the poetry he is not seeking only vain sounds.
My objective in the present study on the activity of Vaptsarov against fascism includes only the preserved documents in the archives of the Ministry of Interior. In this relation I cannot bear the responsibility for what has been collected there. However I’m convinced that when the great volume of documents starts to speak, the hidden whispers, cries and betrayals will be loosened. But furthermore, numerous shining heights of heroism and dark lowlands of moral lapse during these crucial times will appear too. Or in other words – in the following pages we will try to analyze these six-seven months in total, which have become a tragic boundary between life and death for Vaptsarov. Whether this will happen only the reader can judge. But I will never admit to praise my goods like an early greengrocer, and make a pretentious summary that this will be the new reading of Vaptsarov’s biography. But, moreover I would like to underline categorically clear, that each line in this book will be written without shadow of hatred and without a tone of deifying. The name of Nikola Vaptsarov, who has grown up with the Balkan sensitivity to the world, is sufficiently significant. Because long ago it has become a personification of a whole epoch, called contemporaneity of the poet-antifascist and in which stands out his self-sacrifice, revealing his individual political and creative world.
Nikola Vaptsarov is not a genius. But undoubtedly he is a talented personality, who had seen clearly the realities through the chaos of the time. And the sad and the frightful in all this is the fact that a man like him, who has demonstrated by his works his talent was shot to death. In a total – for what? First of all – because he had and defended his convictions; because he had neither killed or wounded, nor he had threatened directly anybody with a gun in hand; because he had never blown up a train composition; because he had not carried two boxes with explosives from one address in Sofia to another; because he had distributed considerable sums for underground revolutionary activity without touching a single stiver for himself; because he had tried to set up a hopelessly destroyed party organization in Varna, where the members could not remember even the password and finally because he had turned his own house into a district post in the name of his ideals. We should not forget the fact that Vaptsarov starts along his dangerous way not in 1943 or in 1944, when things are more than clear in foreign-political and internal aspect. Neither he goes to the Balkan mountain on the 7-th of September 1944 and descends from there with revolutionary fame on the 9-th of September, as some others do. The autumn of 1941 is a time of severe hardships of the still unorganized underground opposition. And a period when the Bulgarian political elite is deeply convinced, that the circle of Hitler will bring new moral and material dividends to it, thanks to the right decision to join the winner in this world mortal skirmish. And the police had just played the role of the necessary surgical knife, which mercilessly cut all other opinions or attempts for the realization of different from the taken up to then government decisions.
The execution of Vaptsarov interrupted forever the advent of new poems, outlining a world behind the line of the Bulgarian horizon at that time. He left us his works, in which nobody liked to go deeply in at these troubled times or to judge on his merits. And this was poetry, revealing the ethic system of the poet, who preferred to be close to the rough texture of the life. It is usually said that the talented individuality is a supreme form for social behaviour of the person. Because people with such features anticipate the needs of their time. The origination and the development of their talent are determined on one hand by the needs of the social environment and on the other hand – by the individual-psychical abilities of the personality, predisposing him to creative work. An elementary truth is the fact that the activity of the talented person does not go beyond the society and its political leanings, because it obtains and renews its powers from the continuous discussion with the surrounding reality.
The way of development of the poet Vaptsarov was traced by his attitude to the social conditions at that period. But it further shows how difficult it is to have a moral code in a godless epoch. The originality at each type of creative work remains the necessary condition not only for the genius but also for the most insignificant talent. In such a soil only the roots of the independence of talented people like Vaptsarov can grow, concentrating all their creative impulses not towards repeating known facts and phrases, but creating something unique. The poems of Nikola Vaptsarov were his class comment on the time he lived in. And the rhymes in them – words, that have turned into mediators for his choice. Moreover the most dangerous for his life and the most courageous as far as it concerns the standing of clear grounds.
For Nikola Vaptsarov a lot has been written. For the poet, antifascist, communist, revolutionary and the man, who brought fame to Bulgaria all over the world, devoting the most precious – his life in the struggle against the hitler-fascism. Thus he entered forever the Bulgarian history and the memory for him will not be covered in the time by the patina of the oblivion. Despite the sad fact that his own relatives deprived him of his eternal home... Vaptsarov showed to us all, that the road of history passes through what one has created and left for the generations with his personal model. And to be a personality supposes to bear a responsibility. And not only to occupy a temporary place in the space, chosen by you only because it provides you moral hygiene of non-intervention. The stereotypes are a calming thing. They save the necessity for thinking. But this huddling in the shell cannot protect anybody from today’s life, ploughed basically by unheard and unseen collapse of the moral and cultural values, of the personal dignity and full absence of stability of the way of living.
Among the hundreds of articles for Vaptsarov the first place is occupied reasonably by those, devoted on his creative works. Here there are no and cannot be any casualties. Because this is the centre of something that is really very indicative – we are speaking for one single volume of poetry! Its content reveals creative intensity, distinguished with its value, not with its volume. The time, when Vaptsarov creates, gives the title of his literary works. But not his consent… An old truth is the fact that for each piece of art an appropriate material is the one, which has conquered the hearts of the people. That’s why there are two types of poetry – good and bad. The first one lives a very long time, while the second – dies due to its own dissatisfaction. Just this conclusion should give us the grounds to put forward the other important question: whether everything is written and studied for the last political part of Vaptsarov’s life – the heir of a great revolutionary family, not an offspring of a worn out fellow from a village hidden among the rocky peaks, in which the time quickly melts the memory for everyone who had walked along the rough cobblestone roads? Things are clear when the reply is positive. T.e. there is nothing to add. But when the answer is “no”? Then quite naturally we have to ask – what has not been pointed yet? Not incidentally, when the name of Vaptsarov is mentioned, most people underline, that he is one of the territories of the battles, which never end at our Bulgarian endless war among the generations, starting in that tragic-miserable 1923 and dividing our nation into two opposite political halves. Because since then hard positions and points of view exist, which have long ago not only blown up, but have completely burned away all bridges for establishing of a common acceptable national opinion. But we should not forget that Vaptsarov is an embodiment of the dream for a better future, born by the insuperable human feature named ability to dream and love. Further to this, when we speak concretely for him, there is hardly a similar case when the life of such a notable Bulgarian poet is in details preserved in archive documents… for all that in the Ministry of Interior. Each sheet from them has become yellow. But all of them have preserved the unequal “duel” of the poet at the age of 33 with the state, which has taken diligently notes for all his political steps. Let us make it clear! The documents do not reveal walks along inoffensive paths during the holidays. And the fact that they exist for decades past does not mean that they have succeeded to push down everything which breathes the air of the human aspirations, nor they have faded the hope and the fear with the composing them paper and ink. In quantity they are just 10 great volumes. An in each of them – between 350 and 400 archive units. As obvious – a sufficiently solid base for each research worker, who has ventured to restore this unequal fighting without prejudice, following only the authentic chronological order of awful facts and police reports, which have broken down one human life.
Each research work in the archives is a glimpse in that part of the life, behind which we see the outlined great human deeds, accompanied often by excessive risks and with dear victims and the bottom of the human disgrace as well. The touch of such a sheet is a real sensation for the authenticity of the acting shocking events accompanied by heroism, belief and mean actions. But also a measure for defining both the generally accepted ethic norms and social moral, and the given ability in our contemporary life to see the law-governed steps of the next days. The work with archive documents means objective study. And not an impudent insight, seeking only sensation. Because behind each line, written there, leading us behind in the time, we see the real souls of the people such as they are – crystal clear or fallen to the bottom of the moral slime.
As far as it concerns the giving of a definition for the essence of the deed and life of Vaptsarov, we have to say, that it this respect we fall in the quite contradictory and complicated matter of the assessments. In principle, in front of each valuable literary work the theoretical disagreements regarding history and politics should keep silent. In the case with Vaptsarov this does not happen at all. Because they are so different, that they exclude each other. I feel myself obliged to give all basic opinions, sticking to the wise words of the great Voltaire, who points out: “I do not approve what you say, but I will defend to my death your right to say it”. And so, let us trace these heterogeneous points of view. According to some authors at each sharp change of the political system the ideological prints go to non-existence. Others consider that after 1989 the thirsty for democracy element has dealt successfully with the socialist literary creative works, while the last have degenerated in propaganda. According to other assessments, only two authors from the revolutionary poetry were left untouched – Vaptsarov and Smirnenski. Because they have proved to be extremely great – like a breakwater in which each puffed up wave is wrecked and confused withdraws back. On the other hand, according to another group of opinions, in Vaptsarov’s personality leaks a very serious contradiction, which has embedded in the dilemma “poet – party functionary”. In accordance with their interpretation this is an inexcusable and insurmountable obstacle in order Nikola Vaptsarov to be put in the pantheon of the nation’s respect and honour. Which reminds us, that in today’s Bulgarian historiography there is no officially declared position, contrary to the example in France, Italy or Yugoslavia, regarding the contribution of the armed communist opposition against fascism. It seems to me that in the row of these attempts to cover all possible assessments, referring directly to Vaptsarov, we have to note several more opinions, which have their place in the public space. They show the obvious according to them clash between two political patterns and none of them nowadays is in a position to be applied. On one hand during the time of the totalitarian socialist epoch, Vaptsarov has been unnecessarily crowned as an incomparable majestic hero, while in the period of the authoritarian war-time dictatorship – pointed as a terrorist, who has to be convicted for edification and most severely in accordance with the fierce war-time amendments of the paragraphs of the Law for defence of the state, each of which envisaged death penalty. There is one more tendency. It pursues the digging of deep like the Grand Canyon in USA trenches, by the help of which to divide categorically the antifascist Vaptsarov from the communist Vaptsarov. In practice he, the stoker-intellectual makes only one, most decisive step in his short life – he considered important to stand at the barricade, erected by the public cataclysms of his time. And because he had decided to follow steadily his conscience and the impulses of his pen. Here we have to add something else. Vaptsarov had all chances to remain and ordinary and mediocre personality like winnowed through a sieve rice. But as we well know he chooses another way. Putting at a higher place the convictions of his mind than the safety of the body. And because he proved, that in the poetry he is not seeking only vain sounds.
My objective in the present study on the activity of Vaptsarov against fascism includes only the preserved documents in the archives of the Ministry of Interior. In this relation I cannot bear the responsibility for what has been collected there. However I’m convinced that when the great volume of documents starts to speak, the hidden whispers, cries and betrayals will be loosened. But furthermore, numerous shining heights of heroism and dark lowlands of moral lapse during these crucial times will appear too. Or in other words – in the following pages we will try to analyze these six-seven months in total, which have become a tragic boundary between life and death for Vaptsarov. Whether this will happen only the reader can judge. But I will never admit to praise my goods like an early greengrocer, and make a pretentious summary that this will be the new reading of Vaptsarov’s biography. But, moreover I would like to underline categorically clear, that each line in this book will be written without shadow of hatred and without a tone of deifying. The name of Nikola Vaptsarov, who has grown up with the Balkan sensitivity to the world, is sufficiently significant. Because long ago it has become a personification of a whole epoch, called contemporaneity of the poet-antifascist and in which stands out his self-sacrifice, revealing his individual political and creative world.
Nikola Vaptsarov is not a genius. But undoubtedly he is a talented personality, who had seen clearly the realities through the chaos of the time. And the sad and the frightful in all this is the fact that a man like him, who has demonstrated by his works his talent was shot to death. In a total – for what? First of all – because he had and defended his convictions; because he had neither killed or wounded, nor he had threatened directly anybody with a gun in hand; because he had never blown up a train composition; because he had not carried two boxes with explosives from one address in Sofia to another; because he had distributed considerable sums for underground revolutionary activity without touching a single stiver for himself; because he had tried to set up a hopelessly destroyed party organization in Varna, where the members could not remember even the password and finally because he had turned his own house into a district post in the name of his ideals. We should not forget the fact that Vaptsarov starts along his dangerous way not in 1943 or in 1944, when things are more than clear in foreign-political and internal aspect. Neither he goes to the Balkan mountain on the 7-th of September 1944 and descends from there with revolutionary fame on the 9-th of September, as some others do. The autumn of 1941 is a time of severe hardships of the still unorganized underground opposition. And a period when the Bulgarian political elite is deeply convinced, that the circle of Hitler will bring new moral and material dividends to it, thanks to the right decision to join the winner in this world mortal skirmish. And the police had just played the role of the necessary surgical knife, which mercilessly cut all other opinions or attempts for the realization of different from the taken up to then government decisions.
The execution of Vaptsarov interrupted forever the advent of new poems, outlining a world behind the line of the Bulgarian horizon at that time. He left us his works, in which nobody liked to go deeply in at these troubled times or to judge on his merits. And this was poetry, revealing the ethic system of the poet, who preferred to be close to the rough texture of the life. It is usually said that the talented individuality is a supreme form for social behaviour of the person. Because people with such features anticipate the needs of their time. The origination and the development of their talent are determined on one hand by the needs of the social environment and on the other hand – by the individual-psychical abilities of the personality, predisposing him to creative work. An elementary truth is the fact that the activity of the talented person does not go beyond the society and its political leanings, because it obtains and renews its powers from the continuous discussion with the surrounding reality.
The way of development of the poet Vaptsarov was traced by his attitude to the social conditions at that period. But it further shows how difficult it is to have a moral code in a godless epoch. The originality at each type of creative work remains the necessary condition not only for the genius but also for the most insignificant talent. In such a soil only the roots of the independence of talented people like Vaptsarov can grow, concentrating all their creative impulses not towards repeating known facts and phrases, but creating something unique. The poems of Nikola Vaptsarov were his class comment on the time he lived in. And the rhymes in them – words, that have turned into mediators for his choice. Moreover the most dangerous for his life and the most courageous as far as it concerns the standing of clear grounds.
THE AUTHOR
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