/ world today news/ The 80th anniversary of the poet Velin Georgiev was celebrated tonight in Hall 7 of the National Palace of Culture. Many spoke with well-deserved superlatives about him, congratulatory addresses were read, incl. and by Sergey Stanishev, he was presented with an honorary badge for a veteran of the socialist movement in Bulgaria.
As a person who was formed in the same cultural environment as Velin, worked in the same newspaper, albeit with a small difference in time, and gave duty for the next issue in the same room of the Kyustendil printing house, I know the jubilee to a very high degree . Therefore, instead of retelling the speeches from tonight’s celebration, I prefer to recall his words from his previous anniversary, said in an interview with the “Over 55” newspaper. I have chosen the passage in which he describes his vicissitudes after writing the poem “Foreign Blood” in 1963:
I wrote “Foreign Blood” in March 1963. And what happened is hardly of interest to the current audience. The poem caused a scandal without being published, without being scandalous. A sacrifice was needed for respect. I had given it with two others to the poet Veselin Hanchev in the magazine “Plamuk” and we agreed that the next day he should come and tell me his opinion. He was in a hurry for a meeting. I didn’t see him the next day either, something had happened. At the meeting, he took the folded sheets of my poems out of his pocket and began to read them. The poet Dimitar Metodiev sat next to him and peered at them. At one point he pulled the sheets and said that he needed just such a thing for his upcoming speech at the national conference on ideological subversion, which was held for ten days in the Central Committee of the BKP from afternoon until late in the evening. That is why Veselin Hanchev decided that it is better not to meet, so as not to worry me. And I took it painlessly. Metodiev read my poem from the rostrum with the stipulation that he would illustrate his thoughts on what relapses the publications should guard against. I realized that it had caused a numbness in the hall. Finally, the First in his closing speech qualified “Foreign blood” as a “call for counter-revolution”. It came out in our country after 27 years, that’s how long Nelson Mandela was in prison. On the other hand, through unknown paths from the party bastille, it found its way to Western Europe, came out in Germany days later with a comment, commented it on Radio “Free Europe” and the native Petar Uvaliev. And so on. From there, it’s not hard to figure out what comes next. They stopped my books at the publishing houses “Narodna Vladje” and “Bulgarian Writer” for an indefinite period, they froze them. I was stuck. And the pubs became my outlet, in “Bambuka” I also recited “Alien’s Blood”, and much more peppery and cheesy things to fellow artists and artists, to artists and prosody, even to cops. For nearly three decades I dragged the targa of mistrust. And when they finally wanted to show me to the readers, something like a debut and selected from a hundred poems, with each poem being looked at under a magnifying glass, I said “I’m here” in 1972, but it wasn’t me, I knew. This continued until the change of the system, after which the same guardians of the ideal of their former regime began to call me “red trash” because of my position and convictions, because of the Salon that I created 15 years ago and still lead.”
Velin hardly has anything to add to this case. In addition to new books, new premieres of Bulgarian authors in the “Ancient Chariot” and new… sorrows.
I will also quote a few sentences from my report to the conference of Kyustendil Socialists on November 9, 2008, when I resigned from the party post I held:
“Ten years ago, the poet Velin Georgiev, who did not cash in on his differences with the previous government, but remained loyal to the BSP, wrote to me in one of his books: “To the most valiant boy in my party!” I end with this, not because I imagine , that I am the most valiant. And to remember what was valued in BSP politicians just a few years ago. Valor is the ability to act bravely, honestly and openly self-sacrifice in the name of truth.”
And I, like Velin Georgiev, have nothing to add.
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