/ world today news/ During the twenty pensioner years I spent in Hersovo, I attended more meetings with writers than I would have had if I had stayed in Sofia. In the city of Sandanski, while the “Spartak” and “Rodolyubie” foundations were alive, there was not a week without events with prominent artists and scientific capacities from the capital.
Radio “Vega” announced that playwright Georgi Danailov is coming to present his memoir. I could not miss such an occasion. I went. I didn’t regret it. We knew him for a long time. Georgi Danailov was accompanied by his colleague Marin Georgiev, who introduced him to the audience.
I will tell for two. About Danailov – short – part of what he shared with the attendees.
At the same meeting of The Board of Directors of the Writers’ Union in 1973 accepted us as members of the Union. Then the Board of Directors was crowded, 57 people, and according to the Statute it must to have received at least two-thirds of the votes in the secret ballot. The genre sections housed a hundred oddities. Of these, the SC confirmed only ten.
When going to a village Blacksmith I visited the home of Georgi Danailov at the lower end of the settlement above the Kanina river. A low house with a ground floor, a secluded courtyard with a well in the middle, surrounded by a high wall. Issued forward porch and to it – a barn. The roof of the barn, adapted to a kiosk, with a view of the mountains. And shutters that are raised during the day and lowered at night and in bad weather. One of the many magnificent fortresses in the architectural reserve, where a dozen Bulgarian films were filmed. Danailov “took over”enlivened and humanized this home. There he wrote new works. He had bought it for 700 BGN from an old man who moved to Pazardzhik. I remember the St. Bernard, the permanent guard, who greeted us in a friendly manner. In the absence of the owner, neighbors throw him food over the high wall.
In Sofia, I did not miss the productions of Daniel’s plays. I will not forget “Thessalonica Assassins”because the Macedonian topic is close to me.
As soon as he noticed me in the audience in Sandanski, George waved his hand. He digressed from the subject he had begun: “The play “Mr. Balkanski” was staged in the Gabrov Theater. The director came up with the idea that the program for the performance should have the look and shape of Bai Gagno’s newspaper “People’s Greatness”. Some party smart guy from Gabrovo called the periodical press department and asked, since the program of the performance will be in the newspaper, if they should have permission for this. And they replied that since it is a newspaper, they should ask for consent for a single issue. Then, on the occasion of anniversaries, such sheets were issued. They sent this proposal to the Press Committee and from there they refused.”
Georgi Danailov joined the Union:
“I did everything I could without involving you, but I didn’t succeed.” They do not allow the director and me to publish the program of the performance in the form of a newspaper “People’s greatness”.
And Georgi Danailov told what I answered him:
– Georgi, do you understand what idiots I am forced to work with? Do you know how much such nonsense they serve me! Lest they be able to judge that this is not a newspaper at all.
I have taken the request and sent one “Agree”.
– So this guy – George continued – resolved the question which was of shame and horror. For my pleasure Georgi also told the incident in his memoirs.
His companion Marin Georgiev and I did not know each other personally. I remember him as one of the the vaunted poets. His first and second collections of poems appeared in the “nursery” of a publishing house “People’s Youth” through 1975 and 1977 Their Marin applied to the request you are to be accepted into the Union of Bulgarian Writers. But the title of writer alone was not enough for rapid ascent to poetic heights. It was good to be strengthened and with party membership. Inspired by ideal and duty, Marin Georgiev applied to BKP. You were in the village of Bivolare when he was informed that the meeting for his acceptance into the Party was scheduled. He jumped on the car and flew to the capital. In a hurry, he ran into a herd of sheep crossing the road. He ended up not at the meeting, but in the hospital. Until they schedule a new meeting, se held the November plenum of the Central Committee.
As a flock of wild geese saved Rome from the barbarians, so a flock of sheep saved the Party from Marin Georgiev. Or Marin Georgiev from the Party. It’s all about who the sheep saved.
After the change, he justified himself as assigned to the post-April generation not because of the infamous plenum, but that his birthday is on the seventh of april. He also renounced the totalitarian Writers’ Union, which had sent him on a one-year business trip to Hungary to learn the Hungarian language and to familiarize himself with their literature. He appeared among the good translators of Hungarian poetry and as a connoisseur of their literature. Nowadays, Hungary has honored his contribution with a high state award – “Pro culture Hungarika”.
He was assigned to a newspaper “Literary Front” for editor and after Marko Ganchev – for editor-in-chief. The newspaper was renamed to “Literary Forum”. And when it started “the pit”, Marin Georgiev possessed him with all his assets, archive, equipment, furniture, paintings, without paying anyone anything. At least one lev, for whatever Ivan Kostov had sold “Kremikovtsi”. Koprinka Chervenkova will remind him in c. “People’s Culture”: “He (Marin G.) quite deftly dragged “Literary Forum” out from under the nose of that creative union, whose body it was, and successfully privatized it.”
Marin Georgiev was already a businessman with his own OOD and he was not into poetry. Indulge in prose – “Memories of a Servant” and the research novel “The Third Shooting” for the banskalia Nikola Vaptsarov, who “novel” overshadowed everything published so far by the singer of the village of Bivolare. For this crowning achievement, he went with an empty bag to the Minister of Internal Affairs Yordan Sokolov, who provided him with the previously classified case of the shot Anton Ivanov, Tsviatko Radoynov, Nikola Vaptsarov, Petar Bogdanov, Anton Popov. And the bag, as they say, was filled.
In 1993, the military publishing house “George the Victorious” flooded the book stalls with “The Third Shooting”. The first shot is from the executioners. The second is from the former communists, who hired the poet as a simple terrorist. The third belongs to Marin Georgiev, who tried to kill “immortality”. But for Vaptsarov – a spirit or a ghost, an apparition or a shadow, “no armor-piercing rounds found, no found…” In vain Marin Georgiev shot and keeps wasting his chips. And after the execution:
– “Vaptsarov family is a sales family”;
– “Well, he, Nikola, has not succeeded in anything. Neither in the profession, nor in your marriage, nor in literature…”;
– “He is an agent of Soviet intelligence. He served them for money, two thousand leva per month.”
There was back in the day “Angel Kanchev” 5 a janitor, a miserable loner, a one-time criminal inspector in the police. It was not for a salary, but for a portion of manja in the writer’s chair and a treat with coffee in “The Quiet Corner”. He talked about his police exploits. It intrigued me too. I invited him to my house once with a colleague. We chatted it up with Kherson wine and a good meze. The man was present as a criminal inspector at the shooting of General Zaimov. Convict tied to a car. The firing squad, rifles at their feet against him, are waiting for His Majesty to call, will he pardon the general or not? They waited a long time. One of the soldiers fainted. The same thing happened with the shooting of the six – in June 1942, – while waiting in the vestibule of the Garrison shooting range, the one who came for the confession of the condemned priest to marry Anton Popov with his fiancee Rositsa. One of the soldiers fainted again.
There is no penalty squad at the third shooting of Vaptsarov. Against the unkilled poet is only the cold-blooded executioner. To this day, he continues to walk around with an unfastened holster. And wherever he meets an opponent to breathe, he thunders, and smoke rises:
– “I have a very interesting thesis about the arrest of Geo Milev. And it diverges from the official one. I will not say it, however, because the communist revanchism in Bulgaria is such that they can beat me up”;
– About Nikolay Haitov – “A man with an uncertain destiny, who should be thankful that the files of the dead are not taken out, because there will be interesting things to see…”;
– “About me Blaga Dimitrova is a talentless poetess. Mean and stupid”;
– “According to me Stefan Tsanev there is something with the services. Your aunt can’t be killed as a mountaineer, and you’re still in Moscow. There is no such law. And all his behavior proves it. I’ve dealt with him too. He is also pathologically vain’;
– “I know the agent past of Atanas Svilenov, of Vera Mutafchieva, of Georgi Danailov“;
– “The hateful one Ivan Granitsky there is a card with his nickname borrowed from “Under the Yoke” – “Ognyanov”;
– “I have read the five volumes of denunciations of Georgi Danailov against his cousins in America’;
– „Mikhail Nedelchev is not only a dissident, but also a builder of a totalitarianism unique in the world in our literary life, this state in which the “writer” was declared to be talentless Georgi Gospodinov”;
– „Alek Popov is a symbol of the wonderful ignorance that has taken root in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences”;
– „Mincho Minchev, “Zora” newspaper, a bodyguard agent – Danail Krapchev was liquidated by people like him”.
And so on and so forth, all the way to someone who is a poison dog.
I’m sorry, reader, I got more heated than the mastitic businessman, the man Marin Georgiev deserves. His “Third Shot” will follow him until the end of his days, as will follow the act of his countryman from Pleven, who refused a one-minute tribute to the deputies on the anniversary of the death of the immortal Bulgarian Nikola Vaptsarov.
At that moment Nikola Radev called me. The brainy sailor whose soul has absorbed more poetry than his strength the salty moisture of waves and tides. When he found out what I was doing, he cooled me down with a memorized poem by Marin Georgiev.
I remembered something. I reached for “Motor Songs”.
The victim and the third executioner have verses titled almost identically.
The first is in the pantheon of immortals. For the love that forgives and begs.
The second is in the anthology of the April Uprising of vengeful jealousy ready to kill love.
FAREWELL
Nikola Vaptsarov
To my wife
Sometimes I will come in your dream
Like an unexpected and distant guest.
Don’t leave me outside on the road.
Do not close the door.
I’ll go in quietly.
Meekly I will sit,
I will look into the darkness to see you.
When I’m fed up with looking at you
I’ll kiss you and go.
FORGIVENESS
Marin Georgiev
What we lived, we lived.
Ours was up to here.
We were harnessed by two oxen
In the yoke side by side.
But the time has come –
the black cloth ties.
from today you are married to my grave,
and me with your tears.
Let no one else lie on the bier –
let the empty be for me.
My oath is my threat
I will come again one day;
do you forget me
with the knife the son will appear.
I swear to the mother of God,
in the severed heads.
Honor and my home to guard.
stay thirsty
wade up to your waist in water
honest, lie down next to me.
Such verses have no owner. They are a mirror to their author. And an open window to the reader and listener.
#Shooting #View #Info
