/ world today news/ The debate these days surrounding Stefan Tsanev is interesting in only one respect: it reminds us again that we never measure one thing or another with one measure.
It’s in our genes.
And the story with Stefan’s prize is funny at first.
You already know – it turned out that Vezhdi did not sign an order for the award of the “Golden Age” at all, so Stefan is giving up something that he does not have, so it turns out.
The two say they are friends, but in this case someone has soaked them and is making fools of them.
***
And they may have soaked themselves.
If someone has whispered to Stefan that they intend to offer him for the “Golden Age” – then a reward! – he should have pulled Vezhdi’s beard and told him he didn’t want it.
And not to become a laughing stock now and give bread to the muskrats to practice not only at their expense, but also at the expense of the Past.
Because there are always tricks to spoil it – and everyone takes out some dirt and criticizes the one they don’t like.
***
Different arshin is the problem, it encourages cannibalism.
Georgi Markov is a saint – although he wrote “At Every Kilometer”, the most apologetic opus for the partisan movement – so rosy that the great figures of the Resistance frowned slightly.
However, Tsanev is not a saint – because he wrote something about Dzerzhinsky.
Markov is a “saint” and because it is necessary to give some style to the Bulgarian “dissidence” – he, Zhivkov’s pet, is his cherry.
To such imaginary champions of pretend anti-communism, I personally prefer people like Stefan and many others who have decided or been tricked into marching a little with the left foot.
But then they went out of order.
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Markov left for his Halo of the Chief Dissident, sent as a luxury parcel with cash on delivery: with an official passport, with his own car, etc.
That’s acceptable – and Stefan can’t write about Dzerzhinsky.
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With the necks of our gene, it is best to kill you.
Then your passport to Glory is forever stamped with ten stamps – most of them from the DS, as in the case of Markov, but it doesn’t matter.
We need heroes killed, not alive.
We don’t need the living Botev, about whom Stambolov had ventured to say that he was coming to become Prime Minister.
We need him not alive, but dead – if he is blown up by his own Chetnik, even better.
Can you imagine what fate Levski would have had if he had survived – and we don’t even dare to imagine – out of shame, of course.
You know why.
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The only interesting thing about dragging around Stefan will be if he tells us why he wrote those verses.
That is, to let us into his then mind.
We need to hear not this or that, but Stefan – he is not afraid to say what he liked about this Dzerzhinsky at the time.
By the way, you will certainly like him if you read the novels of Julian Semyonov.
But they appeared years later.
***
There is nothing fatal about liking something and then realizing you were wrong.
And the world’s greatest personalities have gone through similar metamorphoses – and were even grateful for their delusions.
I mean, the lions themselves have to describe their delusions or torments – because otherwise the jackals will.
Not to mention the carnage that will ensue when the lions are gone.
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Tell your stories publicly – and that way make it at least a little harder for the jackals.
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In Bogomil Raynov’s posthumously published book “Paris” there is an interesting story with Andre Malraux.
The Frenchman tells Bogomil that on the old geographical maps the unknown territories were marked with the inscription “Here there are lions”.
“I don’t know if there were lions in Bulgaria in the past – added de Gaulle’s Minister of Culture – but you have the right to show that there was authentic art there.”
To add Malraux: if you persist, at last there will be white fields on today’s maps, from which only the howling of jackals will be heard.
***
In the early 1970s, I was very close to Georgi Jagarov, he is one of the people to whom I will always be indebted.
Jagarov had a habit of closing bars, even though he didn’t even really drink anymore.
One time we went not to the Astoria/new bar where we usually drank, but to the Orient – it was across the street.
As we slipped through the small crowd in front of the entrance, I heard someone arguing with the porter: “How come you won’t let us in, well, this is Stefan Tsanev, he’s the greatest poet.”
They didn’t let them go – I didn’t know Stefan then, but I remember this line.
He was certainly not considered a great poet because of Dzerzhinsky.
***
Many white spots in the “Malraux map” were filled by Valentin Karamanchev with his memoir “Patila and Sufferings of Books and People”.
His memorial portraits are, without any exaggeration, gorgeous.
Markovedi will surely surround them from afar.
So far, his most ardent late connoisseurs have mainly dug through the archives of the DS, arranged for carp like themselves.
Karamanchev’s portrait is another thing, he shares details that are undoubtedly new to the reader.
Several times he emphasizes that he considers Markov a great writer, that he values him very much.
But, in the end, he cuts off his head.
Because he presents us with a selfish person, who, for example, does not give five cents for his obligations to the publishing house /”Narodna Vladje”/, obsessed with the company of generals from the DS.
He also takes them to Karamanchev, who is the director there, to show his inviolability.
But Karamanchev is also stubborn, like every Macedonian, and he does not give in easily.
Markov is in a hurry to go abroad – he must have seen himself as the next John Le Carré or Graham Greene, though he had hardly heard of them at the time – and refuses to finish work on some manuscripts, but Karamanchev refuses to let him go.
Finally, the head of DS Solakov himself calls to arrange the departure of today’s Memorial.
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Markov’s letter to Dimitar Bochev, which the Markovite lispings diligently avoid, is striking – it seems to have been written about the communist “Worker’s Case”.
Even more striking is the naivety of Markov, who seems to have had not even a vague idea of the realities of the West, but goes to conquer it.
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And we can judge the artistic frivolity of his “Reports” from a small, but otherwise murderous fact, commented by the poet Anastas Stoyanov – we find this in Karamanchev’s book.
Markov writes that during one of Zhivkov’s meetings with a group of writers, he deliberately delayed so as not to take part in the general photo.
“I watched the whole company from afar – he wrote – my colleagues, the old party workers, the rabbit general /Ruskov/ and Zhivkov in the middle, all laughing, like the happiest family…”
And Stoyanov adds: “I have this photo. And I have nothing to add to what Jerry said, except one thing: the author of the “Reports” must have forgotten that he himself is in the picture.”
This is how the Bulgarian Truth emerges.
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Karamanchev’s memory of the wonderful poet Ivan Dinkov and the vicissitudes surrounding his book “South of Life” is also very important.
Now they make him a dissident because of her, and she is melted down by the publishing house itself, in order to at least save the paper – because Dinkov bribes a printer with a bottle of vodka and inserts an additional verse.
There are as many such clarifications to the Truth as you want in the book.
And Radichkov himself shortened a few lines from his seditious play “Image and Likeness”.
Karamanchev treats these authors with respect, as well as his other characters.
But he also treats the Truth with respect, which is far more important.
So, don’t be left to the jackals.
***
Another story from Karamanchev’s book.
In the early 1980s, Svoboda Bachvarova began working on her novel series “Target Land” – and asked Karamanchev, who is the head of the “Bulgarian Book and Press” Association, to find Machiavelli’s “The Prince” for her.
She herself looked for it everywhere and finally stopped at the library of the Central Committee of the BKP, where a friend of hers worked.
“It’s off,” she refused. – Since 1957, in the library diary “The Prince” has been recorded as Todor Zhivkov. And no one dares to ask him for it.”
Eha!
/from the newspaper “Weekend” with abbreviations/
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#uproar #Stefan #Tsanev #dead
