Румен Шивачев

The feature makes retrospective review of the early Elin Pelin receptions. It recognizes the writer’s hesitation, which also gives cause to Dr. Krastev to treat him critically in his essay “Singer of country woe” (“Young and Old” 1907). The text marks the pro-Jungian conceptions of the critics, by which he makes the reading of Elin Pelin. But the instruments of the German psychological aesthetics proved to be insufficient for applying the critical conceptions, on Dr. Krastev’s side. He operates with the ideas for mythos-figure of the author and the overall personality, without problematizing their interrelations. This provokes the meeting between the critics and the writer. “The literary-critical risks of Dr. Krastev” emphasizes the gradual and independent imposition of Elin Pelin as a Bulgarian literature classic between two withstanding writers’ circle, who characterizes to a great extent the pattern of the literary epoch from the beginning of XX century-this of “Thought” as well as this of “Bulgaran”.

The paper traces the discussion of common Balkan culture which was started by the Serbian poet Rade Drainac. It takes place on the pages of the Literary Voice Journal (1931-1932) and includes Bulgarian writers and publicists, such as Dimitar B. Mitov, L. Stoyanov, K. Konstantinov, etc. The paper comments on the important views and opinions of the participants, and underlines the fact that this is the first broad public discussion of the matters of the Serbian-Bulgarian relations and the Balkan Alliance.