When looking back, can you clearly see the importance of the Bulgarian book for you?

I can see everything. No matter how important for my personal development the great Russian literature was, or the French prose of the past century, no matter how significant they are, without the Bulgarian literature I couldn’t have experienced them truly. The native poetry and prose should bring to life all “matrices” – cultural, psychological – which you carry in yourself as a Bulgarian, so that you can understand the value of other cultural achievements, of foreign spiritual quests.

Which books have given you the most and from which books have you been able to take more than you believed it possible?

There are many such books. Some books have given me that feeling of profound communion with the big literature which makes our life on earth worthwhile. However it would be too pretentious to say I have learned from say Dostoevsky or Thomas Mann. I am so small compared with them that even if there is a bit of their beneficial influence in my works, it is accordingly downscaled. These two authors are the invariable mark in my life. I don’t know what else to say because I will have to start enumerating my favorite authors – Chekhov, Faulkner, Cortazar, Borges, etc. – a list that is too incomplete and random that makes me feel awkward. Besides, I don’t believe anyone could want to know what I liked through the years.

What is the destiny of fine letters now, and what could this destiny be in the near and in the more distant future?

Fine letters is still influential but writers and poets are no longer legislators of moral, ideals, modern sensibility. Rather, they are comforters in certain moments of man’s life, they have a diverting role. When I was a child, what a prominent writer said was like a law. This is no longer so. And how things will change with the advent of Internet, for instance, I cannot predict.

The cultural crisis of today has its causes and its signs, but it also has a remedy that is basically universal. Perhaps, the purely Bulgarian specifics of this remedy remain out of focus?

There is no cultural crisis: galleries, concert halls, publishing, theaters – all are seething with activity more than ever. There is a moral crisis. There is also a spiritual crisis. It is wrong to think that culture is the only factor for overcoming the spiritual crisis. Culture does not “feed” the high fields of the spirit, they are the area of religion. There culture can only intuitively penetrate but it cannot give clarity, nor bring much light. That is why sometimes the illiterate righteous Christian is more spiritual than another man who has dealt with culture all his life. The Bible gives us the universal answer: when a people forgets God, nothing good awaits it. We have forgotten God. Why wonder then that we are not successful? Why wonder at the moral disintegration? A man goes to a concert, listens to good music, then goes to the cinema, watches a moving film, and a little later he cheats or steals. Moral is a direct consequence of spirituality. Because spirituality is built on eternal principles. And on the awareness that every deed or word saves or destroys.

There are many secrets to a book, and the author’s mastership tends to be among the most obscure. Have you reached a conscious explanation for yourself of everything that you have created – as creative art, besides a pure will, is also the product of the artist’s instincts, of the artist’s enigmatic and mysterious self that he deciphers only partially in his texts to the reader?

I don’t have the feeling that some enigmatic or mysterious self of mine has played a role in my work. But probably a man doesn’t know himself. Sometimes other people see in him things he doesn’t know or understand. In a sense we live a semi-conscious life. How can I explain what gives me the tongue or how a good phrase is borne? Work and professionalism are really essential. But if they develop thinking, and prose is thinking, we’d better not analyze their influence on the purely creative gift too much. Or we may lose it.

What has been the major source of hope and belief for you through the years?

The family environment, the memory of it and its traditions. My relations with my wife and children. My relations with many friends. The good feelings of quite many readers and many people in general. I can only thank God for that. We should constantly thank God for the good things in our lives. A man too gives himself hope by preserving his innermost nature. My biggest hopes have been connected with my really intensive but quite confused spiritual life. I have dabbled in so many things: esotericism, occultism, eastern teachings, etc. No matter how chaotic such pursuits are, they always leave you the feeling of something you will discover any moment, of something very important that will surely happen. For several years I have considered myself an Orthodox Christian and that has been the brightest spiritual period in my life, the period of my biggest hopes.

What is your vision of Bulgaria at the end of the 21st century? What does Time mean to you?

How could I tell what Bulgaria will look like in one hundred years? Spirituality, which is fateful for a people, is like a wave. Sometimes it overwhelms people unexpectedly, it simply comes down from the air. In a very short time hundreds of people can change and that may rescue the country. But will that happen? As for Time, I have never had any special feeling of it, besides the one known to anybody: how quickly it passes, which depends on many things. Time for me is a court of justice, above all, a court that should not remain empty. A meaningful life, in which the days are filled with thoughts, deeds and pursuits of the best nature, turns Time into a full court.

What is the weight of the values created over the last hundred years, and what is the burden that these years have placed on us?

The burden of the years comes from our inability to shape our destiny the way we like. One of the reasons for this is our failure to understand the connection between spirituality and national destiny. Of course, the detachment of purely Bulgarian areas from the territory of the country is a wound in our souls. But I don’t feel so much pain about them as for the people who are gradually losing their identity. As a matter of fact, your question is so difficult and extensive that I already don’t feel like going on. The reason for this is that the very answer suggests criticism of my own people, citing its mistakes, listing its flaws. I have read enough such stuff. There is too much criticism and too little hope. Darkness has fallen into our souls and it seems as if someone is inciting this process deliberately. One needs to make purposeful efforts to overcome the negative suggestions. Besides, the conclusions are too obvious.

Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the destiny of the Balkans and mankind, and why?

I will repeat that I am too small to make such prognostications. A man doesn’t know what his personal destiny will be in the near future, let alone global matters. One thing however is certain: the social and historical laws postulated by the Marxists do not exist. Things have changed. Thanks God! Life as it is now is much more interesting. There are God’s laws that apply to the destiny of the separate soul. People have a visible history and an invisible, spiritual, history. The second is more important and the first is its reflection. As concerns the spiritual history, the most important thing is to save as many people’s souls as possible. It is very difficult to relate it to the basically earthly notions of success, good future, etc.

Is there any peculiarity of your character that you freely joke about in public? And does it happen frequently?

My inclination to talk too seriously and seek the spiritual dimensions of human relations today, when cynicism is the master. This makes a man really funny.

What would you choose – if you had to choose today – between a bag of gold and an eternal book? And what would have been your choice 30 years ago?

It is just natural to say I choose the eternal book. But thus formulated, the question makes the other alternative possible, since I already know the eternal books more or less. But seriously, the bag of gold has never been important to me. I’m not trying to project some special image of myself. Through all my life I have taught myself to live with little money and take some joy from life, sometimes with the help of money. Or rather days and hours when the soul is full of joy.

Do you think that in these times when the path to the reader is difficult and uncertain, new names could emerge? Could the experience with your own public recognition be useful today? How did you gain recognition, was it easy?

It is very difficult for young people today. Before there was a strictly established system, like everything else in the communist era. You got some positive reviews in the literary magazines or newspapers – Plamak, Septemvri, Literaturen Front, Puls – and your new book was approved, and you gained recognition. The other problems – political, administrative, personal – remained secret for the public. If you were lucky, you wouldn’t meet many obstacles; if you were not, you would, no matter how well your wrote. I’d rather not look back to those times. Today everything is chaotic and uncertain. Nevertheless, young people can gain recognition in their age group at least. As for the rest – there are no mechanisms yet devised for broader public recognition. But life will create them. I am one of the lucky. I didn’t write a partisan phrase in my works, nevertheless I gained literary recognition quickly. I don’t know how it happened. Probably because I was in the group of Rashko Sugarev, Georgi Velichkov and Lyuben Petkov, which promoted the plotless psychological story in the Bulgarian prose. Otherwise each of us would have probably been ruined. There were also well-meaning critics who succeeded in anticipating the possible political attacks and make the book a name. They made it out to be acceptable but they also gave a very serious idea about its merits. If you have lived under dictatorship, you know how complex this struggle is.