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

It is a permanent factor in the formation of the personality – from childhood till the end.

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 but I will try to list at least some of them. As a student in the primary school – Karl May with the nobleness of his characters. During the secondary school – Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas. There were a lot of titles when I was in college – but most of all The Records [on the Bulgarian uprisings] by Zahari Stoyanov, the poetry of Nikolay Liliev. In my university years I started to professionally (as a philologist) study Bulgarian and foreign literature but I would like to highlight the book that gave me more than expected – The Builders of Contemporary Bulgaria by Simeon Radev. At a later stage there came The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, the memoirs of Stephan Popov, and others.

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

Today writers have the full liberty to write as they like and whatever they like. I hope they will never again live through violence and dictatorship.

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?

I do not see a crisis in culture. Talent and freedom are of a decisive impact. There could hardly exist a specific Bulgarian “remedy”. Culture is universal.

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 have not.

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

Friendship

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

I see Bulgaria as a flourishing and prosperous place within the world community. Time seems to me as being the major mystery for human beings.

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

An optimist, but a very timid optimist – that is what I am now, in April 1999.

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

With my credulity and simplicity. I joke in order to try and overcome them.

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?

Both before and today I would choose the book. That is how my life went by – with books.

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?

Each time brings to life its own talents and they always – might be sooner, might be later – reach the hands outstretched to hold them. I lived in a difficult and suffocating time. I was often fired, without work, let alone recognition. It is interesting that in 1975 – during the largest ever purge against Bagryana’s books (which she wrote together with my wife, Blaga) – I was awarded the most sincere recognition by both people who were unknown to me, and by people I knew. I would not want one more generation to live through the experience of our generation. I was banned throughout my whole life from attaining an academic rank, I did not manage to do so before 1990, when the State Security was already history. And I was 55 at that time…

Would you disclose your own anthology or collection of names of masters of the prose whom you hold in highest esteem – names from the Bulgarian and world, including Balkan, literature?

In order to answer this question I would have to write a study of scores or even hundreds of pages…