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

I would say, regrettably rather than proudly – it was everything to me. It is as if I have lived to read and write books (in a broader sense – magazines, newspapers, archives – anything that is related to the invention of Gutenberg). Was that good or bad – it is for others to judge. But when looking back I see myself next to a mountain of books written by others, and myself standing humbly with that small heap of mine. This is true also in a more direct sense. The room where I spent most of my life is full of books, most of which I have not needed for a long time as these books do not interest me any more and which will simply create problems to my relatives when they will have to get rid of them. Besides, there is also the bitter realization that hardly everything that has ever been a subject of consideration or experience, even the most important things ever considered and experienced, has been transformed into a book…

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

I have been addicted ever since my childhood years to the chronicles of individual persons, families, houses, villages, towns, social strata, peoples, mankind – in all possible forms like memoirs, diaries, notes, chronicles, history, research studies. Moreover, and that is perhaps something of a manifestation of professional deformation, the value of poems, short stories and novels for me rises substantially if I sense that they are based on an autobiography, on somebody’s experience, when I come to know how and why these works were created, what is the seed of authenticity, what are the paths that relate them to the psychological and moral realms of the author, what is the creative history of the works themselves. During my research on the Turkish press in Istanbul while writing The Bulgarian Easter I found that even newspaper stories had a dual life – the life on the day they were published, the life shortly afterwards (uninteresting like a yesterday’s newspaper), and the life a long time after that, for instance after more than a century, when the same items assume quite a different meaning and value.

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

It is obvious that in the age of information revolution and technologies that mankind has been living through over the last several years the place and the role of books are also slated to experience a substantial change. This phenomenon can already be observed in the cultural habits of our sons and grandchildren. Books will not have a cornerstone impact on them as they had on us. The whole issue is reduced to whether new technologies will help or obstruct the new structure of expanding, enriching and preserving the cultural memory of mankind. If it is possible to proceed without robotization, without abandoning human nature, without distorting the very human memory of the experienced, then we should not be crying over the dusty book libraries. I am not afraid of how future generations will read and get to know Don Quixote or Crime and Punishment, I am afraid of whether they will “read” and know them at all. And the most important issue: is it possible that a time would come when people will claim they are “cultured” without even knowing about those books. For me that would be the end of human culture as it will be stripped of its eligibility to be called culture and will lose its very substance.

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?

Your question contains an insurmountable contradiction – a universal remedy should be attributable to Bulgarian specifics as well. The point is that the world as a whole, and we together with it, is experiencing a secondary barbarization as prophesied a long time ago by Giovanni Battista Vico. The world at large – and this could be clearly seen by the wars raging around us – together with its pleasantries, with the wellbeing in certain parts, with the unthinkable new technologies and information capabilities, is hosting also some kind of new barbaric offhandedness, a disparaging attitude towards the poor and backward, a non-Christian sense of superiority, a Jesuit justification of all available means in the name of elevated goals etc. The gap between the technological armaments of mankind and its moral level is growing bigger and bigger instead of being closed. Actually this trend represents a degradation to savagery rather than an advance as culture is judged by behavior and not by arms. The health of mankind can be judged with any credibility by its moral temperature alone and by nothing else. Any remedy should be prescribed only after this temperature has been measured and steps have been made to have it within its normal range.

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 am not sure I am qualified to speak about author’s mastership, as my job is somewhere between the “master” and the reader, which is equivalent to being between the irrational and its rationalization. There is one thing I could say after long deliberation and in view of the experience I have gathered towards the end of my life: the secrets are much more numerous that I could have imagined in my presuming youth. The hour of the long shadows is coming closer and an old man more often would see a mystery or a mysterious meaning even in the most simple things of this world. Now I am not sure any more whether my life would have passed in the same way, whether I would have lived with the same illusions and topics, whether I would have written the same books and done the same stupid things, were it not for several fortuitous events, like accidentally seeing Zdravko Petrov freezing in front of a bookstore in Sofia and asking him to come and live with me; or like ordering Vassil Djerekarov on a business trip with me; or like missing the queue in front the of the Dean’s office where I met Snezha; or like Vanya never being sent to Budapest; like not having my beloved son Yordan so close to me, etc. etc… This is how mysterious I see the path to our books and the valuable seed they contain. I know it is difficult to be believed, but the story of my book about the eternal Pygmalion for instance is nothing but a naked and virgin truth. On the very morning when I managed to overcome the major problem, when I decided to transform my impressions from Crete into impressions from Cyprus – where the story had to take place – I received a telephone call and was offered to visit the Island of Aphrodite for commemoration of the anniversary of Geo Milev. May be it was a pure chance. But how could I, a person who is otherwise conventionally superstitious, fail to see a celestial sign, the sign of Fate! Which means that even a comparatively rational person like me, engaged in a rational profession and possessing scientific knowledge, could say that the conscious, planned and premeditated portion of our life covers something like ten to twenty percent. And this portion is far from being the most interesting and the most creative segment of life.

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

To preserve the memory of myself and of my relatives.

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

I am afraid I have no prowess in futurology. Besides, I am basically a historian, and hence I know that – as Valeri said – you must walk into the future with your back first and with your eyes anchored on the past. Perhaps that is the reason why my expectations are far from positive. Besides, as it usually happens here, we are hardly ever capable of exerting an influence on whatever is bound to happen, and three quarters of what is happening in this region is decided somewhere else. I have certain hopes that some day there will emerge Balkan leaders that will finally rationalize the experience of the centuries and will realize that ghost hunting, servicing prejudices and quests for historical rights will all have to come to an end. The Balkan states, and first of all Bulgaria, need economic prosperity most of all, and only then they will get down to free exchange of products and people and to the gradual extenuation and erasure of boundaries. And finally, new personalities must be pushed to the front and brought to power; new personalities that will start thinking about their peoples and, together with this, about themselves and about the ancestors and not about some history ghosts and rights. No chimera is worth a human life, it was best stated by the greatest Orthodox thinker – the harmony of the whole world is less valuable than a child’s tear (Dostoevsky). That means that even the most far-reaching utopia is less valuable than the smallest human suffering. Throughout the new century Bulgaria’s fate will depend on whether it will be able to fight the rages it was enslaved by in the past.
The issue of Time is the most difficult issue possible and I have no answer to what Time actually means. There is one consolation, which – when viewed from a different aspect – is tantamount to the deepest despair: for the infinity of Time it is of no consequence whether something has continued for a second or for hundred million years! I love Hegel’s proverb that Time, i.e. Chronos, is like Cronus – it eats up its children and thus destroys everything that has been created in it.

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?

Now – the bag of gold, of course; as thirty years ago with the same levity I would have chosen the eternal book!

Could the experience with your own public recognition be useful today? How did you gain recognition, was it easy?

As far as there ever was such a thing, my public recognition is related to the restoration of a topic that was forgotten in Bulgaria, namely the place and the role of the Church in the efforts to restore the Bulgarian people and to establish the Bulgarian nation. My experience could be useful with that that the labors spent for the sake of correcting an injustice never remain unrewarded. It is because our historians, and together with them the descendents, had forgotten the efforts, the pains, the exultations and the failures of a constellation of religious and secular figures who had won the victory in the spiritual struggle for independence – the only national victory gained without the decisive support from abroad, with our own forces.
In many aspects I deserve to be envied. I had the chance of having wonderful and unforgettable parents, I spent my childhood amidst pastoral silence and peace – my village is located between Pliska and Preslav and my fellow villagers were as noble as the remnants of the noble houses of the First Bulgarian Kingdom; I have been lucky with the women in my life and I have the best son possible - there could hardly be more loyal and better friends. I have had respectful enemies as well –vicious, among the most properly thinking and the most honest – thoroughbred enemies. My books and my newspaper pieces were read and often instigated an enormous public response. After all – could a man ask for more from life?

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?

This is a difficult but rewarding task and I will try to mention whatever I could remember, with the assumption that I do not consider myself neither an expert nor a researcher who has specifically targeted the arts of the persons I would list. I have nipped a little from some of them, but that little something has stayed with me all my life. First of all I will mention the Greek mythology and Plato’s dialogues that I cherish. The Old and the New Testament come immediately after that, and I have never parted ever since my youth, while I consider the Four Gospels as the summit of prose, human wisdom and dramatic nature. I adore the Roman historians, and for a certain period the Russian and French Byzantology used to be my favorite choice of reading. Good historical prose for me stays at the top of the art of prose, and I have read entranced whatever I have been able to find by Michelet, Gibbon, Momsen, and of course our Zahari Stoyanov, Simeon Radev, Peter Mutafchiev. Fine philosophical prose is ranked in my personal hierarchy somewhere above literary prose. It is difficult to uncover anything more enchanting than the prose of Schopenhauer as translated by Afanasy Fet, of the Russian religious thinkers, as well as Pascal and Kirkegor. The unbelievable procession after Dostoevsky and Vladimir Solovyov has for decades reigned over my conscience, feelings and thoughts, and I am still reading them again and again. I am an admirer of the novel and have dealt in detail with its origins and development. I love the 18-century English novel, the 19-century French novel, and I would add also Marcel Proust of our century. I was crazy as a young man about Turgenev, then I fell in love with Chekhov, but as an adult I never parted with Fyodor Mikhailovich.
I should not forget about Ivo Andric whom I admire, and the powerful prose of Moby-Dick. As far as poetry is concerned, I would say I absorbed Botev with my mother’s milk, as it was my mother who taught me to recite all his poems even before I was able to read, in a time when a person is still not capable of storing away memories. Then I fell in love with Debelyanov, Pushkin, Tyutchev, Blok, Ahmatova. From among the exhibits of the Bulgarian prose, I would place the prose of Karavelov, Vazov, Elin Pelin, Yordan Radichkov, Ivaylo Petrov at an unattainable peak. I consider the physical, spiritual and moral image of Aleko Konstantinov to be a much more perfect work of art than Uncle Ganyo. For me, Nikolay Liliev is still the same mystery – how was it possible to bring to life something so perfect and devoid of faults in a country of such barbaric morals and savage relations? I would stop here as you can see yourself that the topic is starting to lead us too far away and to a different place …