site.btaNikolai Haitov: If Literature Does Not Elevate, It Is Superfluous

If literature does not elevate man, it is superfluous. These are the words of the fiction writer, publicist and playwright Nikolay Haitov (1919-2002), whose birth is celebrated on September 15. Haitov is the author of short stories, plays, essays, travelogues. His first essay was published in 1951 in the magazine. "Septemvri".

According to Haitov, writing is a spontaneous process, like any other creativity. "A work that is modern today because of particular technical means will not be so tomorrow. I was not looking for anything particularly new, but only to say what excited me," Haitov said in an interview in 1968. A year later, he noted, "The plot for a short story is plasticine: squish it, fold it, roll it, twist it as you like, it bears all the vagaries of the imagination; while the plot for an essay is flint, however you touch it, you feel the rigidity of the facts you have to reckon with. It takes a lot of imagination, a lot of culture, to overcome the documentary contours."

Nikolai Haitov believes that "rich, agile language prompts, illuminates, assists the happy birth of thought and amplifies it, giving it expressiveness".

In 1967, he published Wild Tales, which had over 10 editions in Bulgaria and has been translated into 28 foreign languages, including Chinese. In 1979, the London publisher Peter Owen published Wild Tales, translated by the University of Leeds lecturer Michael Holman. It is included in the UNESCO series of representative works by European authors.

The writer explains that the Rhodope region is his laboratory. "I know its history, language, atmosphere. It is in fact the material environment in which my characters act. This region has a specific colour, beauty, heroic and dramatic past. I think regional colour is a must for any work. It is the path to national specificity," he said in a 1972 interview.

Nikolai Haitov was awarded the Order of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, First Class (1979) and the Balkan Range Order, First Class (2000) for his literary and social activity.