2024-09-15 08:51:31
- The writer did not respond to her letters with poems, he even responded with rhymes about the uncle with the phaeton
- The author of “Wild Tales” today would be shocked by the simplification of the language, she is convinced
“The wind screams in my ears, I hug my father with fear, who has put me on a mare, and we race in the forest near Persenk.”
This is the first memory of Nikolay Haitov of his daughter Elena. He is half-aware, because she was only 3 years old, but many told her later how the great writer, then working as a forester, wanted to temper her and teach her from a very young age not to be afraid of dangers, put her on his beloved mare Stella and ran between the trees. “I was trembling with fear, but he ran, my mother shouted: “Stop, you will beat the child!” But how are you going to stop a person with such love for nature?”, says Elena Haitova on the eve of the 105th anniversary of the birth of the author of “Wild Tales”.
Now older, she goes to study in Plovdiv and although her father never directed her to literature, she takes her first steps in writing. He begins with poems that he sends to his father, already famous as a master of words, but receives no reply.
“He just didn’t react. He only wrote to me when I sent him the poem “The Uncle in the Phaeton”. Once upon a time there was a phaeton in Plovdiv that offered a ride to tourists. I looked at the person in him and wondered who was paying attention to him”, recalls Elena Haitova. That is why she was inspired and dedicated poems to him, the beginning of which she remembers by heart to this day:
How it fills my heart with pity
that old and battered phaeton.
And the uncle, in love with the sky,
with his good old horse.
“For the first time, my father answered and wrote to me: “Lenche, well done! If you managed to touch my heart with your still childish talent, you will be successful in this field, because you feel the excitement and sadness of the person. Maybe a rabbit will jump out of this thorn”, Haitov’s daughter describes the praise.
He did not encourage her to create after that, but he did not object when she turned to journalism, but he always told her:
“A person, in order to write, must have character, because there is also hail, it is not only sunshine
I’ve lived in the forest, I’m used to trials, so I can withstand the cunning and the quarrelsome. But you are a girl, it will be more difficult for you. Therefore, if it’s just ambition for you, knock it out of your head, but if it burns inside you, write”, says Elena Haitova. However, she never forgot the unanswered letters and when in 1987 she wrote her first book about the great folk singer Valya Balkanska “Alone among the stars”, Haitov learned about it from “Profizdat”. Elena continued to write and became a member of the Union of Writers with the book “My father – the wildest story”, but Khaitov could not read it – it was written after his death. She dedicated 3 more books to him, including “The Gladiator Haitov”, because his whole life was spent in battles.
The most dramatic of them is with the historians who do not accept his thesis that Vasil Levski was buried in the church “Sveta Petka Samardzhiyska” in Sofia. “The last 15 years of my father’s life were dedicated to the Apostle, he said that his heart remained at Levski’s grave. They criticized him, advised him to watch “Wild Tales”, but still an inscription was placed on the church that there was evidence that Levski was buried there. “This is a small victory, and my brothers – Zdravets and Alexander, continue the fight”, says Elena Haitova.
The writer taught his daughter two basic things – to do everything in moderation, but also not to leave one’s ass in the mud. “He told me never to start first, but if they hit me, to know how to respond, but without nerves. To not get angry at critics and to know that if a person has no opponents, he should grow up because it is they who keep him in shape. He explained that
in a forest, deer are so much more beautiful, the more wolves there are”,
hands over the covenants to his father Elena.
He says that if Nikolay Haitov were alive, he would be shocked by the current simplification of the Bulgarian language. She does not accept that children do not understand the words of authors like him because of outdated and dialect words, she is convinced that it is the job of teachers to explain their meaning. If this happens, even the smallest will absorb the charm of the diminutive Rhodope forms such as “rachinki” and “ochinki”, she says.
Elena Haitova lived for many years in Smolyan and is
was looking for the prototypes of the characters from “Wild Tales”
and their successors. “Once again, I was convinced how many friends my father had among ordinary people – priests, hodges, plowmen, diggers. They are considered more ridged, not like smooth stones. He was looking for just such persons, Turks tell them. For example, I met the heirs of Asan Meshov – the prototype of the character from his story “Wedding” (The premiere of the adaptation of “Wedding” was a few days ago – see the box). In Smolyan there is a monument – my father, Asan Meshov and among them the book “Wild Tales”. Meshov was one of his best friends and I decided to look for his relatives. I discovered that his grandson Dimitar Meshov was studying at the electrical engineering school in Plovdiv. We met and I found that although he was in a technical school, he had an affinity for literature. I met him with his peers from the Varna high school named after Nikolay Haitov. I am very interested in whether these young people are interested in Haitov like their grandfathers, and I am convinced that this is the case”, says Elena Haitova.
In Varna, she met a young woman, after whose birth her mother and father were guests at Haitov’s house in his native village of Yavrovo and decided to throw her navel there – for luck and so that she could be directed to a creative profession. That’s how it happened – the girl’s name is Siyana Georgieva and she worked as a radio presenter in Veliko Tarnovo, now she lives in Varna and is on maternity leave. “I don’t fully believe in such things, but Siyana is convinced that she turned to journalism precisely because her mother, as a literature teacher, threw her navel in the birthplace of a writer like my father,” Haitova adds.
She was amazed when she learned that at the “Yordan Yovkov” school
there is a child in Pleven, whose name is Nikolay Haitov
“I have established that it is of the genus Hytovi, which at first glance has no connection with ours. But according to the boy’s father – Dimitar Haitov, there is a connection, albeit a very distant one. There are only a few Hytov families in the country, and they all come from the Rhodope Mountains, so they have a common root.
That’s why they named the child Nikolay Haitov. He will be in fifth grade now, and the school says he has a literary bent. But I hope that he will realize himself as his namesake not so much as a talent, but as an ardent patriot, as my father was”, says the daughter of the famous artist. And she is glad that she saw a photo of little Nikolay Haitov in a costume.
“Tales from the white sheet”, or how the strong spirit of the writer faces the disease
Days before the anniversary (Nikolai Haitov was born on September 15, 1919) was the preview of the new Bulgarian film “Wedding”. On the day itself, on the initiative of the sons of the writer Zdravets and Alexander Haitovi, a poster exhibition will be opened in the Drama Theater in Plovdiv, and on the 17th in the house of Veren Stambolyan in the Old Town – an exhibition with wood carvings. The following day, illustrations inspired by the work of the great storyteller will be shown in the lobby of the House of Culture “Boris Hristov”.
On September 15, within the framework of the “Crossroads Scene” festival, the State Drama Theater from Targovishte will present the performance “When the world was colorful” based on “When the world took off its clothes” from “Wild Tales”.
“I am very glad that the theaters keep turning their attention to Haight’s work and that the theaters are full when Marius Kurkinski plays his works,” says his daughter. She has her own personal plan to mark her father’s 105th birthday. “I have 4 books about him with memories and stories. Now I am writing “Stories from the white sheet”, I have dedicated it to him, although I am talking about the problems with my health in recent years. He passed away from leukemia and I compare how each of us copes with the disease – this is a story about the power of the human spirit”, explains Elena Haitova.
She chose the title because of a memory from Khaitov’s last days – a cherry fell on the sheet he was wrapped in and burst. “Then I said to myself: ‘Well, if only a little of this red juice could be transferred to his cheeks, he was terribly pale like all patients with this insidious diagnosis,'” she goes back 22 years. The book will be published in the coming months.