The poem you just heard is called The Road traveled and goes: I had a road I loved, I once had a road. One more step and it is at an end. The road is traveled… The voice belongs to poet Penyo Penev, whose life road ended when he was just 29. His last words, written on the fatal night of April 27, 1959 go: “I am weary of being homeless, jobless, unloved…” Just the opposite of what another poet – Stefan Tsanev says about him:

“I have been asking myself why, out of all others, people chose Penyo Penev, why they welcomed him into their hearts. He never occupied high posts where he could have used his power to thrust his poetry upon them, he never forged the brass nimbus of administrative genius for himself, his critics never sang sycophantic odes to him, he never tickled schoolgirls with driveling verses, or snobs – with insincere metaphors. He never wrote his poems in luxury houses, or studied life by watching it through the windows of black limousines, he never went hunting in game preserves behind barbed wires, never lounged about cool summer houses, never issued instructions how people should do their job, how they should live, what they should and what they shouldn’t believe in. Penyo Penev lived as the people lived. He worked as the people worked, ate what the people ate, drank in the taverns where they drank, hated what they hated, their sorrows were his sorrows, what made them laugh, made him laugh. That is why the people saw his words as their own. You may say all this is elementary, primitive, demagogic, and adduce many examples why this is so. Nonetheless, I still say that the people love Penyo Penev precisely because he was at one with them. There is a saying: He, whose belly is full, believes not him who is fasting. I am not quite sure that is true, though I am not sure the opposite is true either. If you want the people to believe you, you must live their life. Not live like a king and say: Hey, I am thinking of you, I am weeping for you!”

Penyo Penev believed he was building the future – a future bright and pure, a future founded on brotherhood and beauty. He believed in the nation’s romantic endeavor to change Bulgaria and turned it into poetry. He wrote poems that imbued people with enthusiasm and faith that there would be a better future, but he also joined in the construction itself with all his heart. His words, his faith have much in common with those of Hristo Botev and Dimcho Debelyanov, themselves guided in their life by their beliefs. Any one of them could have written the words:

Losing money is to lose nothing!

Losing honour is to lose something.

Losing faith is to lose everything!

Even though his poetry was used for communist propaganda, Penyo Penev never wrote on commission. Having lived through unemployment, penury, malicious slanders and lack of recognition, the poet never lost faith. He chose to leave this world like his idols - Mayakovsky and Yesenin. There was no room for people like him in poetry or in that ago. Here is Stefan Tsanev again, a recording from the BNR Golden Fund audio archives:

“A poet has one god – the truth, one sovereign – the people and one judge – his own conscience. When people would try to shake his convictions and to deprive him of these three pillars, Penyo Penev chose to take his own life thus proving how right he was. I shall never forget that frightful April day 29 years ago. On that day, we, presumptuous and inspired 20-year olds were in for a rude awakening – poetry was no pretty game of vanity. On that day we realized poetry was a game of life and death. And today if you reach for the quill, you must know that. You must be ready to pay with your life for the truth you write. That is the collateral of poetry and of truth. Without this lethal collateral the most talented of poems is a talented forgery.”

English Milena Daynova