July 23 marked the 75th anniversary of the execution of the poet Nikola Vaptsarov. “Motor Songs” is his only poetry collection published during his lifetime, which was published in a circulation of 1,500 copies in 1940 by the “Andreev and Yotov” printing house. The printing was paid for by the author, who signed himself “Nik. Yonkov”. In 1961, Nikolay Shmirgela described exactly how the cover of the publication was “born” in an article entitled “Worthy, talented and skillful hands”.
“I would like to tell this “design” incident: Vaptsarov was going to publish his first collection “Motor Songs”. Whether the poets at the time liked it or not, I will not say. But we, his artist friends, definitely liked it. And we decided to organize a competition among ourselves. It was attended by: [Alexander] Zhendov, [Boris] Angelushev, [Stoyan] Sotirov and me. Angelushev “won” us – he made the best design and the book came out with his cover.
This was an expression of our love for “our” book: this love was not measured by a fee or by publishing competition – it was the love for the Bulgarian revolutionary book, which is now being published in many, many editions and whose design has been undertaken by worthy, talented and skillful hands.”
- Nikolay Shmirgela
The text was provided by Milena Radeva
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