"Neka da e lyato" - a model of admirable poetic sincerity and musical talent

When Miryana Basheva passed away on July 12, 2020, the Bulgarian media reported that the "poet of cosmic tenderness" had passed away. She was a beloved artist and a bright journalist, known as the "girl with a difficult character". She began writing poetry around the age of 23, officially debuted as a poet in the newspaper "Literary Front" at 25, and her first collection of poems with the distinctive title "Difficult Character" was published in 1976, when she was 29 and immediately appealed to everyone, even critics. Miryana Basheva's work impresses with a specific poetic language, combining deliberately rough and bold imagery with elegance of feeling and thought.

She had a clear idea about herself as a poet: "Svetlozar Igov (Bulgarian scholar, literary critic and historian, essayist, poet, fiction writer and translator) once introduced me to the Russian audience as the Bulgarian Tsvetaeva and I got really proud. Although I would have preferred to be compared to Akhmatova. Maybe I sounded fresh and daring because I wrote without much poetic database in my head - I didn't like poetry at all before I started writing it...“

After the first collection of poems, "Malka zimna muzika" ("A Little Winter Music") was published in 1979 and „Sto godini sueta" ("A Hundred Years of Folly") in 1992, each of which also included works from the previous collections. All subsequent editions contain already published poems, because Miryana Basheva simply... stopped writing poetry. She is the author of less than a hundred poems, quite enough to be included in the list of the most significant names in Bulgarian literature.

In addition to the originalilty, her characteristic is melodiousness. It is no coincidence that she was one of the most sought-after authors of lyrics for popular songs, created over the years by Petar Chernev, Mihail Belchev or Yuri Stupel and performed by the biggest stars of Bulgarian pop music. But her most successful creative tandem is with composer Stefan Dimitrov, with whom she remained close friends until the end of her life. Thanks to them, emblematic hits were born. Before that, however – in 1977, a simple, sincere and enthusiastic miniature by Basheva and Dimitrov, dedicated to summer, captured the hearts of listeners and won the authors a second prize at the "Golden Orpheus" Festival. With „Neka da e lyato“ ("Let It Be Summer"), the young, charming singers from the "Tonika" group confirmed their star status, achieved a year earlier with another magnificent song by Stefan Dimitrov - "Lado Le".

Decades later, in an interview with "24 Chasa"newspaper, the composer recalled that during the creation of the song he was doing military service in the ensemble of the Construction Troops. When Miryana Basheva showed him her "Summer", he sat down at the piano and in a very short time composed the melody. "This text is a wish that has everything, a picture that humanity dreams of - for it to be nice, warm, for the wheat to ripen in the fields, this is a wish for peace," Stefan Dimitrov says.

To participate in the Golden Orpheus competition, Miryana added another verse related to Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. Having acquired the necessary socio-political message for the regime, the song was performed for the first time at the festival. It won second prize and was recorded by the Bulgarian National Radio. "Tonika" group performed it at all its concerts and Dimitrov remembers that the audience "went crazy".