Pavel Khristov Matev

Born Dec. 6, 1924, in Orizovo, Stara Zagora District. Bulgarian poet and state figure, People’s Cultural Worker of Bulgaria (1971). Member of the Communist Party of Bulgaria since 1945.

Matev graduated from the department of philology of the University of Sofia. From 1963 to 1966 he was editor in chief of the magazine Septemvri (September), and since 1966 he has been chairman of the Committee on Artistic and Cultural Affairs of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria. Matev’s early poetry, the collections On Duty (1951), Clear Days (1952), Duty (1955), and With Faith in People (1959), is characterized by a candid publicistic expression of the lyric hero’s social position and by a lofty civic enthusiasm. In the books of verse Human Anxiety (I960), Genealogy (1963), Seagulls Resting on Waves (1965; awarded the Dimitrov Prize in 1966), Unaffronted Worlds (1969), and Hoarded Silences (1973), he created stronger psychological portrayals of his contemporary, the patriot of socialist Bulgaria. Matev has made a number of statements on general topics of socialist culture and art.