Tribune Excerpts

The following article appeared in the January 2007 Edition of the Macedonian Tribune

Stoyan Christowe, an impression
By Edward Meschi

The following article from the MPO archives was published in the MACEDONIAN TRIBUNE in 1934. Meschi was a freelance writer who contributed to numerous American newspapers and magazines. It is reprinted in memory of Stoyan Christowe who was honored last month by his hometown of Dover, Vt., which erected a monument to him. The Vermont National Guard, which works closely with the Macedonian Army, participated in the ceremonies in recognition of the Macedonian Army’s involvement with the US in the War on Terror and its contributions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If someone were to ask whether he was tall or of medium stature, it would be difficult for me to answer without thinking first. You are so captivated by his finely formed head that it never occurs to you to “look him over.” You feel that head is proud in its sincerity and that it will not bend under any weight. The direct forcefulness that emanates from his dark eyes seems to penetrate you diabolically at first; but then the eyes become warmer, almost sympathetic as he speaks to you, and you become conscious that his voice now has the strength which a month before you had seen in his eyes.

Each word comes distinctly, pointed toward the picture he is building so that you may understand. At moments, it is slow like a curve and then quick like a straight line. This reveals to you the artist without lessening the first impression you had of the dictator.

To a great extent, this personal power has enabled him in his conversation as well as in his writing to impress writers and editors with the seriousness and importance of Macedonia’s struggle. In his foreign correspondence work for the Chicago Daily News, and in his articles published in The Outlook, Travel, The Living Age and other magazines, Stoyan Christowe has given us graphic, seasoned writing, and in doing so has built for us a firm, deep picture of Macedonia which has made us realize that Macedonia does exist and refuses to be erased from the map of the Balkans.

Few of us knew of Ivan Mihailoff or what his name meant before Stoyan Christowe went to Macedonia and then published his articles on the IMRO (Internal Macedonian Liberation Organization). His feature article in the Sunday magazine of the New York Herald-Tribune devoted principally to a portrait of Mihailoff alone reached millions of American people.

Now when they read or hear the name of Mihailoff they know who he is and for what he is striving. I often picture a determined young man hiding in the Macedonian mountains, watching for the first opportunity to add yet another fruitful effort toward the freedom of his people.  I see his eyes focused toward one and I know that to attain that end he will make any sacrifice. I know that there is something humanly real in all this, something deep and rooted in the soil, that it cannot die when men deny their bodies for it.

But there is something more of deep interest to us in Stoyan Christowe. In addition to all this endeavor for Macedonia’s cause, there is the artist who so molds his clay that it assumes shape and lines of universal appeal. In The Dial, a magazine whose pages always welcome a writer who writes something sincere and beautiful, Stoyan Christowe seriously began his literary career.

The subtly chiseled stories: “Setchko”, “Father and Son”, and others won him the notice of critics. Then Burton Rascoe, the belligerent American critic who is responsible for the recognition of many now famous American writers, was entranced by “The Bell”, which he featured in the Christmas number of The Bookman.

This work is so beautifully conceived and written that one has the feeling it is more a symphony in prose then a mere story. “Taro The Joymaker”, which followed “The Bell” in the same magazine, is in a similar vein. Then there are “Grandfather Sees the Bishop”, “The Cross” and the “Crescent in the Commonweal”; “The Bear”, “Give, God Rain” in the Theatre Arts Monthly. … These that occur to me at this moment fine things all, sculptured in words that build an inescapable picture and give birth to new creatures for one to know in the world.

It is not the mere sound of a word, or the color it may have, that interests Stoyan Christowe, rather it is the vitality of a word to give birth and growth that entrances him, since he is concerned not with the exhibition of life but with its profound movement.

He writes as an artist paints. Yet beyond the pictorial perfectness, the subtle nuances ringing in one’s mind, there is his theme; and if the reader is not moved to find a delicate human story in the midst of the beautifully painted pictures – then the intelligence and sensitivity of that reader are not alive to the deeper aspect of life in these idyllic settings. That life is Macedonian life, that story is the sadness of his people. It is told subtly as nature has told it to generation after generation of Macedonians.

And, I have been at times puzzled by the sadness in the eyes of Stoyan Christowe, too. I have wondered and then studied that sadness. It is not nostalgic sadness – it is a sadness that is born of a realization that he could not wave his hand and remove all the impediments to the happiness of Macedonia. In the awayness he wonders, feels deeply concerned toward what he is not touching with his hands, seeing with his eyes, drinking with his lips; but he is feeling with his heart, and creating with his mind just as deeply, as truly as if he were there.

This is Stoyan Christowe, the Macedonian, sad, grieving for his people, hoping that out of the struggle and sacrifices there will rise a free and happy Macedonia.