During this year's "Apollonia" Festival of the Arts in Sozopol – a forum with traditions dating back to 1984 that annually brings together hundreds of artists and thousands of culture enthusiasts – a series of books by literary historian and critic Prof. Mihail Nedelchev was presented. His works are dedicated to literary history, the construction of literary portraits, and the development of Bulgarian literature, and the event itself was part of a rich program of over 70 performances supported by the Apollonia Foundation.
The presentation of the new editions featured prominent members of the academic community, including Prof. Veselin Metodiev, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of New Bulgarian University, Prof. Plamen Doynov, Rector of the university, and Prof. Elka Traykova, Head of the Institute of Literature at the BAS. The focus was on the books "Literary Personalism," "Apologetic for the Priest-Warrior. A Personalist Book about Pencho Slaveykov," "Apology of Yordan Yovkov. Pages for the Singer of Dobruja," and "Discontinuity and Continuity of History."
New Bulgarian University Rector Prof. Plamen Doynov examined "Discontinuity and Continuity of History" in detail. He described the work as a collection of ten studies written over the past few years, in which an innovative concept is developed. According to him, Prof. Nedelchev creates a "passionate theory" that is not afraid to engage in polemics with previous researchers, relying on solid preparation, deep knowledge, and a striving to create an honest literary history.
Prof. Veselin Metodiev emphasized the author's contribution to the philosophy of literary history. According to him, Nedelchev does not use concepts speculatively but rather brings depth and meaning to them, becoming a true philosopher in his field. Metodiev stressed that the main thesis in the new book is the scholar's ability to discover connections and ongoing processes behind apparent ruptures in literature, which he described as true "mastery." Prof. Mihail Nedelchev himself added that this is precisely the essential task of a historian: "The entire mastery of the literary historian, and not just the literary historian. The historian in general must be able to discover them," referring to the traces of what seems to have disappeared.
For her part, Prof. Elka Traykova shared that the book pleasantly surprised her with its conceptual framework, which unites concepts important to literary scholars. She called Prof. Nedelchev an "encyclopedist" who manages to combine knowledge of cultural media with a conceptual view of literary worlds. Traykova emphasized that for Prof. Nedelchev, literary history is a destiny, and in his works, the themes of Bulgarian self-confidence and identity are always inscribed in a broad European context, connecting different periods and "collapses" into a common historical narrative.