A legacy that will be talked about even more

The idea that there is no true literary historian who is not also a critic does not originate from yesterday, and yet it is very often neglected, left in the shadows. This attitude is especially to the taste of those who like to return to the "eternal dispute - is literary criticism a science or an art, or does it happily unite these two spiritual human activities. In fact, literary history does not know and does not recognize the separation of the theorist from the historian - we are talking about the historian-creator and the critic-creator - each of them in different aspects does the same thing: aesthetically evaluates the works of verbal art; one deals mainly with works from the present, the other is oriented towards the past. Another question is to what extent and how each achieves this. A wonderful, extremely useful example in this regard is the literary heritage of Professor Dr. Ivan D. Shishmanov. Getting acquainted with this heritage, our contemporary enters an ideological world where true service to science is combined in an unusual way with active social activity - the latter is the basis for the proper conduct of the former. Ivan Shishmanov is equally original and significant as a researcher of the Revival, as a folklorist, and as a historian of Western European literatures, and as a critic. Perhaps this is facilitated by the fact that his accumulation of diverse and rich knowledge is based on an original, innate talent as a writer. That is why the publication of a literary-critical essay about this great scholar of ours in "Bulgarian Writer" should be noted as very timely and useful.