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Staff Captain Mikhailov from the second Sevastopol story ("Sevastopol in May") by Leo Tolstoy is a modest man. His place in the sea of ​​critical writings about the great writer's work is also modest. There, the tall, stooped figure of the staff captain is almost invisible. It seems to hide behind the large silhouette of the slumbering Field Marshal Kutuzov, behind the brilliance of the restless, eternally out of breath Prince Andrei, behind the romantic charm of Hadji Murat, or finally - behind the gunpowder smoke that enveloped Captain Tushin. Of all the interesting characters of the writer, the least has been written about Staff Captain Mikhailov. There is something natural in this. Because he is one of Tolstoy's early favorites. In him, the writer concluded many of his innermost youthful observations and thoughts. But that is precisely why we will see how this character is repeatedly reincarnated with one or another of his qualities in various later heroes of Tolstoy. These latter characters overshadow the former.

Until recently, in our literary history, the great and very interesting, for his era new writing style, South Slavic and Bulgarian writer Parteny Pavlovich, born around 1695 in the city of Silistra, did not receive the appropriate place for his literary work. He was mentioned episodically in general literary-historical reviews, noting that he was the author of a curious and meaningful autobiography, which, however, remained unknown to the mass reader; the excerpts from it in a New Bulgarian translation, printed by Professor Yordan Ivanov, pursued academic and educational purposes, so their fame hardly went far beyond the walls of the University. This gap was partly filled by an essay by Dr. V. Sl. Kiselkov about Parteny, published as the final chapter in his compiled work "Studies and Outlines of Old Bulgarian Literature", Sofia, 1956, pp. 394-398. The most comprehensive and in-depth exposition of the personality and work of Parthenius has recently been made by Bonyu St. Angelov. In his study, Angelov traces in detail the life path of Parthenius, brings to light and analyzes his larger and smaller works. The great merit of B. St. Angelov is also that, thanks to his publication, today the Bulgarian reader has at hand one of Parthenius' most important works adapted to our current spelling system: his Autobiography, published so far only once in the almost inaccessible Serbian magazine "Serbian Zion".

In the history of Old Bulgarian literature, the Tale of the Zograf Martyrs currently occupies a modest place. It is usually noted as one of the works of our historical literature of the 13th century, written on a historical theme - the massacre in 1275 in the Bulgarian Zograf Monastery of 21 Bulgarian monks and 4 laymen. It is assumed that the appearance of the Tale is directly related to the existing during the Second Bulgarian Kingdom our chronicle tradition, of which the Tale is a small fragment that has come down to us with its specific, dictated by the theme and the time of its emergence, anti-Latin tendency. Both Yordan Ivanov and Petar Dinekov are of the opinion that the Tale was written almost in the wake of the events and insofar as it contains hints about the external dangers threatening the Bulgarian people, they relate to its political and state relations at the end of the 13th century. 2 As can be seen, the Tale was not left without attention by our literary historians. Yet, what has been written about it so far is relatively small, so that the true place of the Tale in the Old Bulgarian literary process can be outlined on its basis. The reason for this state of research is that this medieval historical work of ours is considered anonymous, and the question of its more certain or possible authorship has not been raised.

The contemporary Bulgarian short story in its best examples interprets life phenomena from the perspective of the moral, political and social requirements of socialist society. The completely innovative life truth also determines the socialist-realistic character of the artistic truth of today's short story. The realization of this aspiration is the work of the original participation of talent, which in all cases is associated with the ability to observe and the imagination of the writer. Some argue that talent is a measure of artistic truth, which is achieved through an image realized through the prism of the personal point of view of the fiction writer. It is precisely this peculiar angle of perception of reality that allows us to draw some serious conclusions about the artistic mastery of life phenomena. For us, the short story is valuable not for the literal reproduction of life facts, but more for the ability to present life phenomena in a special light, emanating from a thoughtful and suffered attitude towards people, society and reality. Any attempt to ignore talent leads to a misunderstanding of the essence and specificity of the work of art. The process of realizing artistic truth is unthinkable without the writer's effort to affirm himself by discovering his theme, his vision of the world, and his personal manner of artistic expression. In this sense, for us, personal coloring is a path to finding the artistic truthfulness of the literary work. The realization of the modern story would be impossible without the presence in it of the complex truth about life. Pavel Vezhinov has a special place in the creation of our modern story. The theme of some still living symptoms of egoism appears for Vezhinov - the writer and the person, a main theme. Vezhinov strives in the battle against the loneliness of the human personality. In fact, he began as an artist of the social environment of the past, among which a person often loses his connection with it. The individual facts of the interrupted harmony in the relationship between personality and society are the basis for the writer, on which he artistically realizes true Dramatic states.