Celebrating the 140th Anniversary of the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between Bulgaria and Greece
In 2020, Bulgaria and Greece mark 140 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
At the end of the jubilee year for both countries, the State Institute for Culture at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in partnership with the platform www.stefangechev.com, presents a small part of the Bulgarian-Greek relations - through the story of Professor Kiril Topalov (Ambassador to Athens and Vatican, Lecturer in Alma Mater, writer and screenwriter) about the famous poet, playwright, prose writer, translator, literary critic and diplomat with a contribution to Bulgarian-Greek relations Stefan Gechev.
In the interview on the topic: "The importance of diplomatic relations for the two countries and the common roots of Bulgarian-Greek diplomacy" Professor Kiril Topalov shares moments from his term as Ambassador of Bulgaria to Greece in the period 1998-2002, as well as his experience in deepening the cultural ties between the two countries.
In 1935 Stefan Gechev started studying ancient Greek philology at the University of Athens. In the period from 1936 to 1942, Stefan Gechev worked in the Bulgarian legation in Athens as a clerk in foreign languages, and later as a dragoman-translator. During this period, together with Cleon Peraskos, he translated poems by Elisaveta Bagryan and Atanas Dalchev into Greek, published in the magazine Nea Estia. Later he translated into Bulgarian the Greek poets George Seferis, Odysseus Elitis, Konstantinos Cavafy, Aris Dikteos and introduced the Bulgarian reader to the then unknown in our country Greek poetry. He is the author of the Anthology of New Greek Poetry. Volumes 1-2 (1960), Contemporary Cypriot Poetry (1965), Young Greek Poetry (1976), 20th Century Greek Poetry (1978) and many others.
Prof. Kiril Topalov was Bulgaria's Ambassador to Athens from 1998 to 2002. Thanks to his ten-year broad ties with the Athenian cultural, scientific and political elite, he contributed to building an atmosphere of trust in the implementation of a number of important Bulgarian-Greek interactions.