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Show oo - BULGARIA'S ONLY CLASSIC 1 had been in Bulgaria some months and the sound of spoken , Bulgarian had begun to hold mean- ! ing to me here and there "Tell me. ' I ahked two English speaking friends, with whom I was out walking one day, "w hat Is that I word I hear so often. Bv ganio,r ' My friends leaned against a stone wall and laughed. "You will never know Bulgaria.' said one of them, finally, "until you know Ble Ganlo. Tourists write abonl U6 that we are boorish and sullen sul-len and that we hate foreigners You , should suspend Judgment until j . ou have learned to speak to Ble Ganlo in his native tongue You may know-worse know-worse things about us. but you may also know better ' Long afterward 1 learned that 1 Ble Ganlo" was a book. "The Adventures Adven-tures of Bie Ganlo Balkanskl " by Aleko Konstantlnoff the one piece of literature that Is truly Bulgarian, for its author was only a bimple Journalist Journal-ist with no pretensions to foreign! literary culture. The hero of the adventures is a I Bulgdnan peasant from Bhlpka who has heard of the wonder, of western west-ern civilisation. After Bulgaria i liberatlonB he determines to see lor himself, for he has heard It said that ne. too, is now a European He travels trav-els over the continent, paving his way by ' Selling attar of roses In little lit-tle bottles, which he carrlec in a bag .lung over hie shoulder He has! adopted European dreas, but from uu- der his vest peeps the red sash which suspenders have not yet dls-iflACed. dls-iflACed. His heav mustache droops ov er a chin that is never quite- shav -i n, nor is it ever quite bearded, and his collnrle8s, white shirt is never I oulte white. Ble Ganio, of course', is Bulgaria coraiiiK In first contact with west-em west-em civilization From first to last the l&rratlvs of adventures is a bitter satin the Incidents themselves are told with a frank, Rabelaisian coarse-Invariablv coarse-Invariablv the laugh Is on jioor, ignorant Bie Ganio and his atrocious mistakes, though sometimes some-times the dart of ridicule turns out ward and pricks the cultured Europeans Euro-peans with whom Ble Ganio tries to mingle In the last few chapters Bie Ganio has come home and is trying to apply what he has learned abroad to local conditions, not always happily. hap-pily. L)y itself lhr book is remarkable enough; it will remain a literary classic. But a thousand times mor remarkable is the reception accorded it hy the Bulgarian people In Greece the author would have been mobbed and the church would have declare-d his work high treason and unholy But Bulgaria received the book In Bllence, read it. recognized itself as the hero of the adventures and burst, into a low roar of laughter that has j never since died down In ev. ry household you will find a well-worn ! copy, for over and over again 11 is road aloud by the young people wlnlp their Illiterate elders sit back and: chortle. Albert Sonnlchsen In Amer- I lean Ilevlevv of Reviews lor December. |