The story ‘Баиго’ / ‘Bango’ was originally written by Georgy Tsvetkov in Russian in the late 1980s. It was published twice, in 1999 and 2001. A newly edited bilingual version in Romani in Cyrillic script and Russian was printed in 2018.

‘Bango’ is purely fictional and does not have any basis in folklore. The author discusses the question of morality and aesthetics as a Romantic conflict between beauty and ugliness. This text probably resulted from the author’s interest in Romanticism, particularly, in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Maksim Gorky’s early short stories, such as ‘Makar Chudra’ or ‘Old Izergil’. The influence of the latter can be seen in the character of a wise story-teller and the author’s favourite literary device: ‘a story within a story’.

(Ilona Makhotina)

Source of text sample

Tsvetkov, Georgy. Хасардо тхэм. Страна предков. [Xasardo tkhem. Strana predkov]. [Lost country. Ancestors’ country: Reading book in Russian and Romani. In print.] 2018, in print, pp. 11–34