To Chicago and Back: Aleko Konstantinov, Rose Oil, and the Smell of Modernity

To Chicago and Back: Aleko Konstantinov, Rose Oil, and the Smell of ModernityAuthor(s): Mary NeuburgerSource: Slavic Review, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Autumn, 2006), pp. 427-445Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4148658 .

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ARTICLES

To Chicago and Back: Aleko Konstantinov, Rose Oil, and the Smell of Modernity

Mary Neuburger

Aleko Konstantinov once divulged that his favorite smell was the aroma of

ships and trains.1 Konstantinov, one of Bulgaria's best-known literary fig- ures, must have indulged his olfactory sense all the way from Sofia to Chi- cago during his journey by train and ship to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Once in Chicago, Aleko-as he is often simply called-observed and commented on both the phantasmagoric spectacle of the fair and the

peculiarities of the New World itself. In his famous travelogue Do Chikago i nazad (To Chicago and back, 1893) he encounters the world-old and new-through the sights and smells of Chicago and its fairgrounds.2 Aleko, who had become quite a veteran and enthusiast of the world's fair circuit by 1893, was a keen witness to the unprecedented scale of the Chi- cago fair. The glitz and glamour of the impressive attractions lured him, but he ultimately spent most of his time in the modest Bulgarian pavilion and its outpost on the famous Midway Plaisance. Against the sparkling but imperfect background of the New World, the rest of the world was served

up for American consumption. Thisjuxtaposition of nations, however un- real in their representations, inevitably provoked introspection. In particular, in the kiosk dubbed "Bulgarian Curiosities," Aleko invented Bul-

garia's greatest literary hero and enduring symbol of Bulgarianness-the indomitable anti-hero, Bai Gano. In many ways, for Aleko the fair was less about discovering the New World and more about exploring the quintes- sential nature of his own nation. In that sense, his travelogue was like

many others before it: a journey of self-discovery that purported to un- cover the "other." But in an era when the Balkans were primarily the "ob-

ject" of "discovery and invention" through the vehicle of the travelogue, Konstantinov's work is one of the scant sources of this genre that make the "West" the object of Balkan discovery.'

In both To Chicago and Back and Bai Gano-a fictional account of a

Bulgarian's travels through Europe-Aleko Konstantinov explores Bul-

garia's late nineteenth-century entanglement with the west and with modernity. Aleko's writings, both autobiographical and fictional, tackle

1. Aleko Konstantinov, "Moiata izpoved," in Lilia Katskova, ed., Aleko Konstantinov: Suchineniia (Sofia, 1970), 2:379.

2. For an excellent recent translation of this work into English by Robert Sturm, see Aleko Konstantinov, To Chicago and Back (Sofia, 2004).

3. The most notable recent work on both the western travelogue and the Balkans, which also includes a discussion of Konstantinov's Bai Gano, is Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford, 1997).

Slavic Review 65, no. 3 (Fall 2006)



428 Slavic Review

the promise and problems of the west, while looking closely at Bulgaria in the western mirror.4 During his own travels in the United States, and Bai Gano's travails in Europe, the author and his creation set foot, not just in other places, but in another time. As if in a time machine, they visit the future. But is it a future that Aleko (and Bulgarians) valued and yearned for? In To Chicago and Back Aleko is clearly stunned and impressed by the

technological and material progress that he experiences firsthand in the west. At the same time, he levels a nuanced critique at many of the problems and psychic dilemmas of life in the west. In fact, Aleko's view of the west can be summed up in two conflicting olfactory images, the sweet aroma of trains and ships, and the putrid stench that he encounters on his visit to the Chicago stockyards. The latter makes him question, "To what

disgrace has this thirst for gold led?"'5 The modern world--the future that Aleko visits inside and outside the fairgrounds-is admittedly an increas-

ingly visual world. But it is also a world where the other senses, especially the sense of smell, must adjust to a new set of conditions and experiences. Like the eyes, the nose also takes part in the process of individual and col- lective recasting of identities and paths to becoming modern.

In Bai Gano the role of the nose in east-west entanglements is con-

spicuous. Bai Gano is, after all, a rose oil merchant, a purveyor of natural essence to Europe-to a world of culture and increasing deodorization. In this world of refinement and hygiene, his backwardness and stench are

immediately apparent. As "East" meets "West," it is not only manners and

clothing-practices and visual clues-that delineate the modern, but also smell." Significantly, though, it is the east that brings the west its essence, only to see it be transformed and commodified, exploited at the east's expense. The west, it seems, has a talent for appropriating products and practices from the margins and making them their own; presenting them as requirements for becoming wholly modern. At the same time, the unwritten and ever-changing prerequisites for modernity seem ever out of reach for east Europeans. As a result, many east Europeans then and now have difficulty seeing themselves without looking at their own reflec- tion in west European eyes (and, in the past, noses); without lamenting their unequal cultural and economic relationships. Aleko Konstantinov's work, inspired by his journey to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, is an

early example of such profound introspection.

Aleko Konstantinov: Life and Work

Aleko Konstantinov was born in 1863 in Svishtov, a small but bustling Ot- toman commercial hub on the Danube. A successful and well-educated

4. Stefan Elevterov, Poetikata na Aleko Konstantinov i nasheto literaturno razvitie: Izsled- vane (Sofia, 1978), 68.

5. Aleko Konstantinov, "Do Chikago i nazad," in Tikhomir Tikhov, ed., Aleko Kon- stantinov: Sibrani sichineniia (Sofia, 1980), 1:81.

6. I am well aware of the arbitrariness of the terms "East" and "West," which reflect cultural constructs more than actual places. I use them here with some irony, but also with the recognition that many east Europeans (another term that has fallen out of favor, but I still find useful) did and still do see the "West" as somehow "other."



Aleko Konstantinov, Rose Oil, and the Smell of Modernity 429

Ottoman merchant who knew multiple languages and had traveled widely in Europe and the Ottoman lands, Aleko's father was part of the bur-

geoning Balkan Christian merchant class that arose in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.7 Aleko grew up hearing stories of his father's travels, which were laced with comparisons between Bulgaria and other countries in central or western Europe.8 Aleko was only fourteen in 1877 when the Russo-Turkish War brought Russian troops across the Danube into Svishtov. As the Russians regrouped there for their charge deeper into Ottoman territory, Alexander II actually stayed at the Kon- stantinov home.9 Because of Russian intervention, Bulgaria was granted autonomy in 1878 and gained de facto independence (although vassalage technically continued until 1908). Young Aleko came of age in the midst of the momentous changes of the postliberation era, including the self- conscious modernization and "Europeanization" of Bulgarian society and culture. But during this period, the enthusiasm inspired by liberation

rapidly descended into deep disillusionment and cynicism within Bulgar- ian intellectual circles. Aleko belonged to a new generation of intellectuals that was openly critical of the failings in Bulgarian society and looked westward toward Europe and the United States for models of progress and

modernity. At the same time, his embrace of the west was guarded and at times even profoundly skeptical. After studying at Odessa University for six years, Aleko became an enthusiastic pan-Slav, but he was by no means a Slavophile in the anti-western, nineteenth-century Russian meaning. If anything he was a firm Westernizer-his favorite author was the well- known Russian Westernizer, Ivan Turgenev--though he shared with Rus- sian Westernizers a deep ambivalence toward western ideas and "progress." 1() In short, Konstantinov was influenced by Russian ressentiment and Russia's critique of the west."

Frustration and a serious commentary on Bulgaria's cultural and political predicaments permeate Aleko's writings, but his approach was ex-

ceedingly humorous. He loved to laugh and enjoy life, whatever its per- sistent disappointments and tragedies. In fact, Aleko came to be known as Shtashlivets (the happy one), his pen name in the Bulgarian press. In addition, he was the founder and pivotal member of a group of Sofia intellectuals and raconteurs called Vesela Biilgariia (Merry Bulgaria), who met on a regular basis to make light of the problems and foibles of Bulgarian

7. According to the seminal work of Traian Stoianovich, the beneficiaries of both pax Ottomanica and Ottoman decline were the "conquering Orthodox merchants" who were middlemen in the golden era of Levantine trade and, in particular, in the period of Eu-

ropean economic penetration. Traian Stoianovich, "The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant,"Journal of Economic History 20, no. 2 (June 1960): 234-313.

8. Georgi Konstantinov, Aleko Konstantinov: Biograffia (Sofia, 1946), 5. 9. Liuben Georgiev, Literaturnata klasika (Sofia, 1993), 3:6. 10. Konstantinov, "Moiata izpoved," 379. 11. For a succinct discussion of Slavophiles versus Westernizers and the significance

of ressentiment for Russian identity, see Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Moder- nity (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 189-274. On Slavophiles and Westernizers, see also the recent book, Susanna Rabow-Edling, Slavophile Thought and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism

(Albany, 2006).



430 Slavic Review

politics and society." Konstantinov traveled with members of this group on all of his major sojourns, including his trip to Chicago. After 1894 Aleko primarily wrote ironic-comic feuilleton pieces, which he published in various Bulgarian periodicals, in particular Misil. In the 1890s, the appearance of each of Aleko's feuilletons was a "social and literary event" in

Bulgaria inspiring both "laughter and indignation."'3 Politically a Rus-

sophile, Aleko's feuilletons were critical of the heavy-handed, but effec- tive, Austrophile regime of Prime Minister Stefan Stambolov of the Lib- eral Party.'4 Aleko's most famous series of feuilletons in Mis-l-eighteen in all-were later assembled into the book entitled Bai Gano: Neveroiatni Razkazi na Siivremenen Bzilgarin (Bal Gano: The extraordinary tales of a modern Bulgarian). With seemingly no overt political message, Bai Gano was part and parcel of Aleko's critique of developments under Stambolov.

Among other things, it lampoons the nouveau riche beneficiaries of Stam- bolov's economic policies.15 Indeed, the character of Bai Gano was the

product of the particularities of the Stambolov era when-as socialist an-

alysts have pointed out-the honest Bulgarian esnaf (tradesman) was re-

placed by the petit bourgeois capitalist.'6 Dimitfir Blagoev, the father of

Bulgarian socialism, was perhaps the first and most famous among the Marxist analysts of Bai Gano. He pointedly asserted that Bai Gano could not have appeared ten years earlier, since it was a commentary on the specific period in which capitalism penetrated into Bulgaria."7 And though the book was clearly the product of a specific time in Bulgarian history, its hero became the most famous and contested character in Bulgarian literature and cultural life. Never just a literary hero (or anti-hero), Bai Gano became a full-fledged national phenomenon who "crawled out of the book" and into the everyday consciousness of the nation.'"

Indeed, Bai Gano became the most analyzed character and work of literature in Bulgarian history. In this work of ironic comedy, the book's main character, Gano Balkanski, a bumbling rose oil merchant, travels around Europe selling his wares and embarrassing himself with his unciv- ilized manner and lack of "European" decorum. He has the failings of a "semi-oriental" and a man of the village who is unaware of the etiquette of urban European high society. Not long after publication, debates about the essence of Bai Gano's character arose: was he a national type (Homo

12. Konstantinov, Aleko Konstantinov, 43. 13. Charles Moser, A History of Bulgarian Literature: 865-1944 (The Hague,

1972), 111. 14. On the Stambolov era, see Duncan Perry, Stefan Stambolov and theEmergence of Mod-

ern Bulgaria, 1870-1895 (Durham, 1993). 15. Aleksandfir Nichev, Aleko Konstantinov: 1863-1897 (Sofia, 1964), 107. 16. Georgiev, Literaturnata klasika, 3:22. 17. Dimitiir Blagoev, "Bai Gano-Predvestnik na oformenite dnes kheroi na kapital-

isma," in Tikhomir Tikhov, ed., Bulgarshata kritika za Aleko Konstantinov: Sbornik statii, 1897- 1969 (Sofia, 1970), 25.

18. "Bai" is simply a title of respect. In addition to Bai Gano jokes and sayings, Bul- garians often call each other Gano or "Baiganovtsi" (Bai Gano-type person) as a light- hearted insult. Georgiev, Literaturnata klasika, 3:45.




bulgaricus or perhaps Homo balkanicus) or a particular social type (nouveau riche, bourgeois)?'9 In general, the "national" thesis predominates in analyses from the precommunist period (pre-1944) -with Dimitiir

Blagoev as a notable exception-and the "social" argument prevails dur-

ing the communist period.20 Since 1989, both interpretations have flour- ished. The volume and persistence of such debates attests to the fact that Bai Gano-far from being a figure only relevant to one particular time in

Bulgarian history-finds resonance even today. In Todorova's influential

Imagining the Balkans, for example, a sociohistorical interpretation of Bai Gano posits that the character represents a nouveau riche subtype of Bul-

garian-and not the nation as a whole.2' In a recent article, Roumen Daskalov sees the spectrum of interpretations as illustrative of the range of concerns within modern Bulgarian society. Having said this, though, Daskalov does assert that from the book's publication in 1895 until the im-

position of a Marxist interpretation in the 1940s, most contemporary crit- ics and readers identified Bai Gano as a "national" type.22

Little known to the outside world, Bar Gano haunts the Bulgarian national imagination with his powerful ambiguities. This work is part and

parcel of a Bulgarian self-critique that was influenced by European notions of both the Orient and the Balkans as backwards. Much work has been done on the Balkans (and eastern Europe) as objects of west Euro-

pean travel literature and observation that were permeated with de-

rogatory observations about the Balkans as oriental or semi-oriental.23 Fewer studies examine how Balkan people themselves "discovered" or "invented" Europe or the west, and in so doing, complicated their under-

19. Although most sources agree that Baf Gano is an unsympathetic character at his core, others see Bai Gano as having positive national meaning-that is, of remaining true to his distinctive Bulgarian nature rather than adopting a homogenized European one. For a discussion of this interpretive trajectory, see Rumen Daskalov, Mezhdu iztoka i zapada: Buflgarski kulturni dilemi (Sofia, 1998), 124.

20. For useful analyses from each period, see Tikhov, ed., Bfilgarskata kritika za Aleko Konstantinov, and Panko Anchev, Stranitsi za Aleko Konstantinov: Tvorchestvoto na pisatelia v

bIilgarskata literaturna kritika (Varna, 1991). For the best overall synthesis and analysis of

"Baiganovedeniie" (the study of Bai Gano), see Daskalov, Mezhdu iztoka i zapada, 116-73. 21. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 39- 42. 22. Roumen Daskalov, "Modern Bulgarian Society and Culture through the Mirror

of Bai Ganio," Slavic Review 60, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 530-49. 23. The most obvious and best-known work on these issues is Todorova, Imagining the

Balkans. I do not wish to rehash here my arguments in full on these issues, but in contrast to Maria Todorova, I believe in the relevance of the concept of "orientalism" for the Bal- kans. See Mary Neuburger, The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Na- tionhood in Modern Bulgaria (Ithaca, 2004), 3-5. Others who have written on orientalism and travel literature in the Balkans include, Milica Bakid-Hayden and Robert M. Hayden, "Orientalist Variations on the Theme 'Balkans': Symbolic Geography in Recent Yugoslav Cultural Politics," Slavic Review 51, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 1-15; Milica Bakid-Hayden, "Nest- ing Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia," Slavic Review, 54, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 917-31;John Allcock and Antonia Young, eds., Black Lambs and Grey Falcons: Women Trav- ellers in the Balkans (Bradford, Eng., 1991), 170-91; and BoiidarJezernik, Wild Europe: The Balkans in the Gaze of Western Travellers (London, 2004). On eastern Europe as a whole (with a focus on the north), see Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, 1994).



432 Slavic Review

standings of themselves.24 By the modern period, the west had increas-

ingly delimited and objectified the east as a way of elaborating its own im-

age as modern and civilized.25 Situating Bulgaria along the east-west con- tinuum was integral to the Bulgarian national project. And as works

exploring alterity-or "otherness"-have explained, the east encoun-

tered, objectified, and essentialized the west in ways that had far-reaching consequences for their own identities.26 With this in mind, it is profoundly significant that Aleko Konstantinov found Bai Gano-arguably the ar-

chetypal Bulgarian-in America at the Chicago World's Fair.

Aleko, Bulgaria, and the World's Fairs

Aleko Konstantinov once reported that the two happiest events of his life were his trip to America to attend the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and

coming up with the idea of Bai Gano.27 And although Bai Gano was indeed inspired by Aleko's travails in Chicago, this was by no means Aleko's first world's fair. By all accounts, Aleko was swept up in the "world's fair mania" that seized nineteenth-century Europe, the United States, and be-

yond, beginning with the British Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851. Aleko's first fair was the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889, followed by a visit to the less grandiose Prague World's Fair of 1891, and finally Bulgaria's own diminutive International Fair in Plovdiv in 1892. Unfortunately, Aleko wrote precious little about the other fairs. Only Prague makes an appearance in a Baf Gano feuilleton, but with only minor reference to the details of the fair itself. Clearly these fairs inspired Aleko to seek out more such

spectacles, though, and he became part of the international legion of pil- grims that traveled the world's fair circuit, actively "consuming moder-

nity" in mass numbers.H2 But Chicago impressed Aleko on a scale no other fair had, inspiring his detailed account of his experiences there. In com-

paring the Chicago fair to the exposition in Paris in 1889, for example, Aleko ruminates that "with the exception of the Eiffel Tower, [the Paris

exposition] looked like a heap of gilded huts."9" Aleko was so impressed by the Chicago fairgrounds by night, stunningly bathed in the light of gar- lands of electric bulbs, that he "felt sorry for the moon. How poor and

24. Todorova does explore some works of Balkan self-criticism and self-designation but not necessarily the encounter through travel. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 38- 61.

25. The most notable work to begin to fully analyze this process was Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978). Of course, a whole literature has emerged that both chal-

lenges and refines Said. 26. A great deal of work outside eastern Europe addresses such issues. For one close

to home, see Michael Herzfeld, Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece (Austin, 1982).

27. Konstantinov, "Moiata izpoved," 379. 28. As Purbrick argues in the case of the Great Exhibition in 1851, fair audiences

were far from passive consumers of capitalist or imperialist messages. Rather they became active participants who "inhabited the modern political subjectivities associated with con- senting and consuming." Louise Purbrick, "Introduction," in Louise Purbrick, ed., The Great Exhibition of 1851: New Interdisciplinary Essays (Manchester, Eng., 2001), 15.

29. Konstantinov, "Do Chikago i nazad," 73.




pale she seemed in comparison!'""3 And what was the point of a world's fair if not to impress with its lavish displays of technology, prosperity, and

progress? Like museums and department stores, fairs were one of the institu-

tions that formed part and parcel of the "exhibitionary complex." As Tony Bennett argues, in the nineteenth century these institutions became im-

portant sites for inscribing and broadcasting messages of power." Much of the literature on world's fairs is devoted precisely to decoding the "cultural meanings" or "ideological coherence" behind this phenomenon. As Robert Rydell and others have noted, the most prominent world's fairs of this period in the United States and western Europe celebrated and pro- moted the supremacy of capitalism, liberal democracy, colonialism, as well as white racial supremacy. The world powers used the vehicle of the fair to confirm and extend authority over the colonized or domestically oppressed by popularizing hegemonic paradigms.32 Many world's fairs of this period displayed actual peoples-with the direct input and participation of ethnographers-as well as goods in order to popularize Dar- winian notions of social evolution. Specifically, they endeavored to show the superiority of western man over the eastern oriental and "savage" races."" Indeed it was technological and material progress as displayed at the fairs that "proved" western superiority over the more "backward" peoples of the world. This encoding of relationships between colonizer and colonized has received much attention in the literature on world's fairs. But little work has been done on how eastern Europeans or even Russians fit into the ethnonational hierarchies on display in Paris, Chicago, or elsewhere. To what extent, for example, was Balkan (or east European) backwardness on display and how was it situated within host-country organiza- tions of meaning? Did Balkan peoples perhaps exoticize their own nations in order to market their wares to western publics? Or did east Europeans use these fairs as vehicles for exhibiting an image of their own burgeon- ing progress and material prosperity to the world? And finally, how did east European visitors to the fair perceive their own place in the "sliding scale of humanity" that was represented at Chicago and other such

30. Ibid., 74. 31. Tony Bennett, "The Exhibitionary Complex," in Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley,

and Sherry B. Ortner, eds., Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory (Princeton, 1994), 123.

32. The most prominent scholar in this so-called cultural hegemony school is Robert

Rydell. See Robert Rydell, All the World's a Fair: Visions ofEmpire at American International Ex-

positions, 1876-1916 (Chicago, 1987); Robert Rydell, John Findling, and Kimberly Pelle, eds.,FairAmerica: World's Fairs in the United States (Washington, D.C., 2000); and Robert Ry- dell and Nancy Gwinn, eds., Fair Representations: World's Fairs and the Modern World (Amster- dam, 1994).

33. Rydell, All the World's a Fair, 2-7. Notably, though most seem to agree on the apparent racism operative in the world's fairs, many disagree that the physical layout of the fair encoded such relationships spatially. See, for example, Zeynep (elik, Displaying the Ori- ent: Architecture of lslam at Nineteenth-Century World'sFairs (Berkeley, 1992), 164; and Robert

Muccigrosso, Celebrating the New World: Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893 (Chicago, 1993), 151.



434 Slavic Review

fairs? 34 Such questions raise issues not only about the power implications of western representations of "other" peoples, but also about how east Eu-

ropeans and others were able to "read" these fairs and as a consequence shape their own national participation and display. A growing body of

scholarship explores how world's fairs were read or experienced by those that visited them. In tune with discussions of hegemony, scholars have rec-

ognized that fairs were agents of socialization for their participants, build-

ing (albeit an imperfect) consensus for nationalism, imperialism, capitalism."5 As Bennett maintains, fairs were part of institutional efforts to

"organize a voluntary self-regulating citizenry."36 But as he and others have also argued, fairs were, in addition, a destabilizing and participatory context in which people came to question the world and their own iden-

tities."' Far from just passive receptors of western images of themselves and "others," domestic and foreign visitors at world's fairs often countered or challenged hegemonic visions in various ways. Fairs were a place in which people had to cope with the fluidity of change, and a place in which

they became "subjects" and hence "became modern" themselves.38 And al-

though their stories have yet to be told, visitors from eastern Europe- like Aleko Konstantinov-also participated in pilgrimages to world's fairs. Such pilgrimages could not help but have an effect on individual identities and the ideas that such individuals brought home with them.

The late nineteenth-century world's fairs left lasting impressions on their visitors, however fraught with ambiguities they might have been. The 1889 Paris exposition, for example, was the first spectacle of its kind or scale to be organized for international consumption. The grandeur of the exhibits and particularly its crowning achievement, the Eiffel Tower, left its visitors uniformly astounded. But the exposition also seemed to have both offended and provoked at least a contingent of its foreign visitors. In

part, this was a result of the fair's apparent display of racial hierarchies and

seeming justification of French colonialism. As Zeynep C(elik and others have pointed out, such relationships were encoded in its physical arrangement. The "serious exhibits" of the industrialized nations were at the ex-

position's core, while the periphery was skirted by the ramshackle huts of

34. As noted by Rydell, Denton Snider, a well-known American literary critic at the time of the Chicago fair, dubbed the arrangement of ethnic villages along the Midway the "sliding scale of humanity." Rydell, All the World's a Fair, 65.

35. Most of the literature on world's fairs tends to focus on the hegemonic intent and results of display. A smaller but growing body of work includes the far messier and complex realm of the participant/observer side of the fairs. See, for example, Purbrick, Great Exhibition of 1851; Keith Walden, Becoming Modern in Toronto: The Industrial Exhibition and

the Shaping of a Late Victorian Culture (Toronto, 1997); Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, Mexico at the World's Fairs: Crafting a Modern Nation (Berkeley, 1996); Peter Hoffenberg, An Empire on Dis- play: English, Indian, and Australian Exhibitions from the Crystal Palace to the Great War (Berke- ley, 2001); and Carter Vaughn Findley, "An Ottoman Occidentalist in Europe: Ahmed Mid- hat Meets Madame Gfilnar, 1889," American Historical Review 103, no. 1 (February 1998): 15- 49.

36. Bennett, "The Exhibitionary Complex," 148. 37. Hoffenberg, An Empire on Display, xiv. 38. Findley, "An Ottoman Occidentalist," 17; and Walden, Becoming Modern in Toronto,

334-35.




the "street of nations.""39 This rather disorganized periphery offered

highly demeaning displays of "savage" peoples in their "natural" environ- ment and staged scenes from life in the "Orient." As Timothy Mitchell ar-

gues, the Egyptian exhibit was made "carefully chaotic" by the French- "Frenchmen dressed as Orientals sold perfumes," fifty donkeys were

imported for local color, and even the buildings were dirtied for full effect. Finally, behind the facade of a fake mosque, Egyptian girls danced, and dervishes whirled. According to Mitchell, the overall result was dis-

gusting and highly embarrassing for Egyptian visitors, many of whom

stayed away from their own exhibit.40 Although fairs could inspire curios-

ity, they could also aggravate those who attended and saw themselves or others like them in a distorted state of display.

They were also an opportunity for the west to both impress and be

put on trial by its nonwestern spectators. The Ottoman author, Ahmed Midhat, for example, visited the Paris exposition of 1889 and later published a travelogue describing his impressions of the west. As Carter Find-

ley argues, Midhat was, perhaps surprisingly, not offended by the fair's

tendency to contrast civilized Europe and the "bizarre and picturesque" rest of the world. Midhat, he points out, was as "ready to laugh" at the "savage" peoples as the Europeans were and seemed to take little notice of the "oriental" displays. Instead Ahmed's commentary tends to focus on the details of European progress and, inevitably, the degree to which the em-

pire did not measure up.41 Because the Ottomans fell short in terms of material progress, Midhat relies on a moral-material dichotomy to salvage his national pride. In this he finds solace and sympathy from his unusual travel mate, Madame Gfilnar, a Russian countess. Akin in their marginal- ity, both complain about the moral decay and bankruptcy of the west in relation to the deep spirituality and fervor of their Russian and Ottoman "souls." In the Midhat-Gfilnar exchange, Russian Slavophilism comes into direct contact and finds common ground with occidentalism, both har-

boring deep antipathy toward the west.42 World's fairs were undeniably places where those on - or beyond- the margins of the west had to grap- ple with their place in the world and try to salvage some dignity. It was here that emotional and intellectual resistance to the west as a place and

concept fermented. In Chicago in 1893, even more so than in Paris, the world had to con-

front a formidable vision of prosperity and progress. And the world was indeed impressed. Even western European visitors were apparently aston- ished by the grand scale of the Chicago fair, by far the largest of all nine-

teenth-century fairs with three times the space of the 1889 fair in Paris. One historian called this a "clarifying moment in contemporary history

39. (elik, Displaying the Orient, 18. 40. Timothy Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt (Berkeley, 1988), 1. 41. Findley, "An Ottoman Occidentalist," 38-39. 42. Findley describes occidentalism as a "counter-discourse" that developed in re-

sponse to orientalism and "became an important component of anti-colonial nationalism." Ibid., 17. On the concept of occidentalism, see also James Carrier, ed., Occidentalism: Images of the West (Oxford, 1995).



436 Slavic Review

... it woke up Europeans to the power of the US."43 Chicago, a quintes- sentially American city, was the perfect city for such an event. Historically a frontier town, Chicago had seemingly "lifted itself out of the mud" to

emerge as a dynamic and experimental hub of industry, commerce, and

progress. So much so, in fact, that it tended to make Europeans uneasy, because it made real the possibility that they would have to look to the "barbarians" of the New World as a model.44 But in spite of- or perhaps directly as a result of-their apparent awe, foreign visitors could not help but see the flaws, inconsistencies, and moral questions inherent in Amer- ican society. In essence they too shared a certain brand of Slavophilist- occidentalist ressentiment, which posited the moral and cultural bank-

ruptcy of the New World in the face of its material superiority. And there was nothing like the spectacle of Chicago in 1893 to catalyze such notions.

At first glance, Aleko Konstantinov seems to share this awe and cri-

tique of the New World. In To Chicago and Back Aleko's admiration of western, and especially American, progress is a prominent theme. In great de- tail, Aleko describes how impressed he is from the moment he boards a transatlantic liner. Upon arriving in New York he is awed by the bank

buildings, which "put the European palaces to shame." But without a doubt he is most astounded by the imposing pavilions and exhibits at the

Chicago fair, about which he elaborates at length. In spite of his bedaz- zlement, however, somewhere along the way disillusionment creeps in. His admiration for the American political system and social order begins to be shaken when a Serb he meets tells him about widespread corruption in the United States where "everything and everyone can be bought."4'' He also wearies of the pace of American cities, "the mad motion, of the

railways, ships, and trams . . . and those worried faces . . . those silent lips, already unable to smile. So cold! ... But when will we live?"'• But the cli- max of his disillusionment comes when he visits the Chicago slaughter- houses-a popular tourist destination at the time. The stench of dead

pigs is so putrid and overpowering that Aleko almost throws up several times and nearly loses consciousness. While his friends continue on the tour, he chokes on the "murderous stench," finally yelling, "I'm dying!" His physical and moral revulsion lead him to wonder, "What has brought us to this place?"47 Finally, Aleko comes to a familiar conclusion, that material progress does not bring moral advancement. His moral critique of the United States embraces many aspects of the Chicago fair itself, in-

cluding the indignities that pervaded the representation of certain peoples at the fair. As Rydell has argued, at the Chicago World's Fair, as in Paris in 1889, national-racial hierarchies permeated the organization of exhibits."4 Ethnographers played an important role in the organization

43. Arnold Lewis, An Early Encounter with Tomorrow: Europeans, Chicago's Loop, and the

WVorld's Columbian Exposition (Urbana, 1997), 17. 44. Here Lewis cites Paul de Rousiers, a French economist from this period. Ibid., 16. 45. Konstantinov, "Do Chikago i nazad," 46. 46. Ibid., 95. 47. Ibid., 79. 48. Rydell, All the World's a Fair, 5. Not all historians agree on this point. Muccigrosso,

for example, while concurring that racism was prevalent in the fair's organization and in




and presentation of peoples, including elaborate "instructive" displays in the anthropological building, where a male and female student from Harvard and Radcliffe were displayed as "ideal racial types."49 In the same

building, people from around the world had their heads measured as part of the ongoing gathering of information and popularization of anthro-

pology. Ethnographers were also involved in organizing "ethnic villages" along the mile-long Midway Plaisance. Such "villages" had both a purported educational goal and the aim of providing pure entertainment and

profit for the fair's organizers and participants. Indeed, they were mixed in with such "honky-tonk" attractions as live animal shows and the newly unveiled ferris wheel, with the hopes of appealing to people's tastes for the exotic.5'" For example, the Persian and Egyptian displays featured

scantily dressed women performing the belly dance-popularly known in America as the "hootchy-kootchy." In contrast to the more restrained western exhibits, the nonwestern booths tended to appeal to the senses with their perfumes, spicy foods, and visual display of color and flesh- unlike anything in the western displays.5' They were carnivalesque, a release from the middle-class Victorian morals that pervaded Anglo- American culture. But the displays also conveyed a worrisome message about the bizarre and barbaric essence of "others" in relation to a civilized and advanced western norm. Both the intent behind and multiple read-

ings of such messages are virtually impossible to know for certain. But in Konstantinov's writings, as in those of other commentators, there is a clear sense of indignation in the face of particular ethnic representations.

Interestingly, Aleko seems most offended by the representations of the

Bulgarians' intimate neighbors the Turks at the "Turkish village" on the

Midway. In To Chicago and Back he provides a firsthand account of the de-

meaning activity and displays at the "village" where he and his travel com-

panions have lunch their first day at the fair. There is a certain amount of

irony in the fact that Aleko and his Bulgarian compatriots head straight for the Turkish village when hunger strikes on their first day. After all, though Bulgaria and the Ottoman empire were momentarily enjoying good diplomatic relations, things had been tense since Bulgaria had

gained autonomy a mere twenty-five years earlier. Still, Aleko is not above

enjoying the Turkish food on the Midway, which, after all, probably most

closely resembles Bulgarian fare.52 In the Turkish village Aleko witnesses the spectacle of Americans in fezzes serving food in the Turkish restaurant

(run by Greeks), and a "fool dervish," who twirls for everyone's dining pleasure. Not far away at the bogus Ottoman mosque, two fake Muslims

pray to Allah all day long, standing and then kneeling and bowing with

the displays, also argued that the organization of national exhibits was rather haphazard and that European pavilions were not given privileged positions in relation to nonwestern exhibits. Muccigrosso, Celebrating the New World, 164.

49. Rydell, All the World's a Fair, 57. 50. Ibid., 57-65. 51. Celik, Displaying the Orient, 51. 52. Incidentally, Aleko makes it clear that he hates American food. Konstantinov, "Do

Chikago i nazad," 39.



438 Slavic Review

their "rear ends high in the air."53 Aleko's offense and disgust are pal- pable. But Aleko's interest in the Turkish village is overshadowed early on

by his focus on all things Bulgarian. Above all, Aleko takes a keen interest in the Bulgarian displays at the

fair. In fact, upon arriving at the fair, Aleko and his travel mates head di-

rectly to the Bulgarian pavilion in the fair's "Palace of Manufacturing." This was indeed their plan, which they follow in spite of the allure of the

surrounding pavilions. Aleko is immediately awed by the immensity of the Palace of Manufacturing itself in which, he muses, you could put not only the "entire Plovdiv World's Fair" (1892), but also "all of the inhabitants of

Plovdiv, their possessions and livestock."54 He and his travel mates are

only momentarily led astray when they mistake the Mexican tricolor for their own; same colors, different order. Finally they find the "dark and narrow alley" where the Ottoman pavilion is nestled, along with the tiny Bulgarian diukanche or "kiosk." Significantly, the Bulgarian pavilion isjux- taposed to the Ottoman one, perhaps because the organizers were not sure how to deal with Bulgaria's status as de facto independent, yet still de

jure part of the Ottoman empire. Interestingly, in the American catalogue on the fair, The Book of the Fair, the Bulgarian pavilion is given quite a positive reception, in direct comparison to its Turkish neighbor:

Somewhat in contrast are the exhibits of Turkey and Bulgaria, the former consisting of a single display of oriental rugs, while the latter had fur- nished well selected specimens, not only of her manufacturers but of her

agriculture and her national costumes, those of the peasantry in their gay attire and those of her soldiery and civic officials ... here also are attar of roses, wines, tobaccos, silk, and hand made textiles, including an em- broidered carpet with 500 square feet in area in a single piece.55

This description corroborates Aleko's own, although he is more specific about the prominence of rose oil in the display. As he notes, "the first

thing you see in this shop are two pretty windows displaying attar [distilled oil] of rose." He describes how the pavilion features a map of Bulgaria- for the "curious American women" so they would "know where the rose oil came from.""5" As a Bulgarian produced souvenir catalogue of the pavilion boasts, "An attraction to the lovers of sweet scent is the exhibit of attar of roses in several showcases at one end. ... This is the largest exhibit of the attar of roses ever made.""57 In contrast to the boastful pamphlet and the American catalogue, Aleko's disappointment with Bulgaria's display is im-

mediately clear. For Konstantinov, the pavilion is downright pathetic, and he is deeply

ashamed of Bulgaria's vastly inferior material progress, made visible to all

53. Ibid., 65. 54. Ibid., 58. 55. Hubert Howe Bancroft, Book of the Fair: An Historical and Descriptive Presentation of

the World's Science, Art, and Industry, as Viewed through the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893 (New York, 1893), 1:218-19.

56. Konstantinov, "Do Chikago i nazad," 59. 57. World's Columbia Exposition, Souvenir: Bulgaria, World's Columbia Exposition 1893

(Chicago, 1893), 3-4.




at the fair. Upon seeing the impressive Japanese pavilion, for example, he

points out that the Japanese display only their own products unlike the

Bulgarians who exhibit, "essence of cognac from Bordeaux, bottles from

Prague, and labels from Vienna."58 He is also awestruck by the show of

agricultural production from California and elsewhere. His notion of Bul-

garia as home to the best gardeners in the world, he explains, is now shat- tered, "here at least, I had always thought, no one can outdo us."''59 His humiliation becomes even clearer when he moves on to Bulgaria's only other display at the fair, a small store on the Midway labeled "Bulgarian Curiosities." The Bulgarian Curiosities shop, a hut in Turkish-Moorish

style, is a purely private venture, unlike the official pavilion with its government representative. The shop sells everything from coins, to stamps, folk costumes, and rose oil. As Konstantinov points out, its proprietor was coached on American tastes and the shop appeals-in terms of both in-

ventory and display-to the American thirst for the exotic. This only ag- gravates Aleko's feelings of shame. In fact, Aleko mourns the fact that the

Bulgarian costumes and adornments from the Shoppe region look exactly like those of native Americans. Not only was this bad for business, he suggests, because of consumer confusion, but he is sure that "Americans mis- took us . . . for a South American tribe.""6 The only other nation that seems to have the same type of pitiable presence is Bulgaria's Balkan

neighbor, the Greeks. The Greeks also have a wretched presence at the fair, in Aleko's estimation, since they display little more than a measly se- lection of salt and olives. "Well now the world has seen how advanced you are!" he muses, "A sack of olives!"'' Aleko deals with his shame for Bul-

garia, and the Balkans in general, with his characteristic sarcasm and ironic humor. But unlike Midhat or Gillnar, Aleko does not assert moral or spiritual superiority in relation to the west. Instead he wallows in self- ridicule and embraces the ridiculous.

There on the Midway in the back of the Bulgarian Curiosities shop, Aleko encounters an odd and compelling character. A Bulgarian man sits "Turkish style" (cross-legged) on a chest covered with a kilim rug wearing billowy, baggy Turkish pants (shalvari), a vibrant red sash, and a jaunty black fez.62 Lined up in front of him are little vials filled with tereshe or

geranium oil-a cheap imitation of the prized Bulgarian rose oil.63 Aleko observes as Americans approach him and ask questions that he cannot understand or answer. As the Americans proceed to smell the vials of the

58. Konstantinov, "Do Chikago i nazad," 65. 59. Ibid., 75. 60. Ibid., 77. 61. Ibid. 62. Gano Somov is dressed in a fashion that, even at that time, was rapidly dying out

in Bulgaria in favor of more modern European pants and hats. See Neuburger, The Orient Within, 90.

63. In the 1890s the practice of falsifying rose oil, usually by either mixing it or re- placing it with geranium oil, was widespread. This was harmful to the rose oil industry; since quality could not always be guaranteed, buyers became increasingly wary. See Ivan Irinchev, Georgi Ognenski, and Petiir Delev, Rozoproizvodstvoto v Kazanlu'shkata (Tundzhan- skata) dolina (Sofia, 1994), 75.



440 Slavic Review

low-grade oil, he casually puffs away at his cigarette.64 His name is Gano Somov- or more formally addressed, Bai Gano. An oriental specimen of a Bulgarian served up for American tastes, he would become an emblem

through which Bulgarians would come to understand themselves and, in-

auspiciously, compare themselves to the outside world.

Bai Ganio and the Attar of Rose

Most sources tend to agree that Gano Somov was the primary prototype for Gano Balkanski, that is, Aleko Konstantinov's famous Bai Gano.65 Bai Gano was probably an amalgam of people, and of national or social types. But the use of Gano's name and profession (rose oil merchant) and the obvious similarity in character type prompted Gano Somov to write several letters to Aleko Konstantinov asking for a share of the royalties from his book.66 Not only is the resemblance between the man and the character clear, Aleko introduces Bai Gano in To Chicago and Back with the sarcastic and hypothetical suggestion, "Let us spend some time with Bai Gano traveling around Europe.""7 And indeed the fictional Baf Gano sets off for "Europe" loaded with vials, although this time they contain true rose oil, and not the cheap geranium oil that Gano Somov peddled at the

Bulgarian Curiosities shop. But though Samov was discovered in the New World, it was against the background of "civilized" Europe that Aleko made Bai Gano truly funny for Bulgarians.

Throughout his Bai Gano feuilletons, Konstantinov capitalizes on the contrast between "civilized Europe" and the "oriental" Balkan, or Bulgar- ian type. The various fictionalized Bulgarian intellectuals who narrate the stories were themselves educated in western Europe or Russia, and they tend to be amused, but also deeply humiliated, by Baf Gano and his social foibles, which they witness and retell. As Bai Gano travels from city to city, the stories highlight the contrast between his bumbling, barbaric, and de-

cidedly oriental self, and the refined high European culture that he encounters. Such a contrast would have been far less apparent at the rather

burlesque freak show of the Chicago Midway or even, perhaps, in Amer- ica in general. For the Americans, although technologically advanced, do not always impress Aleko with their social graces. He frequently comments on how Americans spit, put their feet on the table, wear only vests, or en-

gage in other such behaviors that offend his social sensibilities."6 From the

very first feuilleton, or the beginning of the published book, Bai Gano tries but abysmally fails to be "European." Baf Gano's first act is to "don a

64. See Konstantinov's description of this scene in Konstantinov, "Do Chikago i nazad," 61-62.

65. Note that Konstantinov has changed his last name from "Somov" to "Balkanski," the adjectival form of Balkan, which seems indicative of his status as a Balkan -as opposed to just a Bulgarian -prototype.

66. Aleko, who died too young to make considerable money off the book, never obliged. Daskalov, Mezhdu iztoka i zapada, 143-44.

67. Konstantinov, "Do Chikago i nazad," 96. 68. Ibid., 43.




Belgian mantel," through which, as the author sarcastically remarks, "he becomes a true European.""'' Unlike Gano Somov in his fez and shalvari, whose attire was perhaps more true to his nature, Gano Balkanski wears a

European coat and suit. Though his outer, most superficial, layer appears European, his undergarments and accessories are distinctly Balkan. Balkanski wears a Bulgarian kalpak (a brimless sheepskin hat, rather fez- like in appearance) and some Bulgarian undergarments (a woolen anteri-

ika). In addition he carries disagi (or saddlebag-like woolen bags) for his

luggage, which has the overall effect of making him look out of place on the streets of Vienna and Prague. But perhaps the most prominent physical dissimilarity between Bai Gano and the "civilized" Europeans is his

strong bodily odor. As one literary critic later points out, Bai Gano could

easily be identified by his "smell of sweat and garlic." 7" Descriptions of him abound with references to his sweat, his odor, and his haphazard personal hygiene. As the narrator notes in the feuilleton on Bai Gano's exploits in

Prague, "The understanding of cleanliness is not highly developed in Baf

Gano."7• In spite of the fact that he carries vials of one of the most prized floral scents on the planet, he reeks. This olfactory irony provides an im-

portant underlying theme.

Although the book offers few details on Bai Gano's actual trade activ- ities, it is clear that he is a merchant (and most probably a producer) of rose oil, from the legendary '"Valley of the Roses," in the region sur-

rounding Kazanlu1k." Roses have been grown in Bulgaria since ancient times, but by the seventeenth century, production of the famous Rosa damascena-or Damask rose-expanded, mostly to satisfy Ottoman demand for its use in mosques and harems."' In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, production was again expanded, this time in response to

escalating European demand.7" Rose oil merchants were among the so- called conquering Orthodox merchants of the nineteenth century, whose economic success within the confines of the Ottoman empire was part and

parcel of the Bulgarian national revival.75 After liberation in 1877-78, trade in rose oil continued and expanded, particularly after Bulgaria was connected by rail to central and western Europe in 1888 with the so-called Orient Express.7" Until as late as 1905, most Bulgarian rose oil merchants

69. Aleko Konstantinov, "Bai Gano: Neveroiatni razkazi za edin sfvremenen bflga- rin," in Tikhov, ed., Aleko Konstantinov, 1: 109.

70. Petko P. Totev, Aleko Konstantinov: Tvorcheski portreti (Sofia, 1977), 39. 71. Konstantinov, "Baf Gano," 145. 72. The Valley of the Roses on the south side of the Balkan Mountain range has the

perfect climate to support the highly fragrant Rosa damascena- the primary variety of roses

produced in Bulgaria. 73. Khristo Vakarelski, Etnografiia na Bilgariia (Sofia, 1974), 391. The rose-or in

Turkish (derived from Arabic) gi/l-has historically been a prized flower in the Middle East, where fragrance was woven into life, death, prayer, hospitality, and cleanliness in a way it never was in premodern Europe. Ibid., 124.

74. Irinchev, Ognenski, and Delev, Rozoproizvodstvoto v Kazanlishkata, 68-75. 75. Kosio Zarev, Istoriia na rozoproizvodstvo v Bilgariia (Plovdiv, 1996), 18. For the most

thorough discussion of the revival and its historiography, see Rumen Daskalov, The Mak- ing of a Nation in the Balkans: Historiography of the Bulgarian Revival (Budapest, 2004).

76. Irinchev, Ognenski, and Delev, Rozoproizvodstvoto v kazanllshkata, 75.



442 Slavic Review

were themselves small-scale producers, with their own small distilleries for

producing rose oil. Bai Gano carries traditionally packaged vials of Bulgarian rose oil in

unknown quantities tucked into hidden pockets of his clothes and saddle

bags. So protective is he of his cache that he does not even allow the door- men in Vienna to carry his bags for fear they will break the vials contain-

ing his precious rose oil. As he tells his highly embarrassed and amused travel mate, "This is rose oil, how could I give it to them?" He even refuses to put it in the hotel safe, "You never know about people, they could steal

your rose oil and kill you somewhere.""77 In fact, in the book Bai Gano never actually smells or rarely allows others to smell his wares. Signifi- cantly, one time when he does offer up the rose oil for a refined Czech woman to smell, all she is able to smell is the stench of sweat and fish on his hand. During his days in Prague he actually refuses to allow the Bul-

garian students who gather in the Prague cafe Narodny Kavarna to see his rose oil even as he brags about it, "I brought to your Prague a little giulova maslo [rose oil]." Yet when one student says, "Let's see it," he replies, "Oil is oil-it's not for you."78 The aroma of Bai Gano's rose oil is a closely guarded secret, unlike his readily apparent bodily scent. The essence of rose, it seems, is for sale, but not for a Bulgarian's personal use. The ab- sence of the scent of rose in the story is perhaps emblematic of its ultimate

destiny. This pure, fragrant, and natural Bulgarian treasure is bottled and sold abroad to be used in European soap and perfume. Soaps disguise or

strip away smells; they clean and homogenize. Even in perfumes, rose oil was bound to be mixed, to be diluted and changed-deprived of its Bul-

garian essence. And it is sold to the "clean" Europeans who raise (and hold) their noses at the sight and smell of Bai Gano.

Coincidentally, the 1890s roughly mark the beginning of the western obsession with soap and perfume, both important fetish commodities of the capitalist world."7 By the late nineteenth century, soap became funda- mental to the British economy and central to British middle-class val- ues-the cult of domesticity, the virtues of cleanliness and godliness, and even the civilizing mission abroad (washing the savage).s8 A vanguard el- ement of the commodity culture in Britain, soap was, of course, displayed by the British with a flourish at all of the world's fairs.8• During this period,

77. Konstantinov, "Baf Gano," 112. 78. Ibid., 144. 79. The Europeans themselves were relative latecomers to the use of soap and regu-

lar bathing. The eastern Mediterranean and much of the Muslim world used olive oil- based soaps for centuries prior to the nineteenth. Their history of public baths and ritual bathing predated (and were distinct from) the modern concepts of European "hygiene" that Konstantinov alludes to. On the soap industry, see, for example, Beshara Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants inJabal Nablus, 1700-1900 (Berkeley, 1995), chap. 5.

80. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Con- test (New York, 1995), 208.

81. Soap was displayed as early as 1851 at the Crystal Palace exhibition in London and in all subsequent nineteenth-century exhibits as a material symbol of British prosperity, well-being, and cleanliness. See Hoffenberg, An Empire on Display, 101.




frequent bathing began to become standard among the middle classes in the United States and in many parts of Europe and indeed tended to be used as a mark of distinction between classes or races. At the same time deodorization became a critical part of national integration (however incomplete it may have been); erasing smell and conforming to an "olfactory norm" was both about being modern and becoming a national cit- izen.82 As one historian of smell notes, it was also a time in which "olfac-

tory intolerance" (for example, of Jews and prostitutes, among others) became widespread.83 In Bulgaria this process was only beginning. In the late nineteenth century the majority of the population did not often use

soap, and according to one prominent Bulgarian ethnographer, "baths were not held in high esteem."84 Certainly, many Europeanized Bulgarian elites were bathing and using soap and perfumes in a European fashion. But as Bai Gano illustrates, the average Bulgarian had not necessarily adopted such practices and, to the European nose, they were still distin-

guishable by smell. Not surprisingly, smell had long been a European trope on Balkan backwardness. For example, in an 1835 British description of the Bulgarian rayah (peasant), the author claims that the Bulgar- ian is "redolent of garlic and raki" and "like the negro, diffuses around him a peculiar aromatic odour," presumably the result of "infrequent changes of underwear."'•5 In contrast, another nineteenth-century British source distinguishes Bulgarian "cleanliness" from "the filth of the Turks," attributing the difference to the influence of Christianity and Islam, re-

spectively."6 One wonders, of course, whether such a contrast is made on

moral-religious grounds rather than being based on actual bathing practices, about which we know very little. At any rate, hygiene and odor were

part and parcel of the European encounter with the world--especially by the nineteenth century. By extension the world also encountered Europe by way of contrasting aromas.

In that sense Bai Gano involved the stinky Bulgarian encountering the clean and perfumed European, in the process of selling him part of the means to become that way. While the British led the revolution in soap, the French were in the vanguard of perfume manufacturing. By the 1890s Garnier and other French perfumers were traveling to Bulgaria in search of the Rosa damascena, which they imported and used in their prize scents."7 Unfortunately, Bulgaria was unable to thoroughly capitalize on the demand for its unique rose oil. For one thing, Bulgarians never fully embraced perfume or soap manufacturing, instead mostly selling their

82. Annick Le Guerer, Scent: The Essential and Mysterious Powers of Smell (New York, 1994), 33.

83. Ibid., 30-31. 84. Vakarelski, Etnografiia na Bulgariia, 441. 85. Richard Burgess, Greece and the Levant, orDiary ofa Summer'sExcursion, 1834 (Lon-

don, 1835), 7. 86. Stanislas Graham Bower St. Clair and Charles Brophy, A Residence in Bulgaria, or

Notes on the Resources and Administration of Turkey (London, 1869), 283. 87. Although the use of synthetic scents and stabilizers was ultimately detrimental to

the market value of Bulgarian rose oil, natural essences would always find their place in the modern day alchemy of perfume making.



444 Slavic Review

raw rose oil (or attar of rose) to European manufacturers. In addition they did not manage to systematize their marketing or distribution. Bai Gano seemed to epitomize this inability. As Baf Gano eventually confesses to one of the Bulgarian students he meets in Prague, "business is not going well among the Europeans .... I travel the world with this damned rose oil. ... There was a time when you said Bulgarian oil and it was like bees to honey, and now you would not believe! You go into a soap manufac- turer . .. they ask for a free sample and then don't buy."88 In spite of Bai Gano's failures, there was in fact an increase in rose oil production and ex-

port during this period that owed much to the Bulgarian presence at the world's fairs. Since the second half of the nineteenth century, Bulgarian rose oil producers and merchants had made the rounds of world's fairs, winning gold medals for their wares in Vienna (1873) and Philadelphia (1876). In 1889, nineteen different kinds of Bulgarian rose oil were re-

portedly displayed at the Paris exposition."9 Rose oil was prominently featured in Prague (1891), Plovdiv (1892), Chicago (1893), St. Louis (1904), and every fair that the Bulgarians attended in the ensuing years. Chicago was the first fair in which the government officially participated in organizing the Bulgarian pavilion, but it was by no means the last."" In fact the

Bulgarians put on a rather elaborate show at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. In addition to the display of rose oil and other Bulgarian products, there were Bulgarian displays on fine arts, liberal arts, agriculture, indus-

try, geography, politics, and so on.t' It is more than likely that the ramp- ing up of the Bulgarian display had much to do with the publication in 1894 of To Chicago and Back with its unfavorable assessment of the Bulgar- ian pavilions. The world's fairs were a place for Bulgarians to present themselves and their rose oil to world, even as they discovered themselves with the world as a backdrop.

In one of Aleko's first feuilletons about Bai Gano, the character travels to the Prague World's Fair (1891) with a whole train full of Bulgarians. This episode fictionalizes Aleko's real trip to Prague with all 160 members of Vesela Bfilgariia aboard a Bulgarian train commissioned just for the event. This "Bulgarian Train" initially invokes pride in the narrator, one of Baf Gano's fictional travel mates. As he remarks, "How proud I was to go to the exhibit on our own train. Let the Europeans see that Bulgaria does not sleep."2" The narrator eventually grows embarrassed, however, by the fact that the electric lights do not work and the Bulgarian passengers hang up their laundry in and about the train. When the train finally arrives in Prague to a lovely welcoming committee of enthusiastic pan-Slavic Czechs, the narrator comments that the "white and yellow" of the laundry are displayed instead of the Bulgarian tricolor flag. For his part, Bai Gano is up to his usual embarrassing antics, sneaking into the first-class cabin

88. Konstantinov, "Bai Gano," 161. 89. Zarev, Istoriia na rozoproizvodstvo, 204. 90. T. Kfinchev, Mostrenitepanairi (Sofia, 1928), 6. 91. Bulgaria at the Universal Exposition: Saint Louis 1904: Official Catalogue (n.p., n.d.),

1-20. 92. Konstantinov, "Bai Gano," 41.




and chugging down the spirits of the baffled passengers there. But as one recent analysis asserts, "The whole train travels with the spirit of Baiganov- shtinata [the essence of Bai Gano]. Bai Gano is simply the biggest of the Baf Ganos.""93 It was only two years after Aleko's real journey to the Prague fair that he traveled to Chicago, met Gano Somov, invented Bai Gano, and then sent him back in time to Prague to retrace Aleko's own footsteps. Aleko wanted all of Bulgaria to encounter Europe as he had; to laugh at themselves and their own shortcomings. He wanted them to see themselves reflected in the European mirror, smell themselves with a Euro-

pean nose, and to laugh, but perhaps also to learn. In 1897 Aleko wrote a feuilleton speculating on the nature of the Bul-

garian display at the next World's Exposition in Paris in 1900. The piece takes the form of a hypothetical letter to the Bulgarian commission organizing Bulgaria's pavilions for the fair. In a heavily sarcastic tone, Aleko

suggests that the French will want to see something "purely Bulgarian" at the fair and therefore the commission should do its best to give the "truest

representation." He proposes a lengthy list of highly unflattering possibil- ities for exhibits at the fair, including a display on corrupt elections, a political assassination, and a staged representation of a Bulgarian village, complete with "patriotic smells."114 Rose oil, in fact, is not mentioned. In- stead Aleko favors presenting the stench of corruption and village life over the false representations he has witnessed at past fairs-however

pathetic they might have been. His seeming bitterness and harsh invec- tive, though, finally give way to tender pity and tormented ambivalence for the homeland he clearly loves: "Bulgaria, my dear motherland, in what kind of tricked-out costume will they present you at the Paris World's Ex-

position? And will your offspring recognize you? Oh my poor, sweet,

simple, sly and clever, pious and atheist, tormented and intimidated but brave Bulgaria."'95

Sadly, Aleko did not live to see the Bulgarian exhibit at the Paris World's Exposition of 1900. He was killed by a bullet that was meant for his companion (a prominent Bulgarian lawyer) on 11 May 1897. They were traveling within Bulgaria on a train, surrounded by Aleko's favorite scent-the smell of the rails. In a museum in Svishtov (Aleko's home-

town) one can still find his snow-white kravat (now somewhat yellowed) colored by a spot of blood.

93. Mikhail Nedelchev, "Dvumodelnostta na 'Baf Gano,'" in Anchev, Stranitsi za Aleko Konstantinov, 168.

94. Aleko Konstantinov, "Skromna lepta na obshta zhertveniia," in Katskova, ed., Aleko Konstantinov: Suichineniia, 2:177.

95. Ibid.



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To Chicago and Back: Aleko Konstantinov, Rose Oil, and the Smell of Modernity