Summary
In "I Live in Berkovitsa," the folk poet tells of his life in this small but beautiful mountain town. of his service as chairman of the district court, of the people he befriended, of the walks through the beautiful mountain scenery that helped restore his shaky health from the turbulent life in the then malarial Ruschuk, where he served in the Governorate as a "junior clerk for special orders." e On days free from work - the poet writes in these memories - I made joyful outings on horseback with a young group of Berkovci, with the doctor and the governor through the dense beech forests that cover the skirts and sides of the Stara Planina, intoxicated by the sound of the crystal mountain streams, by the breath of the grasses and flowers, by my youth and by everything, everything". .. *"Kom reminds me, however, of a crime - Vazov continues further - that we committed with the district governor. It still haunts my soul and now I will confess it (A. T. - Vazov wrote this memory 31 years after the event, if we judge by the date placed under this memory, published in the newspaper "Speech"). We found three beams set on Kom, which formed a kind of narrow high pyramid, built with stones and supported by transverse trees. We wondered what this thing was. A shepherd told us that Serbs had placed it as a sign on the border between Serbia and Bulgaria... And, overcome with patriotic indignation, we overturned the unfortunate wooden pyramid through the guards. A few days later, a Russian topographic officer told the governor that some mischievous people had pushed the trigonometric sign on the Kom! In the novel "New Land", Part III, Chapter VIII ("The Pyramid") Vazov tells of this "crime", but attributes it to Dikiy Barin, an image that he also uses in the humorous story "Mitrofan and Dormidolsky" in the person of Dormidolsky. The prototype of both characters is the judge Ivan Stoyanov, called "Grandpa Ivan" by the Berkovitsa residents, with whom Vazov lives in the house of Zlatish Hasan.
