ABSTRACT
The participants in the Central Asian regional conference on literary translation, which was held in the city of Frunze [present-day Bishkek, capital of Kyrgystan], listened to a manaschy, a storyteller of the Kyrgyz folk epos Manas. An old Kyrgyz with a kind and intelligent face wearing shaded glasses and two honorific ribbons on his chest chanted a passage from the great poem, which is as powerful and immortal as the Iliad. Men of letters from six Soviet republics, as well as from Moscow, and representatives of the intelligentsia of seven socialist countries all listened to him, each in his own way.
