Войната като език, паметта като съпротива. Конфликтната реторика в „Преселението“ на Боян Биолчев
War as Language, Memory as Resistance: Conflict Rhetoric in Boyan Biolchev’s The Resettlement

Summary/Abstract: The article explores how Boyan Biolchev’s novella The Resettlement interprets the historical trauma related to the ethnic cleansing and refugee displacement following the Second Balkan War of 1913. The analysis focuses on the symbolism of the lost home, violated identity, and the voiceless suffering of the ordinary person caught in the historical catastrophes of the Balkans. Special attention is given to the way in which the literary text transforms political violence into a universal narrative of human vulnerability, using imagery reminiscent of biblical and mythological motifs. Central characters – the history teacher, the mentally broken Zlatina, the deserter Ivan, and the unnamed child narrator – are examined as bearers of moral insight and traumatic experience. The novella is interpreted as an aesthetic and ethical act of resistance against forgetting, one that restores the dignity of history’s silent witnesses. The narrative’s use of biblical imagery (the olive grove, the Last Supper, the “living lights”) is also analyzed as a means of spiritually reinterpreting suffering. Ultimately, the text affirms literature as a vehicle for preserving cultural memory and as a way of speaking the unspeakable, confronting historical guilt, and preserving humanity in inhuman times.

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