Non-words for the remembered & unremembered violence of Bulgarian labor camps by Valentin Kalinov

the Bulgarian philosopher Valentin Kalinov reflects on the remembrance of atrocities, on what is spoken and what is unspoken between family and friends, on the repeated interjections that pepper our language about an unresolved past — interjections like « ah », « oh », « eh ». (Kalinov’s essay, accordingly, has its own eerie rhythm of repetition.) Ah, oh, eh and the like, Kalinov observes, are paradoxical sounds:

^{'By means of interjections, people try to add something else to the main thing they are saying, something that cannot be said, something for which there is no place in language, something the words fail to name — an unknown joy, a hidden desire, a long-held pain. Interjections burst into language to evoke something beyond it — something that can only be shown in the very formlessness of the spoken interjection. Ah, these little non-words! They are the unformed stones in the human garden, thrown in all directions — without direction — between the crocus beds of language'}

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