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Paper short abstract

Interpreting K. Kassabova’s Balkan tetralogy, I focus on the concept of ‘deep implicacy’, the claim that humans are intertwined with the landscape, plants and animals, as well as on the narrative's ability to transform the earthly into a personal experience and the local into a cosmic one.

Paper long abstract

The paper interprets the Balkan tetralogy (Border, To the Lake, Elixir and Anima) by author Kapka Kassabova through the lens of the concept of “deep implicacy” by philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva and Amy Shuman's insights on storytelling as a means of reshaping collective memory and challenging anthropocentric knowledge.

Kassabova's writing blends ethnographic and literary elements, merging travelogues with existential dramas. Her rewritten stories, told in various languages, are always overshadowed by the themes of war and peace, reflecting the global experiences of marginalized regions and minority communities. She is both a researcher and an insider rooted in the region and in the global migrant flows, while illuminating the fragile coexistence of different peoples, languages, and religions. Recounting embodied knowledge of seasonal rhythms and societal changes, Kassabova discovers the intersections of human and natural history, successful examples of adaptations and violent interventions, mutations and mimicry.

The significance of her writing lies in how she relates the fears and hopes of Balkan villagers to the global human condition, transforming a paradigmatic European periphery, “a forested Berlin Wall,” into a center. The scattered highland communities are positioned at this center not through mass migration to European cities but by their precious knowledge of resilience and ability to survive in the most difficult circumstances and conditions. As true advocates of green philosophy and as practitioners of self-healing, they offer lessons on how to restore our human essence, encouraging “close encounters with the living that exist within us and all around us.”