Abstract
En muchos de sus escritos, sobre todo en los de carácter más autobiográfico, Walter Benjamin ejercita toda una poética del recuerdo y de la memoria en donde la sensibilidad en todas sus dimensiones cobra un papel determinante. Benjamin evoca y rememora aspectos puntuales y aparentemente secundarios o meramente subjetivos e incidentales; y en el modo de hacerlo no atiende a los cauces dominantes de la visibilidad y el concepto; sino que rescata la imagen o la palabra fugaz o imaginada, y todo un océano de ruidos, sonidos, aromas y sabores. En este ejercicio se reconoce la influencia de los maestros franceses que estudió y tradujo (Baudelaire, Proust). El ejercicio de esta poética del recuerdo afincada en una sensibilidad plural y esquiva y sus posibles influencias apela a una imprescindible congruencia, a veces malograda, con la noción benjaminiana de la historia y sus implicaciones críticas y políticas. Benjamin aporta como pocos pensadores, los elementos para salvar una memoria de lo que, como un aroma, nos asalta de un fogonazo pero casi, por su aparente insignificancia, apenas nos atrevemos a recordar como crónica sustantiva de lo que hemos sido y de lo que somos.Palabras clave: memoria, autobiografía, rememoración, sensibilidad, sentidos, poética del recuerdo, filosofía de la historia, teoría crítica.
Abstract: In many of his writings, particularly those of a more autobiographical character, Benjamin deploys a whole poetics of remembrance and of memory, a poetics in which sensitivity, in all of its dimensions, plays a crucial role. Benjamin evokes and recalls particular and apparently unimportant details, merely subjective and incidental ones; and in doing so, he does not address the usually prevailing ways of visibility and of concept, but he rescues instead the forgotten or fantasized image or word, along with a whole realm of noises, sounds, scents and flavours. In such a practice, the influence of the French masters whose works Benjamin studied and translated (such as Baudelaire or Proust) has been clearly traced. The practice of this poetics of remembrance, rooted in a pluralistic and elusive sensitivity, with all its diverse possible sources of influence, demands an indispensable and required congruence with Benjamin‟s own conception of history and with its critical and political implications, though this coherency sometimes remains unattained. Benjamin, in a way few other thinkers did, provides us with the necessary tools for preserving the memory of that which, like a fugitive scent, strikes us like a sudden flash, but which, because of its apparently lack of significance, we would scarcely dare to remember as a substantial part of the chronicle of what we are and of what we used to be.Keywords: memory, autobiography, remembrance, sensitivity, senses, poetics of memory, philosophy of history, critical theory.
Abstract: In many of his writings, particularly those of a more autobiographical character, Benjamin deploys a whole poetics of remembrance and of memory, a poetics in which sensitivity, in all of its dimensions, plays a crucial role. Benjamin evokes and recalls particular and apparently unimportant details, merely subjective and incidental ones; and in doing so, he does not address the usually prevailing ways of visibility and of concept, but he rescues instead the forgotten or fantasized image or word, along with a whole realm of noises, sounds, scents and flavours. In such a practice, the influence of the French masters whose works Benjamin studied and translated (such as Baudelaire or Proust) has been clearly traced. The practice of this poetics of remembrance, rooted in a pluralistic and elusive sensitivity, with all its diverse possible sources of influence, demands an indispensable and required congruence with Benjamin‟s own conception of history and with its critical and political implications, though this coherency sometimes remains unattained. Benjamin, in a way few other thinkers did, provides us with the necessary tools for preserving the memory of that which, like a fugitive scent, strikes us like a sudden flash, but which, because of its apparently lack of significance, we would scarcely dare to remember as a substantial part of the chronicle of what we are and of what we used to be.Keywords: memory, autobiography, remembrance, sensitivity, senses, poetics of memory, philosophy of history, critical theory.