Poetics of the memory: Walter Benjamin and George Steiner
The present study draws a succint comparison between the autobiographic writings of Walter Benjamin, Berlin childhood around 1900, and George Steiner, Errata. An examined life. Both books are the result of what their authors’ memory manages to coagulate from their biographic experience; even more, their approach is morphologically quite similar. Nevertheless, the results are remarkably different: Benjamin’s is a rich poematic prose, or even better an ample poem, while Steiner’s is a narrative examination of the main topics of his intellectual life. Which proves that there are different types of poetics of memory, depending on how one recollects the world – as a poem or as a story.
Keywords: Walter Benjamin, George Steiner, autobiography, poetics of the memory
1.[1] George Steiner, Errata. O autobiografie, Bucureşti, Humanitas, 2008.
2.[1] Walter Benjamin, Copilărie berlineză la 1900, Bucureşti, Humanitas, 2010.
3.[1] George Steiner, Errata…., pp. 119-120.
4.[1] idem, p. 222.
5.[1] Theodor W. Adorno, Im Schatten junger Mädchenblüte, în Noten zur Literatur, Gesammelte Schriften I 1, Frankfurt pe Main, 1974, p.670; apud Peter Szondi, Speranţa în trecut. Despre Walter Benjamin, prefaţă la Walter Benjamin, op. cit., p. 7.
6.[1] George Steiner, Errata…, pp. 170-172.
7.[1] George Steiner, After Babel. Aspects of language and translation, Oxford Universitw Press, Oxford – New York, 1992, p. XIV.
