Abstract

KARAGEORGOU, Christina. A retoric of lucidity: poetry as art memory. Acta poét [online]. 2013, vol.34, n.1, pp.177-207. ISSN 2448-735X.

This essay explores the temporal dimension of lyric discourse from the point of view of mnemonics, an activity that for centuries was conceived as the "art of memory", and conveyed a way of relating to and possessing past stories. Time in lyric poetry possesses a dimension of simultaneity, derived from the art of memory, whose particular view on historiography and usage of the archive poetry inherits. Lyric poetry finds its foundations in the instant, vis à vis narrative prose and its deep influence on the definition of memory and the evaluation of what is memorable. This is what Noni Benefas demonstrates in her book Cartografía ardiente (Fiery Cartography, 1995), a book that constitutes the base for the present reflection on time, memory and poetry. Benegas establishes a relation between word, instant, and writing, and she departs from it in an effort to map out recollection either of experience or of art. Taking to its ultimate consequences the lessons of the art of memory, as illumination of the word meaning through a tumultuous unfolding of a simultaneous temporality, Benegas captures life and art not through the complex efficiency of syntax, but in the productive pinnacle of the instant and its poetical counterpart, the word.

Keywords : Benegas; art of memory; poetical discourse.