Romano Bilenchi's Poetics of an Ethics of Memory

Abstract

The defining characteristic of the fictional writings of Romano Bilenchi is the depiction of critical life events that determine and condition subsequent decisions as those individual choices interact with grand historical tendencies. The examination of memory, in Bilenchi's way of viewing things, allows the creative artist to intervene in the present in a way that would give a direction to history. Literary art is not autonomous of its historical context, but heteronomous to it. For Bilenchi, the writer who makes sense of the past is society's 'primary historian' and, therefore, the dialectical counterpart of the journalist, whose task is to record the present, and the politician, who must programme the future. By sharing responsibility in this way, the writer gains social relevance and incisiveness.

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