Esercizi d'immaginazione. Note su Arendt e la letteratura

Abstract

The aim of this article is to highlight the importance of Arendt's address on accepting the Lessing Prize of the Free City of Hamburg (1959); it enables us to follow some of her “trains of thought,” amongst them: the role of remembrance as a salvation from the ruins of time, especially once faith in tradition and in the indestructible character of the world has been lost; and secondly the importance of literature, particularly poetry, once she has underlined the limitations of the social sciences in dealing with past and present events. In Arendt work literary texts are treated as mediations for the imagination and in the very fact of preferring the company of narrators and poets we can read her confidence that imagination eventually will catch a glimpse "of the always frightening light of truth.” [ita]