On the 14th of November 2024 I had the honour to give the opening talk
"The eclipse, short circuit and hunt. Thought-images of the remembering of the uncovered past"
at the conference "Root Cause: Comparative Studies in Literature and Translation" in Vilnius, part of the "2024: the Year of Estonian Literature in Lithuania".
The talk focused on addressing the buried past in literature, reflecting on a variety of thought-images related to the uncovered past.
Starting with Walter Benjamin’s archaeology metaphors from “Excavating and remembering” and his angel of history from the “Theses on the Philosophy of History” the talk continues examining other literary examples of thought-images for remembering.
Accordingly, Christa Wolf’s elaborations on Benjamin’s angel of history and the image of falling through the layers of past was discussed. Also, the paper analyzed Georgi Gospodinov’s image of a Minotaur and Ene Mihkelson’s image of Ahasver (the wandering jew) as metaphors for the one who remembers.
Ene Mihkelson has also compared the one who remembers with the work of a paleontologist and a hunter. Remembering in her novels is often a result of ‘short circuit’.
The recording of the talk can be found:
"Root Cause: Comparative Studies in Literature and Translation" conference organising partners were Lithuanian Association of Literary Translators, Lithuanian Comparative Literature Association, Vilnius UNESCO City of Literature. Conference was sponsored by Lithuanian Council for Culture.
For conference programme and abstract see Vilnius University Faculty of Philology or Vilnius UNESCO City of Literature.