Una poética de la memoria y el olvido en Traiciones de la memoria y El olvido que seremos de Héctor Abad Faciolince

Abstract

While memories are intertwined in the construction of a life story, it is forgetting that defines the contours of our existence, differentiating happiness from sadness, the important from the superfluous. In his works “Betrayals of memory” (2009) and Oblivion. A Memoir (2006), the Colombian writer Hector Abad Faciolince reflects on the role of memory and forgetting in autobiographical writing marked by death, grief and reconciliation. The memory-forgetting dialectic is projected with all its weaknesses, deceit, inventions, complexities and needs in texts that connect narrative with the essay, certainty with invention, and fictionalized autobiography with the manifest of memory. In the end, it is writing that remains as the force that rescues memories from disappearance, which brings the individual to closeness with the collective, in short, the force that expresses the virtues of forgetfulness and the tricks of memory.