Walter Benjamin and the Storyteller: recreation of the short story as a critical genre

Abstract

Nicolai Leskov lived and wrote at the glorious time of the nineteen-century’s Russian roman; he was a contemporary of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. But in his essay about the author, Walter Benjamin compares him to the archaic figure of the Storyteller. The origins of that figure are pre-modern and are connected with oral tradition and traditional transmission of experience (Erfahrung), which are lost in modern world. So, he places Leskov in the archaic past of the oral tradition. The anachronism is not absurd: the Russian Storyteller uses traditional and popular forms like fairy tales. But the position of Benjamin is not nostalgic or conservative. Reflecting on  Lescov’s short stories, he intends to create a new genre, radically modern, with the ruins of the storytelling art. He explores the reflexive productivity of the traditional tale not only as a critic but also as a fictionist.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22409/gragoata.2017n43a934.