What Ends is What Stays: Tradition at Stake, Essay Put in Check

Abstract

This essay sheds light on Lezama Lima’s careful assessment of the Latin American tradition. Firstly, it sets itself apart from Alejo Carpentier’s cultural translation. Next, it relates tradition and historicity by analyzing T.S. Eliot and Ernst Robert Curtius, while it concentrates on the problem of historical experience by resorting to emulation as a rhetoric device. Last, but not least, these considerations assess the historical view by poetry as their central issue. They inspire, thus, other historiographical resources by means of their critique of historicism and their emphasis on recognition.