Memorie rivisitate nella poesia di Ana Luísa Amaral

Abstract

With the metaphor of the visiting rooms, Portuguese poet Ana Luísa Amaral presents a conception of memory and revisitation, both personal and cultural, that reduces the distance between lived life and memory, whether individual or collective, embracing the coexistence and overlap of different times. In both realms—personal and cultural—a process takes place that we can define, borrowing the poet's own terms, as one of inversion or reversal. Cultural, poetic, or historiographic revisitation is not merely a retelling of what is already known but becomes a rewriting that places the act of remembering within an intimate dimension, overturning traditional perspectives on memory. This reversal of traditional memory opens the way to a more inclusive cultural and historiographic vision, one that intertwines individual experiences with collective memory. The metaphor of the visiting rooms effectively captures the complexity of this approach, rooted in a balance between ethics, freedom, and intimacy in the act of remembering.