José Lezama Lima: A Hammock Between the Peremptory and the Accidental
Lezama Lima’s assertion of poetic reason sheds light on the translation strategy which underlies the emergence of varying knowledge structures. Poetic reason, as opposed to mimetic logic of representation, aims to reestablish a non-antagonistic and non-hierarchical vision of the components of metaphors. Hispanic America appears as a place entirely modeled on the most unexpected of associations, as found in the original connections between the domestic and the foreign. From the analogy between poetic reason and translation strategy, a major epistemological consequence emerges, as stated by Henri Meschonnic–we must translate to understand, and not understand to translate.