Narraciones del nazismo: "El viajero de Agartha" de Abel Posse y "Les bienveillantes" de Jonathan Littell entre la historia y el mito

Abstract

This comparative study of "El viajero de Agartha" by Abel Posse (1989) and "Les Bienveillantes" [published as “The Kindly Ones”] by Jonathan Littell (Prix Goncourt 2006) is an excuse to open – from the reader's point of view – a consideration of different strategies in the contemporary historical novel in the face of the burden of the past and its buried ghosts. The ancient opposition between the history (true narration) and myth (ambiguous story), deeply rooted in the language and perception, turns out to be rather illusory in the light of recent studies on the functioning of human and social memory, and on the mechanisms of "construction" of memories – more and more obvious in the case of the current generation of Postmemory which accedes the palimpsest of the past in its affective dimension.