Abstract
We need history because we need rest. A pause to rest the conscience, so that the possibility of a conscience remains - not just the seat of thought, but of practical reason, giving full scope for action. To save the past, to save time from the frenzy of the present : poets devote themselves to this task with precision. To do this, they have to work to weaken themselves, to make themselves idle, to render ineffective that jeopardizing of temporality that ransacks experience and scorns childhood. " Astonish the catastrophe ", as Victor Hugo put it, or, with Walter Benjamin, put ourselves in the way of this slow catastrophe to come, which is more a continuation than a sudden rupture.
