The PRÁVEDNIKI:

MYTH, RELIGION AND POLITICS IN THE READING OF WALTER BENJAMIN

Abstract

This article aims to identify how the myth influenced Walter Benjamin in the reading of the short stories “Kótin, o provedor, e Platonida”, “A sentinela”, “O artista dos topetes” e “O peregrino encantado”, by Nikolai Leskov. Apprehended from the perspective of the fair ones as an analytical category, according to theoretical assumptions of Georg Lukács, Pierre Bouretz, Michael Löwy and Gershon Scholem, it is conjectured that the redemption and the Lukacsian type, alluding to the messianism and the Marxist theory, respectively, permeated the Benjaminian horizon in interpretation of these accounts' protagonists, endorsing the neo-romantic principles to rescue the ethos of pre-capitalist societies. From the merger between political utopia and theological tradition, it is concluded that the advent of the myth contributed to Benjamin restoring value to men who, facing dilemmas of a secular order, were redeemed by God. In the broadest sense of this salvation, the reconciliation of the fair ones reaches a political-ideological content, when redemption takes shape as a collective event in the present of History