Hans Blumenberg. Fuentes, corrientes, icebergs, edición de Ulrich von Bülow y Dorit Krusche, traducción de Griselda Mársico. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2016, 342 páginas

Abstract

Blumenberg—the name of the metaphorphologist itself would also enclose or contain a metaphor (just as the mountain [Berg] encloses or contains veins of minerals). It would be more accurate to say: the name does not enclose or contain any metaphor, insofar as this metaphor is not hidden within its core or interior, nor does it require excavation in order to be extracted or brought to light. Rather, it is inscribed visibly, on the very surface of the name, at ground level, upon the slope or relief of the aforementioned mountain. A metaphor, we said? Perhaps less than a metaphor; barely an image or a tableau; in any case, a tableau worthy of mention: a mountain of flowers [blumen], a flowery or blossoming mountain. A striking image, whether it is of an improbable mountain clad or covered in flowers (improbable because another type of vegetation usually thrives in the cold air of the summits), or a mountain of flowers in the figurative sense, that is, a metaphor to express or illustrate a gathering, an accumulation, a heap of flowers. In the case of Blumenberg, and judging by his working methodology (which we will discuss in greater detail below), the flowers that accumulate to form a heap or a mountain could be, precisely, the flowers of rhetoric—the metaphors themselves, the tropes that figurative discourse causes to blossom.