Vivir es escribir el poema que somos

Ficciones literarias, sentido e identidad

Abstract

This article examines the role of literary fiction in the constitution of meaning and personal identity. It starts from a central question in the philosophical and literary tradition: Why do we, as human beings, persistently read and produce fictions? While the neurosciences of narrative have already highlighted its adaptive functions—facilitating social cognition, fostering communal cohesion, enabling the internalization of moral norms, and providing a framework for anticipating real-life situations—this article contends that its most decisive contribution lies in the shaping of subjectivity and the construction of meaning.

The first section addresses the problem of the “death of God” in Nietzsche and its cultural consequences: the loss of transcendent foundations, the dissolution of moral frameworks, and the experience of a world without orientation. Although contemporary responses tend to split between the radicalization of traditional proposals and syncretism, the persistence of the problem calls for conceptual alternatives. The second section explores one such alternative by turning to literary fiction, particularly the novel, conceived as a device that enables the elaboration of a narrative identity. In dialogue with Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics, it is argued that fiction fulfills a threefold mediation: referentiality (between human beings and the world), communicability (between the subject and others), and self-understanding (between the subject and the self). From this perspective, fiction is not an escape or mere entertainment, but a form of poiesis capable of conferring unity upon what is scattered and of configuring plots of meaning. The central thesis can be summed up in the formula: to live is to write the poem that we are.