A Heideggerian Reading of Knut Hamsun’s “Growth of the Soil”

Michał Kruszelnicki

doi:10.18778/1689-4286.17.01

Autor

Michał Kruszelnicki Dolnośląska Szkoła Wyższa we Wrocławiu

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1689-4286.17.01

Słowa kluczowe:

Knut Hamsun, “Growth of the Soil“, Martin Heidegger, eco-criticism, poetic dwelling, language, technology, modernity

Abstrakt

The article proposes a reading of Knut Hamsun’s Nobel Prize winning novel Growth of the Soil that will simultaneously follow the interpretive inspirations provided for it by the philosophical thought of Martin Heidegger. The “eco-critical” reading of Hamsun with Heidegger is encouraged by some intriguing similarities to be found between Heidegger’s and Hamsun’s perspectives of seeing the world and the relations human beings enter with it. It is argued that both Heidegger and Hamsun hoped for an existence that would be sensitive to the significance of the everydayness (both to the things created by man, and those brought forth by nature), but also open to receiving the world as a mysterious and extraordinary gift which exceeds human comprehension. I believe Hamsun’s famous novel provides the reader with a fine model of a “poetic dwelling” – the paramount idea late Heidegger was trying to illuminate.

Biogram autora

Michał Kruszelnicki - Dolnośląska Szkoła Wyższa we Wrocławiu

Michał Kruszelnicki – (ur. 1979) absolwent polonistyki (UWr), doktor filozofii (UMK). Autor książek: Oblicza strachu (Toruń 2003), Tradycja kulturowo-literacka i symbolika w Mistrzu i Małgorzacie Michaiła Bułhakowa (Toruń 2004), Drogi francuskiej heterologii (Wrocław 2008), Studia z posthumanistycznej filozofii podmiotu (red. Wrocław-Warszawa 2008) oraz artykułów z zakresu współczesnej filozofii francuskiej, filozofii edukacji, literaturoznawstwa i problemów kultury popularnej. Stypendysta Uniwersytetu North Carolina w Greensboro (USA) i Uniwersytetu w Tromsø (Norwegia). Pracuje w Dolnośląskiej Szkole Wyższej we Wrocławiu.

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