Recognition and concealment

Heidegger’s ‘it gives’ in modern poetics

Authors

  • Jørgen Veisland University of Gdańsk

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59391/inscriptions.v5i1.145

Keywords:

Being, time, it gives (es gibt), recognition, concealment

Abstract

In his essay “On Time and Being” (1972; “Zur Sache des Denkens”, 1969) Martin Heidegger states that “Being is determined by time as presence” and then proceeds to analyze the relation between time and Being, ending his argument by calling that relation Ereignis, appropriation and event. Appropriation is a process of unconcealment that, paradoxically, yet conceals itself. Being is indeterminate and this indeterminacy is explored in Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and Repetition, in Paul Auster’s Portrait of an Invisible Man, Samuel Beckett’s Molloy and The Unnamable, Wallace Stevens’ poem “The Snow Man”, and Kirsten Thorup’s novel Indtil vanvid, indtil døden. The indeterminacy of Being is valorized as a positive difference existing concurrently in ontology and aesthetics. Poetry grasps this positive difference.

Author Biography

Jørgen Veisland, University of Gdańsk

Jørgen Steen Veisland is associate professor of Scandinavian, American and Comparative Literature at the University of Gdańsk, Poland, where he has been employed since 1992. He is a member of The International Association for Scandinavian Studies and The International Association for Ethical Literary Criticism. He is the author of Kierkegaard and the Dialectics of Modernism and many other books and articles.

References

Aristotle. Poetics. Translated by S. H. Butcher. New York: Hill and Wang, 1961.

Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Auster, Paul. Portrait of an Invisible Man. London: Faber, 1988.

Beckett, Samuel. Molloy. New York: Grove Press, 1955.

Beckett, Samuel. The Unnamable. New York: Grove Press, 1955.

Heidegger, Martin. On Time and Being. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. New York & London: Harper & Row, 1972.

Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling. Translated by Walter Lowrie. New Haven: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Kierkegaard, Søren. Repetition. In Kierkegaard’s Writings, Vol. 6, edited and translated by Howard Hong and Edna Hong, 125-231. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.

Kristeva, Julia. Revolution in Poetic Language. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.

Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past. Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff. London: Wordsworth, 2006.

Stevens, Wallace. “The figure of the youth as virile poet.” In The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination. New York: Vintage Books, 1942.

Stevens, Wallace. “The Snow Man.” In Harmonium. Chicago: Poetry Magazine, 1921.

Thorup, Kirsten. Indtil vanvid, indtil døden. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2020.

Downloads

Published

2022-01-15

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2022): Being and event

Section

Academic articles

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Jørgen Veisland

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who submit manuscripts and publish with Inscriptions retain copyright to their original work and agree to the following terms:

  • Inscriptions is granted the right to first publish the work under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License unless otherwise agreed in writing prior to publication;
  • Inscriptions and its publisher Tankebanen forlag is granted the right to produce and reproduce the work in any form, printed or electronically, for free distribution and for sale;
  • Authors are permitted to post their work online and to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal’s published version of their work as long as its initial publication in Inscriptions is acknowledged.