“Infinitely fragile, short-lived, vulnerable…”: Motives of Frailty of the World and Human Resistance to it in Olga Tokarczuk’s Prose

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of motives of frailty of the world and human resistance to it in Olga Tokarczuk’s prose, based on the narrative of corporeality / materiality. All kinds and levels of the depicted reality are subject to disintegration. We consider reflexions and bodily practices connected with disintegration and death (depiction of a dying, dead, sick, deformed, old body) as well as reflexions and bodily practices which embody resistance to mortality (relic worship, resurrection, dissection, copying, counterfeiting, cloning, etc.). One of the mediated ways of resisting entropy and decay is also the search for harmony and equilibrium between the heavenly and the earthly and the interrelation of their orders, the desire for orderliness as an unattainable goal. In this context the motives of predicting the future, astrology, the place of cosmogonic, theogonic and other theories are analyzed. The way to resist entropy and decay is the word and the narrative, which allows to find a fragile balance in the perishable world. In this connection the ways of resistance to frailty of the world and thanatic fear at the biographic and autopsychotherapeutic level – by means of mythodrama narrative and desensitization narrative are considered.