A metaphor at the core of metaphysics : Heidegger and Różewicz

Streszcz. po ang.

This article is an attempt at interpreting one sentence from a poem by Tadeusz Różewicz beginning with the words "The poet is losing strength / the images are fading". The line reads "the metaphor, still alive / was blooming in the entrails / of meaphysics". It is a paraphrase of a sentence written by Heidegger’s essay The Essence of Reasons. In it he argues that the relationship between the metaphysical and the metaphorical is established by the transposition (meta-phero) of sphere of the senses into the realm of the supersensual in the case metaphysical thinking, and the transposition of the literal into the figurative in the case of metaphor. Różewicz’s antimetaphoric gesture is constituted not only by his refusal to use of metaphor as a poetic ornament dropping but also on a more thorough critique of metaphor, which stems from the foundations of Western metaphysics and can be defined as a transposition of what is concrete, right at hand, sensual into the realm of ‘ideal’ and stable essences.