Ognosia, or Olga Tokarczuk’s secular theology

Abstract

Olga Tokarczuk proposes – both in the Nobel Prize lecture and in her essays – her concept of literature, the features of which are the project she calls ognosia, based on a four-person (panoptical) narrator, or the understanding and function of myth, and more broadly – of all narration. As she believes, her concept can be considered as alter-religious. She refers to the nature of the biblical narrative to – resorting to analogy – describe her view of an author and other components of a literary work. The concept may be interpreted from the point of view of literary theory but also theology. The article is an attempt at such an interpretation. Its author looks for a parallel between literature as understood by Tokarczuk and the Bible as a text revealed and written down by hagiographers. In the conclusion of the sketch, a thesis may be found that Tokarczuk’s idea is not a post-secular or quasi-religious project, but secular and de facto gnostic, because it refers to the knowledge and supposedly divine competence as the foundation for the construction of the world presented.