The desire for meaning: Urszula Zajączkowska’s reading of nature

Abstract

This article is an attempt to develop and apply the concept of reading nature within an interpretive practice directed at the poetic and prose works of Urszula Zajączkowska. In the notion of reading nature, at least two distinct intellectual traditions can be identified. The first reaches back to the concept of the book of nature, i.e. the liber naturae, rooted in early medieval theology and philosophy. The second consists of scientific proposals emerging from the field of biosemiotics. To read nature would therefore mean, first, to understand its existence, its forms, and its modes of being as semiosis and as poiesis. Second, it would mean, in probing its meanings, to employ practices characteristic of reading. In Urszula Zajączkowska’s work, reading nature encompasses both the decoding of “the hieroglyphs of anatomy” and their exegesis and translation – practices that open onto the experience of co-existence.