„Only dogs love”. The kennel and human puppy (in Günther Grass’ Dog Years and Bronka Nowicka’s To Feed the Stone)

Abstract

The article is an attempt to show the relationship between the dog and the man in chosen literary examples. Among them there are dogs enslaved by a man, i.e. Adolf Hitler’s dogs, the dog in the poem Monologue of a Dog Ensnared in History written by Wisława Szymborska and the dog in the novel by Günter Grass Dog Yeas (Hundejahre, 1963). There are also dogs enabling human to live, dogs, who teach man intimacy, freedom and friendship, loving dogs. The most important example here is above all the book of prose written by Bronka Nowicka, entitled To Feed the Stone (2015) and the poem Grandma and Poodle by Danuta Wawiłow. The author of the essay comes to a conclusion that kennel, dog’s fur and dog’s presence are in many different ways essential for man not to get lost in the world.