Erwin Kruk as a Reader

Abstract

Reading was for Erwin Kruk (1941–2017) one of the basic forms of both existence and participation in social life. In the writer’s work and statements, the act of reading is the subject of reflection. Kruk believed that by reading, we “put our world in order” and build our own identity. He took the word seriously, which was due to the Lutheranism that shaped him in the first period of his life. The direction of Kruk’s interests as a reader was related to the trauma of the original loss of “home”. The love of reading texts by authors from East Prussia was dictated by Kruk’s need to regain the memory of his Masurian genealogy. The writer felt obliged to follow the old and contemporary literature from Warmia and Mazury, and to dedicate to it his literary criticism. He argued that ambitious reading was a way of opposing the provincialisation of marginal cultural centers. The reconstruction of Erwin Kruk’s reading list shows that the writer implemented his own reading strategy throughout his literary life. According to Kruk, it is a kind of work to maintain the cultural continuity of both the region where one lives and other spheres of the human community.