The Varieties of Religious Experience in Józef Wittlin’s The Salt of the Earth
The Varieties of Religious Experience in Józef Wittlin’s The Salt of the Earth

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to present the individual and intense experience of sensing the world in religious categories, an account of which can be found in the novel The Salt of the Earth. The term “religious experience” comes from William James. The author of the article first mentions the interpretative difficulties connected with structural irony, which calls into question some of the statements verbalized in the novel. Taking into account this complexity, he points out four elements that justify discussion of a religious experience in The Salt of the Earth. First, he points to the title, which evokes a religious perception of the world, and assumes a response to a calling that comes from God. Second, he refers to the Prologue (deprived of structural irony), which introduces the theme of war as blasphemy.

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