Dance and Dizziness

Episodes in Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun's writings display recurrent kinesthetic imagery of dance. This imagery suggests experience in spinning forms of dance that lead directly to the experience of dizziness and in some cases collapse. Similar kinesthetic imagery can be found in Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky's books where dancing becomes “the time and the place” of a scandalous collapse. However, to put it in Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard's categories, Hamsun presents “single-sighted dizziness” more often. He focuses on the phantasies of dancing, spinning, and playing. In Dostoyevsky's writing, the exploration of “double-sighted dizziness” prevails. He uses ballroom dance situations to explore the tension of deliberation

Aesthetics · Art · Dance · Developmental psychology · Fyodor · Kinesthetic learning · Linguistics · Literature · Norwegian · Psychoanalysis · Shadow (psychology) · Kierkegaardian Philosophy and Influence · Narrative Theory and Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology