Abstract: | Ben Okri's 'The famished road' (1991) and 'Songs of enchantment' (1993) can both be read as records of the powerful, dangerous and beneficial aspects of the spirit world as it relates to the physical world; both works assert the enormous potential of spirit in a revitalizing of human life in the physical world. Such a statement runs counter to the dominant rationalist view of Western philosophy with its faith in rationality and dedication to the investigation of the isolated individual. Yet, to investigate these two Nigerian novels, the present author turns to a Western philosopher, Martin Heidegger, and his concepts of 'Dasein', being-in-the-world. He considers three large points: the nature of being itself; the interplay between human and spirit worlds; and the implications of human maturation. Both primary and secondary sources of Heidegger's vastly complicated writings are used in an attempt to describe the richness of the world view that Okri proposes. Bibliogr., notes. |