The work of Tor Jonsson is often seen as an exchange or a struggle between celebration of life and death drive, where the latter finally prevails and where Jonsson’s biography and suicide is given great interpretational and explanatory priority. This article sees Jonsson in light of the vitalistic current that can also be found among his contemporaries, prominently in peers and predecessors such as Tarjei Vesaas, Åsmund Sveen and Olav Aukrust. The article argues that vitalism represents a dominating value norm in Jonsson’s work, guiding the choice of motifs and poetic images – and one that underlines the focus on social exclusion and outsider status that gradually becomes more and more prominent in Jonsson’s poetry.

The article suggests readings of three of the Norwegian poet Olav H. Hauge’s (1908-1994) poems from the 1960s. The perspective is the later Martin Heidegger’s central thoughts on a specifically poetic way of «Building dwelling thinking», as one of his article titles read. Chronologically, Hauge’s knowledge of Heidegger is established, based on his published diaries, at the time when he worked on the renewal of his authorship which resulted in the poetry collection På Ørnetuva (1961). The three investigated poems from this book are «Til eit Astrup-bilete», «Kveld i november» and «Kvannskorane». The poems have been chosen because they in a particularly striking way fit Heidegger’s thoughts, but the connection might have further significance.