I have a sentence in Haruki Murakami's 海辺のカフカ which reads:
でも形而上的であり象徴的でありながら、同時にそいつは千の剃刀のようにするどく生身を切り裂くんだ。
I understand the first part of the sentence as:
May it be metaphysical or symbolical, at the same time it's like a thousand razors... ripping apart...
But I don't get the meaning of that どく part. I don't believe it's 毒, as it's written in hiragana.
「するどく」 is the [連用形]{れんようけい} (continuative form) of the adjective 「するどい / 鋭い」 = "sharp".
It is conjugated into its 連用形 so that it can modify the following verb 「[切]{き}り[裂]{さ}く」 = "to rip up".
"sharp" ⇒ "sharply"
(「[毒]{どく}」("poison") or any other noun will not fit in grammatically.)
"するどく- 鋭くin 漢字 and かな)" is an inflection of 鋭い. It has nothin to do with "毒," which is a stand-alone noun.
The adjectives such as "するどい - sharp," "辛どい - painful," "くどい - insistent," "悪どい - malicious" inflect into adverbs like, "するどく," "辛どく," "くどく," and "悪どく," and adjectives like "珍しい - unusual,""憎らしい - hateful," "重々しい - heavy, " inflect into adverbs as "珍しく," "憎らしく," and "重々しく."
