Life after Life A Reading of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Walter Benjamin Mathelinda A. Nabugodi UCL PhD Comparative Literature Creative Critical Writing Life after Life | 2 I, Mathelinda Apolona Nabugodi, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Life after Life | 3 Abstract The title of this thesis, Life after Life, cites an essay by Jacques Derrida where he translates the title of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s last poem ‘The Triumph of Life’ into life’s triumph, a life after life, or else a living on, sur-vivre, Über-leben. The latter term, Überleben, is in its turn a citation from Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘The Task of the Translator’ where Benjamin conceptualises the life of literary works as their afterlife in future readings. This comparative reading of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Walter Benjamin begins with this intersection in the afterlives of their works. I explore their reception in contemporary literary theory with the dual aim of reading Shelley and Benjamin and reading how they have been read by other critics. The thesis is written under the ‘Creative Critical Writing’ strand of the Comparative Literature PhD, which has allowed me to develop my methodology in response to the material that I study. Central themes include translation, autobiography, disfiguration, poetic histories of language, the problems of historical representation, ekphrasis, tragedy, violence, and, finally, forgiveness as a force stronger than violence. I focus on Shelley’s translation of the Homeric ‘Hymn to Mercury,’ ‘The Triumph of Life,’ ‘The Defence of Poetry,’ ‘The Cloud,’ ‘On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery,’ and The Cenci. Of Benjamin’s works I read ‘On Language as Such and on the Language of Man,’ ‘The Task of the Translator,’ ‘Doctrine of the Similar’ and ‘On the Mimetic Faculty.’ Furthermore, I look at his ‘Critique of Violence,’ ‘Goethe’s Elective Affinities,’ Berlin Childhood around 1900, some of the methodological notes in ‘Convolute N’ of The Arcades Project, and ‘On the Concept of History.’ Life after Life | 4 Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................................................... 7 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ........................................................................................................................................ 8 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ....................................................................................................................................... 9 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................ 10 1. Death. ........................................................................................................................................................... 10 2. Afterlife. ...................................................................................................................................................... 18 3. Methodology. ............................................................................................................................................ 22 4. The roads not taken. ............................................................................................................................. 27 5. Outline. ........................................................................................................................................................ 31 IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE NAME .......................................................................................... 36 6. Shells. ........................................................................................................................................................... 36 7. The aura of being named. ................................................................................................................... 38 8. A tortoise. ................................................................................................................................................... 40 9. Feet. .............................................................................................................................................................. 44 10. Violence. ................................................................................................................................................... 46 11. Sense and non-sense. .......................................................................................................................... 49 POETIC NATURE ............................................................................................................................... 51 12. Air-in-motion. ........................................................................................................................................ 51 13. Ruach. ....................................................................................................................................................... 53 14. Child’s play. ............................................................................................................................................. 54 15. A certain rhythm or order. ............................................................................................................... 57 16. Flash of similarities. ............................................................................................................................ 58 17. Imagination. ........................................................................................................................................... 59 VIOLETS ............................................................................................................................................... 62 18. The violet in the crucible. ................................................................................................................. 62 19. Shattered and assembled. ................................................................................................................ 67 20. Philosophical supplement. ............................................................................................................... 70 21. A flower absent from every bouquet. .......................................................................................... 72 22. The colour violet. .................................................................................................................................. 72 TWO WORDS ...................................................................................................................................... 75 23. Disfiguration/Entstellung. ............................................................................................................... 75 24. The Shape all light. .............................................................................................................................. 77 25. Thread, tread, trample. ..................................................................................................................... 80 A CLOUD THAT IS NOT ONE .......................................................................................................... 82 26. Recap. ........................................................................................................................................................ 82 27. Hover. ........................................................................................................................................................ 83 28. Glimmer. .................................................................................................................................................. 86 29. Veil. ............................................................................................................................................................. 90 MURMURING SOUNDS .................................................................................................................... 91 30. The lamp. ................................................................................................................................................. 91 31. Muhme Rehlen, Mummerehlen, Mißverstehen. ....................................................................... 93 32. The mimetic imperative. ................................................................................................................... 97 STRANGE DISTORTION ................................................................................................................ 100 33. Prosopopoeia. ..................................................................................................................................... 100 Life after Life | 5 34. In the photographer’s studio. ...................................................................................................... 102 35. Tit for tat. ............................................................................................................................................. 107 36. Shelley’s remains. .............................................................................................................................. 108 37. ‘Then, what is Life?’ I said. ............................................................................................................ 109 38.