Life Death: Crossing the Threshold in Louise Glück's Vita Nova and Averno
Abstract
Drawing on the seminar by Jacques Derrida titled Life Death (1975), in which the philosopher, discussing Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, analyzes the inseparable relationship – not of opposition but of mutual implication – between life and death, this paper aims to explore this dynamic as it emerges in the poetry collections Vita Nova (1999) and Averno (2006) by Louise Glück. She offers readers a particularly poignant depiction of what may be termed ‘still life’: a life shaped by the subconscious drive toward self-destruction and dissolution yet also marked by sudden rebirths and renewals. Extending the reflection begun in The Wild Iris (1992), Glück, in the collections under consideration, continues to explore the theme of time by staging voices – often posthumous – that lucidly confront various forms of loss and interpret life, following Derrida, as survival. The paper examines the poetic devices that enable Glück to achieve a unique convergence of psychoanalytic inquiry and mythic detachment, arguing for a revision of the elegiac mode and for a poetic articulation of autothanatography.
Submitted: May 5, 2026 | Accepted: June 17, 2026 | Published Oct. 12, 2026 | Language: en
Keywords Myth • Death • Derrida • Autothanatography • Elegy • Psychoanalysis
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