Living death
Does "preserve his living death" in the following context mean "preserve a moment of the life of a dead man (we know he is dead now but he is still alive in the photograph)"?
Text:
infamous book on photography, Camera Lucida, confronting a photograph of assassin Lewis Payne alive before execution in the knowledge of his eventual death, Roland Barthes looks into the eyes of a dead man, and it is this which generates for him the uncanny frisson between the dead and the living. Payne, now dead, was once alive in
front of the camera lens, his presence recorded by light rays that preserve his living death.
Top answer
catttt Does "preserve his living death" in the following context mean "preserve a moment of the life of a dead man (we know he is dead now but he is still alive in the photograph)"? I would not say that. We speak of a "living death", a situation you find yourself in where your suffering is such that it is equivalent to being dead.
- catttt Does "preserve his living death" in the following context mean "preserve a moment of the life of a dead man (we know he is dead now but he is still alive in the photograph)"?
- I would not say that.
- We speak of a "living death", a situation you find yourself in where your suffering is such that it is equivalent to being dead.
- The writer has alluded to that without actually employing the idiom.
- "His living death" is his state at the time the photograph was taken.
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cattttDoes "preserve his living death" in the following context mean "preserve a moment of the life of a dead man (we know he is dead now but he is still alive in the photograph)"?
I would not say that. We speak of a "living death", a situation you find yourself in where your suffering is such that it is equivalent to being dead. The writer has alluded to t
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