identification

“Life as a quotation” (“das zitathafte Leben”) is a phrase that Thomas Mann formulated in his celebratory speech on the occasion of Sigmund Freud's 80th birthday to present his vision of a life that is always made up of (un)conscious repetitions of prefabricated patterns. This paper offers an analysis of the “life-as-quote” formula in two perspectives. The notion is examined, once, within the writer's speech and, secondly, in the context of psychoanalysis with an emphasis on the mechanisms of identification. Some of the questions the text attempts to answer are: what is quotation in this perspective and what is its significance for literary studies.