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La melodia del giovane divino: Pensieri, racconti, critiche
Oltre a La persuasione e la rettorica, al Dialogo della salute e alle Poesie, Michelstaedter ha lasciato un’impressionante mole di scritti. Impressionante tanto più se si pensa alla brevità di una parabola esistenziale conclusasi con il suicidio a soli ventitré anni, e in cui è impossibile non cogliere il segno di un audace programma: «... e farai di te stesso fiamma». E sono proprio questi ‘scritti vari’ – ovvero il laboratorio segreto di Michelstaedter –, di cui il suo maggiore specialista ci offre ora una silloge che copre il cruciale periodo 1905-1910, a fornirci una chiave per penetrare l’enigma di un’attività speculativa solitaria e radicale, che pareva, con la tesi di laurea, essere giunta a maturazione per vie misteriose, e che invece si rivela qui tumultuosamente ma caparbiamente preparata. Che rifletta sulla catarsi tragica o sulla «via della salute», che si sperimenti in favole o parabole, che reagisca a caldo a una pièce di Ibsen o di D’Annunzio o a un concerto, infatti, il pensiero di Michelstaedter sembra accanirsi intorno a un nucleo rovente, a una dolorosa certezza: contro ogni scuola che parli nel nome dell’assoluta verità, contro la voce della philopsychía, che mette «un empiastro sul dolore per lenirlo», l’uomo «deve ricrearsi nell’attività col suo spirito per creare il valore individuale, per giungere alla ragione di sé stesso – alla vita, per portar l’attualità all’atto; per esser persuaso; poiché da nessuno e da niente egli può sperar aiuto che dal proprio animo, poiché ognuno è solo nel deserto».
- GenresPhilosophy
241 pages, Paperback
Published August 1, 2010
2 people are currently reading
41 people want to read
About the author
Carlo Michelstaedter
17 books62 followersCarlo Michelstaedter (3 June 1887 - 17 October 1910) was an Italian writer, philosopher, and man of letters.
Carlo Michelstaedter was born in Gorizia, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian County of Gorizia and Gradisca, as the youngest of four children in a well-to-do Italian-speaking Jewish family. From his father Alberto, the head of an insurance office and president of the Gabinetto di Lettura goriziano, he received a push towards literary study; from his mother Emma Luzzatto, a great love for family and country.
He was a scrappy and introverted boy, but by the end of high school (completed in Gorizia), he developed into a brilliant, athletic, intelligent youth. He enrolled in the department of mathematics in Vienna, but soon moved to Florence, a city he savored for its arts and language. There he formed friendships with other students, and in the end enrolled in the department of letters of the local Istituto di Studi Superiori (1905). He majored in Greek and Latin, and selected for his laurea thesis a philosophical study of persuasion and rhetoric in ancient philosophy. In 1909 he returned to Gorizia and set himself to work on the thesis.
By about the fall of 1910, he completed his work, finishing the appendices by 17 October. He was surely very tired, and that day he had a fight with his mother, who complained he hadn't wished her a happy birthday. Left alone, Carlo took a loaded pistol he had in the house and killed himself. One of his friends from Florence, a Russian woman, had also committed suicide, and probably also a brother who lived in America. Friends and relatives published his works and collected his writings, now in the Biblioteca Civica di Gorizia.
Tracing the development of Michelstaedter's ideas is difficult: His philosophical vision seems to have formed suddenly, and his brief life didn't allow for time to explore other directions. For him common life is an absence of life, narrow and deluded as it is by the god of pleasure, which deceives man, promising pleasures and results that are not real, although he thinks they are. Rhetoric, -- that is the conventions of the individual, the weak, and society -- comprise social life, in which man overpowers nature and himself for his own pleasure. Only by living in the present as if every moment were the last can man free himself from the fear of death, and thus achieve Persuasion; that is, self-possession. Resignation and adapting onself to the world, for Michelstaedter, is the true death.
Carlo Michelstaedter was born in Gorizia, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian County of Gorizia and Gradisca, as the youngest of four children in a well-to-do Italian-speaking Jewish family. From his father Alberto, the head of an insurance office and president of the Gabinetto di Lettura goriziano, he received a push towards literary study; from his mother Emma Luzzatto, a great love for family and country.
He was a scrappy and introverted boy, but by the end of high school (completed in Gorizia), he developed into a brilliant, athletic, intelligent youth. He enrolled in the department of mathematics in Vienna, but soon moved to Florence, a city he savored for its arts and language. There he formed friendships with other students, and in the end enrolled in the department of letters of the local Istituto di Studi Superiori (1905). He majored in Greek and Latin, and selected for his laurea thesis a philosophical study of persuasion and rhetoric in ancient philosophy. In 1909 he returned to Gorizia and set himself to work on the thesis.
By about the fall of 1910, he completed his work, finishing the appendices by 17 October. He was surely very tired, and that day he had a fight with his mother, who complained he hadn't wished her a happy birthday. Left alone, Carlo took a loaded pistol he had in the house and killed himself. One of his friends from Florence, a Russian woman, had also committed suicide, and probably also a brother who lived in America. Friends and relatives published his works and collected his writings, now in the Biblioteca Civica di Gorizia.
Tracing the development of Michelstaedter's ideas is difficult: His philosophical vision seems to have formed suddenly, and his brief life didn't allow for time to explore other directions. For him common life is an absence of life, narrow and deluded as it is by the god of pleasure, which deceives man, promising pleasures and results that are not real, although he thinks they are. Rhetoric, -- that is the conventions of the individual, the weak, and society -- comprise social life, in which man overpowers nature and himself for his own pleasure. Only by living in the present as if every moment were the last can man free himself from the fear of death, and thus achieve Persuasion; that is, self-possession. Resignation and adapting onself to the world, for Michelstaedter, is the true death.
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December 29, 2021
Uno entra a este libro saliendo que se trata de una colección de escritos recuperados, no pensados para su publicación y ahí entran la belleza y flaqueza de este volumen. Los cuentos no me gustaron, las reseñas y crítica son buenos, pero el punto fuerte está en los pensamientos. Muy a la manera del diario íntimo, son una ventana al pensamiento y literatura propia del autor. El apartado de la melancolía me encantó en particular.
Displaying 1 of 1 review