The criticisms, stories, and thoughts collected in this anthology offer interpretive clues towards comprehending the mystery behind a radical and solitary existence. With a surprisingly philosophical and literary potency, these texts by Carlo Michelstaedter possess a clear intent to surrender as well as a combative attitude, exposing the character of a misunderstood man. Through these compiled texts, Michelstaedter reveals himself as someone who doesn’t live in the present because he yearns for a future that never arrives, and, among other things, viciously criticizes bourgeois society and celebrates an affirmation of life for what it is.
Las críticas, los cuentos y los pensamientos reunidos en esta antología ofrecen claves interpretativas para comprender el misterio de una existencia radical y solitaria. De una sorprendente potencia filosófica y literaria, estos textos de Carlo Michelstaedter poseen una clara intención de renuncia a la vez que una actitud combativa, los cuales desvelan el carácter de un hombre incomprendido. Mediante estos escritos copilados, Michelstaedter se revela como alguien que no vive en el presente porque anhela un futuro que nunca llega, y entre otras cosas critica con virulencia a la sociedad burguesa y celebra la afirmación de la vida por sí misma.
Carlo 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.
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.