Carlo Michelstaedter was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, philosopher

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

, and man of letters

Intellectual

An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...

.

Life

Carlo Michelstaedter was born in Gorizia

Gorizia

Gorizia is a town and comune in northeastern Italy, in the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. It is located at the foot of the Julian Alps, bordering Slovenia. It is the capital of the Province of Gorizia, and it is a local center of tourism, industry, and commerce. Since 1947, a twin...

, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian County of Gorizia and Gradisca, as the youngest of four children of Albert and Emma Michelstaedter Coen Luzzatto: Gino (1877-1909), Elda (1879-1944), Paula (1885-1972) and Charles. Charles Raymond (Gedaliah Ram) is the name that is imposed. We know little of his childhood: his sister Paula remembers him as a child fearful of the dark and heights, stubborn and not at all prepared to apologize for any misbehavior. In school, he was judged "not very suitable (" minder entsprechend ") for having intentionally and frequently disturbed the lessons during the year.

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

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, but soon moved to Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

, 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

Laurea

In Italy, the laurea is the main post-secondary academic degree.-Reforms due to the Bologna process:Spurred by the Bologna process, a major reform was instituted in 1999 to introduce easier university degrees comparable to the bachelors...

 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.

Thought

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

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

, -- 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.

Works

• Il dialogo della salute (1909), edited by Sergio Campailla. Milano: Adelphi Edizioni, 1988.
• Poesie (1905-1910), edited by Sergio Campailla. Milano: Adelphi Edizioni, 1987
• La persuasione e la rettorica, translated as Persuasion and Rhetoric with an introduction and commentary by Russell Scott Valentino
  Russell Scott Valentino
  Russell Scott Valentino is a literary scholar, translator, and editor. He received his Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1993. He has taught Slavic and comparative literature at the University of Iowa since 1994...
  
  , Cinzia Sartini Blum, and David J. Depew (Yale University
  Yale University
  Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
  
   Press, 2004, ISBN 0-300-10434-0)
• La persuasione e la rettorica - Appendici critiche, edited by Sergio Campailla. Milano: Adelphi Edizioni, 1995.
• Epistolario, edited by Sergio Campailla. Milano: Adelphi Edizioni, 1983.
• Diario e scritti vari
• Opere, edited by G. Chiavacci, Sansoni, Firenze
  Florence
  Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
  
   1958
• Scritti scolastici, edited by Sergio Campailla, Gorizia
  Gorizia
  Gorizia is a town and comune in northeastern Italy, in the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. It is located at the foot of the Julian Alps, bordering Slovenia. It is the capital of the Province of Gorizia, and it is a local center of tourism, industry, and commerce. Since 1947, a twin...
  
   1976
• Parmenide ed Eraclito. Empedocle : Appunti di filosofia, edited by Alfonso Cariolato and Enrico Fongaro. Milano: SE, 2003.
• Another English translation of La Persuasione e La Rettorica exists, by Wilhelm Snyman and Giuseppe Stellardi, with an introduction by Giuseppe Stellardi, published by University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, South Africa, January 2007
• La melodia del giovane divino, edited by Sergio Campailla. Milano: Adelphi Edizioni, 2010.

External links

• "Carlo Michelstaedter and the Metaphysics of Will" by Thomas J. Harrison MLN
  MLN
  Modern Language Notes is an academic journal established in 1886 at the Johns Hopkins University, where it is still edited and published, with the intention of introducing continental European literary criticism into American scholarship. Each year, one issue is devoted to each of the four...
  
   (106 (1991): 1012-1029)
• "The Michelstaedter Enigma" by Thomas J. Harrison in Review of Italian Thought 8-9 (Spring/Autumn, 1999, pp. 125-141)
• Michelstaedter devoted website (in Italian)