Carlo Michelstaedter (1887-1910)

Trapped in the flow of time

Michelstaedter has been one of the few geniuses in human history who attempted to come to the very core of human suffering; to detect its true aetiology, and cure it once and for all. Born in Gorizia – currently at the Italian-Slovenian border – in the well-to-do Jewish family of Alberto Michelstaedter, the director of an insurance company and bibliomaniac, and Emma Luzzato, member of another prominent Jewish family, Carlo has been a victim of the fin de siècle nausea which afflicted in an even more pronounced manner the then collapsing Austro-Hungarian Empire (Bini 1992, 28-29). To the fundamental question of why humans are suffering, Michelstaedter gave an answer very similar to the one bequeathed by the best philosophical – and religious – traditions of the East, the West, and his native Italy specifically:

“But man wants from other things in a future time what he lacks in himself: the possession of his own self,¹ and as he wants and is busied so with the future he escapes himself in every present. Thus does he move differently from the things different from him, as he is different from his own self, continuing in time. What he wants is given within him, and wanting life he distances himself from himself: he does not know what he wants. … for he does not have himself as long as an irreducible, obscure hunger for life lives within him” (Michelstaedter 2004, 11).

Being human actually means being subject to that irreducible, obscure hunger for life. A human is the animal that never stops desiring. The very moment it would stop, its life would have automatically come to an end. Here lies the fundamental contradiction of human life, according to Michelstaedter. Life is de facto a motion in time, a perpetual sense of discontent which must be satisfied at any price, but which, strangely enough, can never be fully satisfied: “Because at no point is the will satisfied, each thing destroys itself in coming into being and in passing away: πάντα ῥεῖ, ‘everything flows,’ so that it transforms itself without respite in varied desiring” (Michelstaedter 2004, 15).

Human beings are condemned to strive for possessing themselves without ever being able to achieve it; were they ever to achieve it even for a single moment, their life would have to stop immediately. Schopenhauer had already shown that all life amounts to is will, and that this will is by definition insatiable: “For Schopenhauer, as for Leopardi, will is what constitutes the essence of human life. Will presents itself as a constant tension, as a search for what man lacks” (Bini 1992, 8). But insofar as human life’s conditio sine qua non is that constant lack of everything, it is also necessarily deduced that the tragedy of human beings is their entrapment in the flow of time: “In order to possess itself, to reach actual being, it flows in time: and time is infinite, for were it to succeed in possessing itself, in consisting, it would cease to be will for life (ἄπειρον οὗ ἀεί τι ἒξω, ‘an infinity beyond which there is always something’)” (Michelstaedter 2004, 14).

It was 1897 when Carlo enrolled in the Staatsgymnasium of Gorizia. There, he met his inseparable friends Nino Paternolli and Enrico Mreule. Mreule introduced Carlo to Schopenhauer and instilled in him the passion for philosophy (Bini 1992, xii). Michelstaedter’s book Il Dialogo della Salute [The Dialogue of Health] (1910) consists precisely of philosophical dialogues, in the Socratic style, between Carlo, Nino and Rico. His intimate relationship with Rico has also been the backdrop behind which Italian author Claudio Magris developed the story of his novel Un altro mare [A Different Sea] (1991).

Incarcerated in the prison of desire

And so, desire is a never-fulfilled possession; the indeterminacy that plagues humans in every single one of their present moments; a will for possession always postponed somewhere in the future; the negation of possession and of present par excellence: “Each thing at every point does not possess but is the will for determinate possession” (Michelstaedter 2004, 15). In order to feel that I am alive, I have to project a fulfillment of my own will in the future. Hence, willing negates being; desiring negates really possessing myself in the here and now; I am trapped in the snare of time.

Desire, in essence, means time. Desire and time together amount to “philopsychia [= love of life, cowardice]” (Michelstaedter 2004, 20), a term in which Michelstaedter recapitulated the eternal diseases of human life: ‘the yearning to live’ (Michelstaedter 2004, 15), desire, pleasure, hope, time; a term which, in the final analysis, he identified with what he called in one word the rhetoric. Desire and time convert humans into somnambulists immersed in their dreams of future fulfilment; in this process, in nothing do they differ from swine bathing in filth, as Heraclitus had warned: “Ὓες βορβόρῳ ἣδονται μᾶλλον ἤ καθαρῷ ὓδατι” [“Poultry bathe in dust and ashes, swine in filth”] (Heraclitus 2001, 36). “Liquescit voluptate” [“pleasure liquefies”] writes Michelstaedter (2013, 46) at another point, directly echoing Heraclitus. Heraclitus, Parmenides and the Presocratics constitute the philosophical foundations of the young Michelstaedter. He studies them in depth after he enrolls at the Istituto di Studi Superiori in Florence. At the age of nineteen Carlo was already able to work in five different languages: Italian, German, French, ancient Greek and Latin (Bini 1992, 4).

Seen from another angle, philopsychia [φιλοψυχία] could be seen as Michelstaedter’s correlate of Schopenhauer’s Wille zum Leben, since it is “… the basis of human perpetuation through the fulfillment of finite needs, and thus inadequate self-affirmation” (Angelucci 2011, 53-54).

The Ego and his Own ²

In this lineal concatenation of innumerable images of pleasure projected in the future, finally coagulated into what we perceive as time, the identity of the “I” is born; in Michelstaedter’s own term, the persona. I hope, therefore I am; I possess things, hence I am; even worse: I hope I will possess a thing somewhere in the future and hence I think that I am; I am the owner of a consciousness: “Nothing is for itself but with regard to a consciousness. Ἓως ἂν παρῇ μοι ἐλπίς τις – μένει μοί τι, ‘if there is any hope at all for me, there is something for me’ – for as long as I want in some manner, attribute value to some thing, there is something for me” (Michelstaedter 2004, 16). Actually, human consciousness could be defined as the locus of the constant postponement of a never-satisfied pleasure: hence hope, discontent and, finally, pain; it is in fact the archaeology of all those things which we could have potentially possessed here and now but which we have stubbornly been sacrificing in the name of some uncertain future gratification instead.

And thus, one’s persona is created out of the abstract materials of will, desire, possessiveness and time: “To the extent that a thing proves to be pleasurable, the whole person is there in action. And since it tends towards the thing as its own, it obtains from it the illusion of individuality. What I like, what is useful to me: this is my consciousness, this is my reality. Hence, the reality ὀνομάζεται καθ' ἡδονήν ἑκάστου,³ that is, it is defined according to the pleasure of each individual” (Michelstaedter 2013, 36).⁴

This is the ‘Ego’, the “I”, with all its misery and pain. It is exactly at this point – at the solidification of the persona – where the plague of rhetoric emerges.

Rettorica – The Antipode of Persuasione

In the shallowness of a life confined to the suffocating limits posed by pleasure and desire, in the mire of a personality – a persona – concocted in terms of time from the abstract ingredients of false possession and dubious future achievement, rhetoric blossoms to the full. Humans need a false persona as a substitute for real life: “But men fear this [to have it out with life] more than accidental death: they fear life more than death” (Michelstaedter 2004, 95).

It is thus out of uncertainty and fear that “… they abandon themselves to whatever brutish exertion presents itself: within each man hides the soul of a fakir. They need to see a stretch of road right before their eyes, presumably leading to some good, which certainly defers open pain, and, in continuing, flees from the abyss of cessation” (Michelstaedter 2004, 95). It is of this pain that humans are desperately trying to break free, and along the way they easily abandon themselves to every possible kind of illusion. How much in vain, though: “Therefore, each path forged is a new mine, each banner a mantle covering the insufficiency of the wretched, conceding to them a persona and a right: thus, does rhetoric flourish irresistibly” (Michelstaedter 2004, 95).

In his interpretation of what the mechanism of human thought actually is and how it works, Michelstaedter echoes the greatest masters of the Eastern religious and philosophical traditions – Buddha, Lao Tzu, the Sufi masters, and probably, more than anyone else, J. Krishnamurti – all of whom stressed the twofold drawback inherent in thought: first that it merely consists of abstract and hence inexistent concepts, and second, that it invariably manifests itself in the guise of time as desire and becoming. On this illusory path, humans are literally deprived of their entire being:

“But cogito does not mean “I know”; cogito means I seek to know: that is, I lack knowledge: I do not know… But if thinking means to agitate concepts, which merely by this activity must become knowledge, I am always empty in the present, and the care of the future wherein I feign my goal deprives me of my entire being. Cogito = non-entia coagito, ergo non sum, ‘I think = I agitate non-entities; therefore, I am not.’ This is the life rhetoric feigns for the man alongside life, the life of the thing they call intellect, which if it really were, would stop living” (Michelstaedter 2004, 71).

Enrico Mreule was again the one who introduced Carlo to Buddhism, although only one book with Buddhist maxims and aphorisms has been found in his library, entitled Indische Sprüche (Bini 1992, 254).

But rhetoric does not limit itself only to the domain of thought and knowledge. Actually, it stands for everything that lacks substance, reality, truth; on the contrary, it is identified with anything that is pretentious, inauthentic, superficial, imitative, conventional, obsequious, conformist. And so, easily enough, rhetoric explodes in every other field of human existence, destroying life and truth in their totality:

“… and out of the healthy life of the body, sensual degeneration and the rhetoric of pleasure are born; out of the right behavior of the one who has a mission to carry out, the ambition for power and the rhetoric of authority are born; out of the artistic work of the one who really had something to say, the pose of the artists and the artistic rhetoric are born; out of the words of those who showed the right path, the presumption of the thinkers, as well as the philosophical rhetoric – along with its little sister, the scientific rhetoric – are born. This way, the human beings ascribe names to the secure manifestations of life, they covet their forms, only to obtain their personas and joys; concerned about this life, which is slipping through their fingers, they enslave themselves to it.⁵ But destiny is always making a mockery of them” (Michelstaedter 2013, 65-66).

However, where rhetoric makes itself probably more conspicuous than anywhere else, is in the domain of language. In fact, rhetoric’s materia prima is the word.

Kαλλωπίσματα ὂρφνης

If the plague of the humans is their entrapment in the fictitious mechanism of need → time, and if one’s persona is the equally fictitious ‘solidification’ of time and need into an ‘entity’ created out of one’s desperate need for security and meaningfulness, then words are indeed the vehicle for such intellectual ‘sorcery’: “The words are, that is to say, the words spoken by the ‘will/need’: ‘Then if the truth… regarding bread were exhausted by his relationship with his stomach, the proposition would have never been made because as for the stomach it would have been persuaded with bread and would have asked for… nothing more’” (Michelstaedter, Parmenide ed Eraclito 31, cited in Cangiano 2019, 74).

It all started with Aristotle: “Words, the modes of language… become for Aristotle ‘things’ in themselves: they crystallize” (Michelstaedter, Opere 234, cited in Bini 1992, 29). Then, it was Plato, who “… gave reality to every idea and every name, and rettorica was born. The identity of ontology, thought, and language was forever broken. From then on, being was to be used as a predicate, words were to become technical terms, language was to become a game. … The Socratic dialectics was dead and “from its ashes” rettorica was born” (Bini 1992, 28).

In the illusion of this ‘crystallization’ of mere sonic utterances into ‘things,’ out of this peculiar hypostatization of what undoubtedly belongs to the conceptual and symbolic realm, – ideas, concepts, names, – the humans think they find everything they lack – security, identity, hope, pleasure, and the most effective possible alleviation of their pain:

“… they feign words containing the absolute world, and with words they nourish their boredom, making for themselves a poultice for the pain; with words they show what they do not know and what they need in order to soothe the pain or make themselves numb to it. Each word contains mystery, and they entrust themselves to words, weaving with them thereby a new, tacitly agreed-upon veil over the obscurity: καλλωπίσματα ὂρφνης, ‘ornaments of the darkness’: “God help me”—because I haven’t the courage to help myself. They need “knowledge,” and knowledge is formed. “Knowledge” in and of itself becomes the goal of life. … Thus, rhetoric flourishes alongside life” (Michelstaedter 2004, 69).

After all, this is what Michelstaedter tried to point to with such terms as rettorica, persona, καλλωπίσματα ὂρφνης during his short but extremely fecund life: the overall symbolic and hence illusory constitution of the human being; the intrinsic lie of human existence; our fictitious identity; our absolute and irrevocable estrangement from truth and reality; our beastly indulgence in anything that is shallow, insubstantial, ideational. Of this harrowing situation Michelstaedter tried to make us aware by pointing to the path of persuasione.

Persuasione – In union with the world

Fully handed over to la rettorica, humans walk along the tightrope of time, brandishing words as their only weapon against the void of existence, building up their inadequate knowledge and science, until they suddenly discover that they have been engulfed in the empty shell of their persona, a mere armor consisting of the mechanical repetition of ‘colorless propositions’ – καλλωπίσματα ὂρφνης: “Their conjoined mode [of the words], as inadequate as their knowledge, is limited, reduced almost exclusively to the elementary relations of time and finality” (Michelstaedter 2004, 133).

But if one really wants to redeem his/her life back, he/she surely has to go beyond “the word that blurs and muddies the unity of being” (Michelstaedter 2011, 51).⁶ Were the word removed once and for all, then knowledge, for its part, would have automatically lost the very foundations upon which it rests: “Everyone can stop turning in the slavery of what he does not know and, refusing the payoff of empty words, have it out with life” (Michelstaedter 2004, 95); without knowledge and words, the grassroots of one’s persona would also be seriously shattered; and, in the void of a brain which does not know and which refuses to speak, space enough would have been created for silence to blossom: “He who is persuaded is silent because he has no ‘motive’ to speak” (Fondo Carlo Michelstaedter, cited in Bini 1992, 24).

Without the ever-chattering, knowing persona, the human brain would most probably resemble that of a Buddha: empty of any thought, words, or concepts, utterly silent and immobile in its ecstasy and bliss, completely devoid of any desire or hope. Michelstaedter’s persuasione is actually the Buddhist nirvana, the fanā of the Sufis, the contemplative state of Heraclitus’s mind while he is sitting by the fireplace. Michelstaedter’s vision has been that of a human being without a self, with no memory, empty of words and desire, in full possession of itself, living unconditionally in the here and now, never postponing anything to the future, never dreaming of anything in the future: “He who for one instant wants his life to be his, only for an instant to be persuaded of what he does, must take possession of the present, to see every present as the last, as if death were certain afterward, and to create his own life by himself in the obscurity” (Michelstaedter 2004, 39). Then only is there a possibility for the human being to come back to the unity of the nature and the universe, from which it has also sprung; then the humans would have actually turned into gods: “… the extreme consciousness of the man who is one with things, has all things in himself: ἕν συνεχές, ‘one, indivisible,’ the persuaded: god” (Michelstaedter 2004, 89).

But this “extreme consciousness” of the persuaso is actually the Absolute itself; that same Absolute which Michelstaedter set out to grasp during the few years of his life. He didn’t make it. He succumbed precociously to the very contradiction of the human condition: constantly tending towards the Absolute, and never being able to attain it:

“What I know is that my consciousness, whether corporeal or soulful, is made of deficiency, that I do not have the Absolute until I am absolute, that I do not have Justice until I am just, that I do not have Freedom, Possession, Reason, the End, until I am free and finite in myself, lacking nothing that would present itself as an end in the future, but I have a reasonable end here, now, all in the present. I do not wait, search, fear, and I am persuaded” (Michelstaedter 2004, 65-66).

By October 17, 1910, Michelstaedter had finished his dissertation entitled La Persuasione e la Rettorica. That same day, at two o’clock in the afternoon, after a short argument he had with his mother, Michelstaedter shot himself, not once but twice (Harrison 1996, 2). His suicide has correctly been associated with the overall mindset that had prevailed in Europe during the so called fin-de-siecle, more pronouncedly than anywhere else within the confines of the then collapsing Austro-Hungarian Empire, as well as to a series of unfortunate facts which had seriously affected his sensitive idiosyncrasy: the suicide in 1907 of Nadia Baraden, a Russian divorcee with whom he had an affair, his having been rejected by the family of Iolanda De Blasi with whom he had fallen in love soon after Nadia’s suicide, and his successive failures to have his writings published, as well as to manage to translate and publish Schopenhauer’s works in Italian (Bini 1992, xii-xiii). However, it is more likely that Michelstaedter’s suicide was after all associated with the tragic dead-end his own philosophical project had reached: his failure to supersede the human nature itself and reach that different sea, the realm of the persuaso – the enlightened one – the one who has managed to get out of the flow of time, the one who has eliminated desire and hope overall and has become one with the silent void of nature and the universe.

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Works Cited

Angelucci, Marco. 2011. Words Against Words: On the Rhetoric of Carlo Michelstaedter. Troubador Publishing.

Bini, Daniela. 1992. Carlo Michelstaedter and the Failure of Language. University Press of Florida.

Cangiano, Marco. 2019. The Wreckage of Philosophy: Carlo Michelstaedter and the Limits of Bourgeois Thought. University of Toronto Press.

Harrison, Thomas. 1996. 1910: The Emancipation of Dissonance. University of California Press.

Heraclitus. 2001. Fragments. Translated by Brooks Haxton. Viking Penguin.

Michelstaedter, Carlo. 2013. Diálogo de la salud — Poesías [The Dialogue of Health — Poetries]. Translated by Tomás Lorma and Miguel Ángel Frontán. Ediciones De La Mirándola. Kindle edition.

Michelstaedter, Carlo. 2011. La Melodía del Joven Divino. Translated by Antonio Castilla Cerezo. Sexto Piso.

Michelstaedter, Carlo. 2004. Persuasion and Rhetoric. Translated by Russell Scott Valentino, Cinzia Sartini Blum, and David J. Depew. Yale University Press.

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1. Unless otherwise stated, emphasis is in the original. ↩︎

2. Borrowed from Max Stirner’s (1806-1856) book of the same title (1844). ↩︎

3. Heraclitus 2001: 24. ↩︎

4. The translation from Spanish is ours. ↩︎

5. For the translation of a part of this passage we have also consulted (Cangiano 2019: 78). ↩︎

6. The translation from Spanish is ours. ↩︎

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