Carlo Michelstaedter

Carlo Michelstaedter

Carlo Michelstaedter (1887-1910), Italian philosopher and poet. Not much is known about him. I read about him from The Conspiracy Against the Human Race.

Michelstaedter's biographers and critics have speculated that his despair of humanity's ability to become disentangled from its puppet strings was, in conjunction with accidental factors, the cause of his suicide by gunshot the day after he finished his dis­sertation. Michelstaedter could not accept a stellar fact of human life: that none of us has control over what we are--a truth that extirpates all hope if what you want to be is invulnerably self­ possessed ("persuaded") and without subjection to a life that would fit you within the limits of its unrealities ("rhetoric," a word oddly used by Michelstaedter). 

We are defined by our limitations; without them, we cannot suffice as functionaries in the big show of conscious existence. The farther you progress toward a vision of our species without limiting conditions on your consciousness, the farther you drift away from what makes you a person among persons in the human community.

Transcending all illusions and their emergent activities --- having absolute control of what we are, and not what we need to be, so that we may survive the most unsavory facts of life and death --- would untether us from the moorings of our self-limited selves. The lesson: "Let us love our limitations, for without them no­ body would be left to be somebody." 

Speaking like a poet, Michelstaedter sees that we are puppets, and he wants to cut the strings, even if he knows that without the strings he is just a pile of woods, not even able to lift the scissors anymore.

by yawg07

What is his pessimistic theory? Carlo Michelstaedter: The Tragedy of Thought (Daniela Bini, 1988) quotes some of Carlo's writings, such as this one, prophetic of his eventual suicide:

Only when you do not want will you have what you want, because what you want is absolute being, and your will is all but contingency: it is not in itself ... as long as it will be, your body will cast a shadow so that you cannot see; when you will no longer be, you will have the possibility of seeing. (Opere 781)

This fragment is representative of Carlo's tragic philosophy:

1. The Absolute (that is, things that do not depend on time, history, other's opinions, etc) exists: absolute truth, absolute beauty, absolute existence, etc.
2. The Absolute is not possible to get for us, because we are the outcome of historical processes (especially biological evolution) and social processes that make us extremely historical, timely, provincial, short-sighted, small-minded, un-absolute.
3. Despite this, we still desire the Absolute. At least, Carlo desired the Absolute.
4. To get to the Absolute, it's necessary (Carlo did not explain whether it is sufficient) to die, one way or another. Like a moth burning up in the flames, touching the Absolute would destroy any human, since all humans are so petty, limited, historical, un-absolute.

Carlo wrote some poems In CARLO MICHELSTAEDTER (Raffaello Piccoli, The Monist, Vol. 26, No. 1 (JANUARY, 1916), pp. 1-23)

The few lyrical poems which are published in the first volume of Michelstaedter's works will certainly range among the best of their kind in Italian literature. I append the translation of one of them, addressed to his sister Paula and written by him two months before his death, which will give, I hope, an insight into the sweetness and depth of feeling underlying his apparently pitiless thought. For daring to attempt such a translation into a language still unfamiliar to me I offer my humblest apologies to the reader.

The poem, with my explanations:

 Even as swallows year by year return

 Back to the nests that held them featherless,

 So man goes back in the course of his days,

 Time after time to the thought of his cradle.

 People keep remembering the days when they were just a baby.

 And as every year he keeps that day,

 That to hunger and thirst, to sorrow and grief,

 That to this mortal life did him awaken,

 Every year he persuades himself again

 To love his life.

They remember that day as the sad day when they woke up to a life full of pain. They still tell themselves to love life, even if it is full of pain. 

 And the parents who in the newly-born,

 In the fragile and helpless little being,

 Saw the fruit of their hopes;

The parents think of their baby as something that can make their hopes come true.

 And holding out to him with timorous love

 All that life gives to him who asks to live,

 Made of his tears a veil for their own eyes;

Trusting that clothes and food

 Could make him live his life;

 The parents give their baby a gift: a veil made of the baby's tears. The veil is a lie: merely clothes and food can make life worth living. It hides the cruel truth: life is not worth living.

 Year after year revive their ancient hope,

 Their ancient grief,

 And with a veil still cover their tired eyes,

 Offering thanks to him for being born,

 That he may thank them for his life, and that

 The dumb grief be forgotten, and the vain

 Promise be ever present.

The ancient hope is the hope that life is worth living. The ancient, dumb grief is the grief of all the pains of life. The parents thank the child for being born, because it keeps the parents hopeful. The parents ask the child to thank them for giving him life, and forget about the grief, and keep believing in the promise "life is good".

 But may the wish, that, what he never had,

 Even for an instant,

 Should come to him through long luminous years,

 Lend the light that it borrows from the future

 To the day of his birth, and multiplying

 Illusions, may it persuade him

 That his hunger is good, and life sufficient

 Is this our daily death.

Some literary crap I can't translate well. I think it says: Maybe one day, the child will believe in the promise and the illusionary hope, that his hunger is good, and life is worth living.

 May gifts and kisses and the table spread,

 Sweet words in plenty, plenty of sweet things,

 Blithe promises and glances full of trust,

 Make the familiar room joyous and bright,

 And shield it from the terrors of the night.

Let's be happy and have Christmas parties inside our houses and civil societies, away from the terrors of the night and the inhuman outside.

 Paula, I cannot say sweet words to thee,

 And things that might be dear I do not know,

 Because dumb grief has spoken unto me,

 And told me that which every heart suffers

 Unknowingly, unconfessed to itself.

Sister Paula, sorry, I can't say sweet and comforting words, because dumb grief told me the terrible secret things that everyone knows, but suppresses deep into the unconscious because of how terrible those secrets are.

 Beyond the window-panes of the bright room,

 Which the accustomed images reflect,

 The darkness I can see, still threatening,

 And stay and rest I cannot in the desert.

The secret darkness of the world is hard to see, not because they don't exist, but because we turn away from them. We live our lives in orderly routines designed to keep the darkness from intruding. Still, I am not normal, and I can see the darkness clearly, threatening us. This dread makes me unable to rest. Like someone lost in a desert, I have to move, to look for a way out, no matter how hopeless it is.

 O, let me go, Paula, through the night,

 There to create my own light by myself,

 Let me go through the desert, to the sea,

 That I may bring thee back the gift of light.

 more than thou thinkest, thou art dear to me.

I will try to find something truly worth living for, to cross the desert and find the sea. Then I will show you how to live a truly worthwhile life. I love you so much, sister Paula.

Van Gogh's sadness will last forever

Letter from Theo van Gogh to Elisabeth van Gogh Paris, 5 August 1890.

“Il [Vincent] voulait mourir ; lorsque je me trouvais à son chevet, je lui ai dit que nous essayerions de la soigner et que nous espérions que cette sorte de désespoir le quitterait, il m’a alors dit : La tristesse durera toujours. Je comprends ce qu’il voulait dire par ces mots. Quelques moments plus tard, il a suffoqué et en moins d’une minute il avait fermé les yeux. Un grand repos s’est abattu sur lui dont il n’est jamais revenu”.

In English:

He himself wanted to die, when I sat at his bedside and said that we would try to get him better and that we hoped that he would then be spared this kind of despair, he said, “La tristesse durera toujours” [The sadness will last forever]. I understood what he wanted to say with those words. 

A few moments later he felt suffocated and within one minute he closed his eyes. A great rest came over him from which he did not come to life again.